Q1 sounds like a permanent badge of quality. It is a position in one ranked list, in one database, for one year, and it moves when any of those change.
What a Q1 journal is
A Q1 journal is one that ranks in the top quarter of its subject category on a citation metric, in a particular database, for a particular year. Q2 is the next quarter, Q3 the one after, and Q4 the bottom quarter. That definition has three moving parts, and the label "Q1" on its own names none of them:
- The source and metric. Usually the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports (JCR), or the SJR indicator on the SCImago Journal & Country Rank portal, which is built on Scopus data.
- The subject category. The journal is ranked only against the other journals in that category.
- The year. Both sources publish new values every year, and positions move.
Citation rates differ between fields, so a Q3 journal in a heavily cited field can have a higher impact factor than a Q1 journal in a less cited one. Ranking within categories corrects for that.
The working rule: treat a bare "Q1" as an incomplete claim, and ask who ranked it, against which list, and in which release.
How Journal Citation Reports assigns quartiles
The JIF is the number of citations a journal receives in one year to items it published in the previous two years, divided by the number of citable items (articles and reviews) it published in those two years. Clarivate's JCR Reference Guide states that editorials, letters and meeting abstracts are not counted in the denominator, though citations to them do count in the numerator. According to Clarivate's announcement of the JCR 2026 release, it reflects 2025 data and covers 22,643 journals in 254 categories.
Within each category, journals are sorted by JIF. Clarivate divides each journal's rank position by the number of journals in the category, a value it calls Z, and assigns the quartile from where Z falls. The Reference Guide sets out the method:
| Quartile | Z = rank ÷ journals in the category |
|---|---|
| Q1 | above 0, up to 0.25 |
| Q2 | above 0.25, up to 0.5 |
| Q3 | above 0.5, up to 0.75 |
| Q4 | above 0.75 |
Tied journals share a rank position and therefore a quartile, and the next rank position is skipped. Ties are never split between quartiles.
A worked example
Take an imaginary category of 120 journals:
| Rank | Z | Quartile |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | 30 ÷ 120 = 0.250 | Q1 |
| 31 | 31 ÷ 120 = 0.258 | Q2 |
| 60 | 60 ÷ 120 = 0.500 | Q2 |
| 61 | 61 ÷ 120 = 0.508 | Q3 |
If the journals at positions 30 and 31 have the same JIF, both take rank 30 and both are Q1, and the next journal takes rank 32 (Z = 0.267) and is Q2. In a specialist category of 14 journals, rank 3 gives Z = 0.214 (Q1) and rank 4 gives Z = 0.286 (Q2), so without ties only three journals fit in Q1.
In a crowded category such as Medicine, General & Internal, which holds hundreds of titles, a tenth of a point of JIF can move a journal several rank positions without any change in how it publishes.
JCR also reports the Journal Citation Indicator (JCI), a field-normalised metric with its own rankings, so a policy that means a JCI quartile should say so.
How SCImago assigns quartiles
SCImago Journal & Country Rank is free to use and draws on Scopus. Its SJR indicator counts the weighted citations a journal receives in one year to documents it published in the previous three years, and citations are not all equal: one counts for more when it comes from a more prestigious journal, with prestige depending on the field.
According to the SJR help page, journals are ranked by SJR and divided into four equal groups, from Q1 for the highest values to Q4 for the lowest. A journal's SCImago page shows its quartile in each of its subject categories, year by year.
Scopus has its own metric, CiteScore, which uses a four-year citation window. Scopus Sources shows it as a rank and percentile in each subject area and offers a CiteScore quartile filter, with Elsevier's own bands: Quartile 1 is titles in the 99th to 75th percentiles, Quartile 2 the 74th to 50th, Quartile 3 the 49th to 25th, and Quartile 4 the 24th to 0. That makes the CiteScore quartile a third system, separate from JIF and SJR quartiles.
Why the same journal gets different quartiles
A journal can be Q1 in JCR and Q2 in SCImago, or the reverse, without either being wrong. The two systems differ at almost every step:
| JCR quartile | SJR quartile | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Clarivate | SCImago |
| Citation data | Web of Science Core Collection | Scopus |
| Metric ranked | JIF (JCI rankings also available) | SJR indicator |
| Citation window | One year's citations to the previous two years' items | One year's citations to the previous three years' documents |
| Citation weighting | Each citation counts once | Weighted by the citing journal |
| Categories | Web of Science categories | Scopus subject categories (ASJC) |
| Access | Subscription | Free |
Categories matter most. JCR uses Web of Science categories, such as Medicine, General & Internal. SCImago uses the Scopus classification (ASJC), the scheme behind CiteScore too, which has a category called Medicine (miscellaneous). The schemes draw different boundaries, so a journal is ranked against a different set of journals in each, and a journal indexed in only one database has a quartile only there.
For clinical journals this is not a technicality. A paediatric oncology journal may be classified under both a paediatrics category and an oncology category, and oncology is the more heavily cited field, so the same journal can be upper quartile against paediatrics titles and lower quartile against oncology titles in the same release. When a quartile appears in a promotion file, ask which category produced it.
The decision rule: compare journals only on quartiles from the same source, category and year, and find out where any quoted quartile came from before you use it.
Where to check a journal's quartile
Work from the database, not from the journal's website.
- For JIF quartiles, use Journal Citation Reports through your library's subscription, and note the rank and quartile in every category.
- For SJR quartiles, search SCImago by title or ISSN and note the quartile in each category.
- For CiteScore, use Scopus Sources, which is open to non-subscribers too. Record the percentile, rank and quartile for each subject area, labelled as CiteScore.
- Match the ISSN and publisher, because journal titles are reused and imitated.
- Record source, category, year, quartile and the date you checked.
A "Q1" badge on a journal website, or a ranking list with no stated source, is not evidence. Unverifiable ranking claims are among the red flags for predatory journals, and our guide for institutions on spotting predatory publishing risks builds that check into a routine triage.
When the method changes, not the journal
Clarivate has changed how JIF rankings are built three times in recent releases, and each change moved quartiles for journals whose performance was unchanged:
- Decimal places. Since the 2023 release (2022 data), the JIF has been displayed to one decimal place rather than three. That created more tied rankings, so quartiles are no longer evenly sized by number of journals.
- Unified rankings. In 2024 Clarivate replaced edition-specific rankings with a single ranking for each of its 229 science and social science categories, bringing Emerging Sources Citation Index journals into them. Adding titles to a category changes every incumbent's Z value.
- Retractions. From the 2025 release (2024 data), citations to and from retracted and withdrawn publications are excluded from the JIF numerator, though the retracted items still count in the denominator.
So a journal that slipped from Q1 to Q2 has not necessarily declined, and one that rose has not necessarily improved. Before you act on a change, check whether the category changed size or the method changed underneath it. Watch the year labels too: the JCR 2026 release contains 2025 data, and both years get quoted.
Writing a quartile rule that holds up
If your institution uses quartiles in incentives, promotion or reporting, start with what the provider itself says. In its JCR 2026 announcement, Clarivate states that the journal-level indicators in JCR "are designed to support journal evaluation, not to assess the performance of individual researchers or articles." The general recommendation of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) goes further: do not use journal-based metrics such as the JIF as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, or in hiring, promotion and funding decisions.
If a quartile rule stays in a policy, make it unambiguous. Check that your wording:
- Names the source and metric, such as "JIF quartile in Journal Citation Reports" or "SJR quartile in SCImago"
- Says which year applies: the year of publication, or the most recent release on a stated date
- Says which category counts when a journal has several: the best, the one matching the applicant's field, or all of them
- Covers journals the source does not rank, such as one indexed in Scopus but not Web of Science
- Asks for evidence: a record of the source, category, year and date checked
- States that the quartile describes the journal, not the quality of the article or the researcher
A clause that meets most of these might read:
For this scheme, a Q1 journal is one ranked in the first quartile by Journal Impact Factor in at least one of its Web of Science categories, in the most recent Journal Citation Reports release available on the date of the application. Journals without a JIF ranking will be assessed by the committee on the content of the article.
Adapt the details. The test is that two people applying the rule reach the same answer for the same journal.
A quartile is a starting point
A quartile answers a narrow question about a journal's citation performance. It does not say whether a paper fits the journal's scope, how carefully manuscripts are reviewed, or whether the right readers will see the findings.
When authors ask your office for a list of Q1 journals, give them quartiles with source and year, and point them to the checks that decide where a paper should go. Our guide to choosing the right journal sets those out in order.
Directive Publications describes its peer review process and publishes its author guidelines, so authors and research offices can judge scope and process directly rather than through a single label.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Q1 journal always better than a Q2 journal?
No. A quartile reflects a journal's rank on one citation metric within one subject category, so it says nothing directly about the quality of a particular article or how well the journal suits your paper. Judge scope, peer review and recently published papers alongside the quartile.
Why is a journal Q1 in one database and Q2 in another?
Journal Citation Reports ranks journals by Journal Impact Factor using Web of Science data, while SCImago ranks them by the SJR indicator using Scopus data. The two use different citation windows, different weighting of citations and different subject categories, so the journal is measured differently and ranked against a different set of journals. Neither quartile is wrong, but they cannot be compared with each other.
Where can I find a journal's quartile?
JIF quartiles are in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, which usually requires an institutional subscription through your library. SJR quartiles are free on the SCImago Journal and Country Rank website. Scopus Sources shows CiteScore rank, percentile and quartile for each subject area. Search by title or ISSN in the database itself rather than trusting a badge on a journal website.
Do journal quartiles change every year?
Yes. Both Journal Citation Reports and SCImago publish new annual values, and a quartile can move because the journal's citations changed, because other journals in the category changed, or because journals joined or left the category. Methodology changes move quartiles too, as when Clarivate merged its edition-specific rankings into unified category rankings in 2024. Always record which year a quartile refers to.
Can a journal be in different quartiles for different subject categories?
Yes, if the journal is assigned to more than one category. Journal Citation Reports gives a journal a separate rank and quartile in each of its categories, and SCImago shows a quartile for each of its own categories. A journal can be Q1 in one category and Q2 or Q3 in another, so any policy that uses quartiles should say which category counts.