Scopus CiteScore in 2025: Overview, Journal Ranking

The Scopus CiteScore (2025), covering the period 2021–2024, has been released.

Many researchers focus on whether a journal is indexed in Scopus, but it is equally important to consider the journal’s CiteScore and quartile ranking.

Journal metrics such as the CiteScore, SNIP and SJR help you evaluate journals. The CiteScore Metric is used by Scopus to calculate the Impact of a research journal, book, or a conference proceeding.

The annual Scopus CiteScore calculation is usually released in June. The latest 2024 CiteCcore has released in June 2025.

According to the latest CiteScore data from Scopus:

Total source titles indexed: 48,473
Journals with CiteScore: 31,138
Journals without CiteScore: 17,335

Distribution by CiteScore quartile

Scopus divides journals into four quartiles: Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. Q1 contains the top 25% of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 contains journals in the 50 to 75% group, Q4 journals represent the bottom 75-100% .

Quartile	Number of titles
Q1	9,655 titles
Q2	8,056 titles
Q3	7,101 titles
Q4	6,326 titles

CiteScore measures the average citations received by each document published in a journal. The higher the CiteScore, the greater the recognition of the journal.

CiteScore metrics provide transparent data to help authors measure the citation impact for Scopus indexed journals.

How CiteScore is Calculated?

CiteScore 2024 counts the citations received in 2021-2024 to articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters and data papers published in the time period 2021-24 and divides this by the number of publications published in 2021-2024.

For example, the journal “Ca-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians” has total number of Citations in 2021-24 are 121,190 and the number of publications for the same time period are 105. So the CiteScore is calculated as 121,190/105 that is 1154.2.

The CiteScore calculation considers articles, reviews, conference papers, data papers and book chapters.

Top 50 Journals in the CiteScore

S. No.	Journal	CiteScore	Category	Citations (2021-24)	Documents (2021-24)
1	Ca-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians	1154.2	Oncology	121,190	105
2	Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning	202.9	Software	3,450	17
3	Nature Reviews Drug Discovery	181.8	Pharmacology	32,182	177
4	Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology	150.9	Molecular Biology	33,659	223
5	MMWR Recommendations and Reports	129.9	Health (social science)	2,857	22
6	Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology	114.5	Oncology	28,505	249
7	Nature Reviews Disease Primers	113.3	General Medicine	19,833	175
8	Nature Reviews Microbiology	106.4	Infectious Diseases	40,742	383
9	Nature Reviews Materials	105.5	Materials Chemistry	28,378	269
10	Nature Reviews Cancer	103.8	Cancer Research	23,559	227
11	Chemical Reviews	100.5	General Chemistry	102,753	1,022
12	New England Journal of Medicine	96.4	General Medicine	216,262	2,243
13	Reviews of Modern Physics	91.1	General Physics and Astronomy	12,021	132
14	The Lancet	87.6	General Medicine	155,575	1,776
15	IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials	86.2	Electrical and Electronic Engineering	27,510	319
16	Nature Reviews Methods Primers	85.0	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	14,627	172
17	Nature Reviews Immunology	84.7	Immunology	28,274	334
18	Nature Medicine	82.4	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	96,697	1,174
19	MMWR Surveillance Summaries	81.8	Health (social science)	3,192	39
20	Nature	78.1		390,062	4,992
21	Cell	74.8	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	114,331	1,528
22	World Psychiatry	74.0	Psychiatry and Mental Health	6,212	84
23	Chemical Society Reviews	73.2	General Chemistry	90,796	1,240
24	Progress in Energy and Combustion Science	73.0	Energy Engineering and Power Technology	8,839	121
25	Nature Energy	73.0	Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment	39,648	543
26	Proceedings of the IEEE	71.1	Electrical and Electronic Engineering	19,976	281
27	Annals of Oncology	70.4	Oncology	26,834	381
28	Living Reviews in Relativity	70.2	Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)	1,474	21
29	Progress in Materials Science	70.0	General Materials Science	26,103	373
30	Nature Reviews Earth and Environment	70.0	Nature and Landscape Conservation	17,568	251
31	The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology	64.2	Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism	16,946	264
32	Physiological Reviews	63.8	Physiology	10,343	162
33	The Lancet Neurology	62.6	Neurology (clinical)	22,606	361
34	Nature Nanotechnology	62.2	Condensed Matter Physics	44,687	719
35	Nature Materials	61.8	Mechanical Engineering	50,439	816
36	Nature Reviews Physics	60.3	General Physics and Astronomy	14,530	241
37	Nature Reviews Chemistry	59.4	General Chemical Engineering	14,203	239
38	Nature Biotechnology	58.8	Biotechnology	39,000	663
39	Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology	58.7	Gastroenterology	21,528	367
40	Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy	58.6	Genetics	64,411	1,099
41	Annual Review of Psychology	58.0	General Psychology	5,918	102
42	Journal of Hematology and Oncology	57.9	Molecular Biology	23,285	402
43	Living Reviews in Solar Physics	57.8	Space and Planetary Science	752	13
44	Cancer Cell	57.7	Oncology	28,061	486
45	Nature Catalysis	57.7	Biochemistry	27,946	484
46	Nature Reviews Genetics	57.7	Genetics	16,673	289
47	Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease	57.0	Pathology and Forensic Medicine	4,959	87
48	Nature Reviews Cardiology	56.1	Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine	17,783	317
49	Annual Review of Immunology	55.5	Immunology	5,610	101
50	International Journal of Information Management	54.9	Computer Networks and Communications	21,368	389

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