Understanding JMVRA's 11.25 Impact Factor

What Lies Behind the Figure

JMVRA reports an Impact Factor of 11.25, a figure that surprises many authors who compare it with well-established Scopus-indexed journals in their discipline. The candid explanation is that 11.25 is a calculated metric based on citations from Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar. It is not an official Clarivate Journal Impact Factor (JCR), and it is built on broader citation sources than JCR or Scopus use. Steady monthly publishing since June 2023 and a low-cost fee structure add to the pool of citable articles behind it.

This article explains precisely how that figure is produced, why it looks as it does, and, just as important, what it is not, so you can decide how much weight it deserves for your own submission or evaluation needs.

What an “Impact Factor” Really Measures

In its simplest form, an impact factor is a ratio: the citations received by a journal’s articles divided by the number of citable articles it published within a set window. It rises when citations build up faster than new articles appear, and falls when a journal publishes quickly without a matching rise in citations. Remember that every such ratio depends heavily on the window and the data behind it.

Importantly, there is no single official “Impact Factor”: different indexing bodies compute it in different ways, across different time windows and from different citation databases. This is the source of most confusion, and of much misleading marketing by some journals.

Comparing the Google Scholar H-Index, JCR and CiteScore

Metric	Source Database	Who Calculates It	Typical Characteristics
Journal Impact Factor (JIF)	Web of Science	Clarivate	A rigid 2-year citation window; WoS indexing is required
CiteScore	Scopus	Elsevier	A 4-year citation window; Scopus indexing is required
Impact Factor / H-index based on Google Scholar	Google Scholar	Calculated independently from publicly available GS citation data	A wider crawl with no formal indexing application needed; figures may look bigger because coverage is broader and effective windows longer

The Importance of Journal Age: Volume Builds Up Over Time

JMVRA has published without a break, every month, since June 2023. Each monthly issue adds articles, and each article is its own citable unit that can keep gathering citations from the moment it goes live. JMVRA's own article and citation counts are shown on its pages only once verified.

Accumulating citations depends on time as much as on quality: an older article has had longer to be found and cited than a new one, whatever the journal. That is why any citation-based metric, JMVRA's included, should be read alongside the period it covers. You can check JMVRA's citation record yourself on its Google Scholar profile.

How Low Cost Opens the Way to Greater Volume

Plenty of good manuscripts are never published at all — not through rejection, but because their authors cannot afford a $200–$800 publication fee, common at many journals, especially students, early-career researchers and authors at cost-sensitive institutions. JMVRA’s ₹971 INR / $41 USD fee is purposely set low enough to remove that obstacle for the great majority of Indian and international authors.

As a direct result, more legitimate, peer-reviewed research appears through JMVRA than would otherwise find any outlet. A larger body of published articles, sustained month after month, supplies exactly the raw material a citation-based metric needs in order to grow. Volume alone proves nothing, but it does give citations something to build on.

The Snowball Effect of Citations

Citations compound over time. A paper published in mid-2023 has had more than three years to be found, cited by later papers, then cited again in reviews of those papers, and so on. Spread that effect over every monthly issue since June 2023 and total citations tend to grow non-linearly, a pattern sometimes called the citation snowball.

Factor	How This Affects a Google Scholar-Based IF
Uninterrupted monthly publication since June 2023	A growing pool of citable articles, each gathering citations over time
A low fee takes away the cost barrier	More legitimately published, citable articles
Multidisciplinary scope	A wider potential citing audience across many fields
Open access with CC BY 4.0 licensing	No paywall to hinder reading and citing

Plain Disclosure: Not Indexed in Scopus, Web of Science or DOAJ

The reason for this disclosure is that some journals display a high figure without naming its source, so authors may assume it comes from JCR or Scopus when it does not. JMVRA is plain about it: 11.25 is calculated from Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar citations, and carries no endorsement or ranking from Clarivate, Elsevier, or DOAJ.

Reading JMVRA’s Impact Factor Responsibly

• Regard 11.25 as a calculated citation metric based on Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar data, and not as a ranking equal to Scopus or JCR.
• For UGC-related compliance (API scores, PhD requirements), note that JMVRA is aligned with UGC's Suggested Parameters for Choosing Peer-Reviewed Journals, a separate basis you can check against your institution's rules — see the UGC CARE criteria breakdown.
• When your institution or funder explicitly requires Scopus or Web of Science indexing, make sure your chosen journal meets that before you submit — JMVRA does not currently meet that particular requirement.
• Use the Impact Factor as just one signal among several (peer review process, ISSN validity, editorial transparency, alignment with UGC's Suggested Parameters), and never as the single reason for choosing where to submit.

Checking the Figure Yourself

There is no need to take JMVRA’s word for the citation activity behind 11.25. Search for JMVRA (ISSN 2984-8911) on Google Scholar, open JMVRA's Google Scholar profile, look at citation counts on individual published articles, and work out the ratio yourself. JMVRA shows its own citation count and h-index only once they are verified. The dedicated Impact Factor explainer page gives full methodological transparency, including the anatomy of the calculation and a side-by-side comparison table.

At-a-Glance Checklist

1. Source identifiedGoogle Scholar & Semantic Scholar
2. Not a JIFSay so
3. Fair comparisonSame metric
4. Profile checkedYourself
5. Careful useIn applications

Interpreting Any Journal's Impact Claim Responsibly in Your Own Work

A single figure can tempt readers to draw large conclusions. Use these thoughtful habits whenever you meet an impact claim, whether on a journal website, in an advertisement or in a colleague's remark.

• Ask who calculated the figure. Different providers use different methods and data, so numbers are not interchangeable. Identify the source and method before comparing one journal's claim with another's.
• Prefer reproducible evidence. If you can retrieve the underlying citation data yourself, you can judge the claim honestly. Figures that cannot be checked deserve cautious treatment.
• Track your own article's reach. Monitor downloads, citations and mentions of your paper over time. Evidence about your own work often matters more to reviewers than the journal's headline figure.
• Describe metrics accurately in CVs. When listing a journal metric in an application, name its source exactly and avoid wording that suggests a different measure. Precise description builds trust with evaluators.

Always name the source of a metric, verify it where possible and let your own article's evidence carry the most weight.

Questions Researchers Often Ask