The IF reports have been compiled every year since 1975 by Clarivate, a British-American analytics company, and are considered an authoritative indicator of the major academic journals’ performance and impact in their fields.

A journal’s IF is roughly calculated by dividing the number of citations in the past year by the total number of articles published in the previous two years, according to Clarivate.

IF rankings are a main reference for researchers when deciding where to submit their manuscripts. Some universities and institutes also use the reports when assessing the academic performance of their researchers.

More than 21,000 disciplinary and multidisciplinary journals from 112 countries were assessed for the latest report, which gives The Innovation an overall ranking of 79th.

China’s highest-ranking disciplinary journal – with an IF of 44.1 – was Cell Research, published by the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences in partnership with UK-based Nature Publishing Group, which covers cellular and molecular biology.

Duke Chen, director general and one of the founders of The Innovation, said China’s substantial contribution to scientific research was a factor in the Beijing-based journal’s rapid rise.

“China has been contributing to nearly 30 per cent of the world’s academic papers but owns less than 2 per cent of the journals. This huge scientific output is a major reason for us to grow fast within a short period of time,” he said.

The journal’s success is a vindication for Chen and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who in 2016 identified the need for a home-grown version of Science and Nature to match China’s rise as a scientific powerhouse.

When their requests for support were turned down by the national funding agencies, the young scientists decided to go ahead anyway.

More than 100 founding members each put a few thousand dollars of their own money into getting the journal off the ground, which included a considerable amount in digital publishing fees to Cell Press.

Chen quit his job as a cancer researcher to lead the editorial office, while others contributed a lot of their time to running the journal. Online meetings were held late at night or on weekends to discuss everything from content to art and marketing.

“Not everyone stayed till the end but some core members have always been around to get our journal to where it is today,” Chen said.

One of those who stayed is neuroscientist Dai Ji from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology. He has been strongly involved in the journal’s operations since 2019, especially the pre-screening of manuscripts.

“I spent about 20 per cent of my time working for The Innovation. Its impact factor told us our work has paid off,” Dai said.

Dai is now managing The Innovation Medicine – one of four sister journals launched last week. Preparations started a year ago, and putting together its first issue was “a much easier time” than the same experience in 2020, he said.

The other titles cover life sciences, materials science and geoscience. The expansion is important for The Innovation’s long-term sustainability, with the increase in publishing fees helping to ease its funding shortage, according to Dai.

The move would also make better use of the growing number of submissions and expand the journal’s influence, said Chen. As one of two full-time employees, he works up to 16-hour days, handling somewhere between 100 and 150 manuscripts a month.

“Our journal has become increasingly known to the research community and we’re receiving way more papers than we can publish in a bimonthly,” Chen said.

The team is also establishing its own platform, registering a publishing company called The Innovation Press in Hong Kong.

“Once we have our own publishing platform, we can save a lot of money and have much more flexibility with the publication process,” Chen said.

While building a platform has been technically challenging, Chen and Dai said the real challenge was to build the brand and boost its international influence beyond the rankings.

“Honestly, Chinese scientists are producing high-quality papers every day, but not many of them will decide to publish them in a journal like The Innovation,” said Dai, adding that this was partly because of existing evaluation systems.

“Every researcher knows if they publish with Science or Nature, they simply have a much higher chance to win research funds or rewards with the same paper,” he said.

According to Chen, it takes time for change to happen. “We need two decades or more to really have a brand like Science or Nature. It’s a long way, but we will get there.”