ImpaQ Ecosystem•Clarivate, Scopus & CORE Data
Clarivate WoS 2024 / 2025 Data
IMPAQ
WoS SCIE Q2Scopus Q1SCImago #7,535Hybrid

Health Care Management Science

Acronym:hcms
•
Identifier (ISSN):1386-9620(Print)/1572-9389(Online)
•
Publisher:Springer Nature
Clarivate JCR Index Advisory: Active (SSCI)
Clarivate IF (2026)
2.8↑ +0.8
Journal Impact Factor
IF Trend↓
WoS Quartile
Q2
WoS SCIEJCR Quartile
Clarivate WoS JCR
WoS Categories↓
JCR Release Date: 2026-06-17

Impact Factor Trend (2022–2026)

Clarivate IF trend for Health Care Management Science

WoS Q2
13463.9820223.620232.32024220252.82026
Annual Impact Factor Metric
Current (2026):2.8
Scopus SJR & RankScopus Q1
0.751
#7,535

SCImago Journal Rank citation prestige weighting

Scopus Year: 2025
H-Index (2025)
72

72 papers with at least that number of citations each

WoS: SCIE / JCRQ2
Self-Citation Rate13%
Safe Level (< 15%)Warning Level (> 20%)
Self-citation below 15% indicates strong scholarly independence.
Volume & Open AccessHybrid
52articles/year
48.57% Gold OA•100% Original Research

Aims & Scope

Health Care Management Science publishes papers dealing with health care delivery, health care management, and health care policy. Papers should have a decision focus and make use of quantitative methods including management science, operations research, analytics, machine learning, and other emerging areas. Articles must clearly articulate the relevance and the realized or potential impact of the work. Applied research will be considered and is of particular interest if there is evidence that it was implemented or informed a decision-making process. Papers describing routine applications of known methods are discouraged. Authors are encouraged to disclose all data and analyses thereof, and to provide computational code when appropriate. Editorial statements for the individual departments are provided below. Health Care Analytics Departmental Editors: Margrét Bjarnadóttir, University of Maryland Nan Kong, Purdue University With the explosion in computing power and available data, we have seen fast changes in the analytics applied in the healthcare space. The Health Care Analytics department welcomes papers applying a broad range of analytical approaches, including those rooted in machine learning, survival analysis, and complex event analysis, that allow healthcare professionals to find opportunities for improvement in health system management, patient engagement, spending, and diagnosis. We especially encourage papers that combine predictive and prescriptive analytics to improve decision making and health care outcomes. The contribution of papers can be across multiple dimensions including new methodology, novel modeling techniques and health care through real-world cohort studies. Papers that are methodologically focused need in addition to show practical relevance. Similarly papers that are application focused should clearly demonstrate improvements over the status quo and available approaches by applying rigorous analytics. Health Care Operations Management Departmental Editors: Nilay Tanik Argon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Bob Batt, University of Wisconsin The department invites high-quality papers on the design, control, and analysis of operations at healthcare systems. We seek papers on classical operations management issues (such as scheduling, routing, queuing, transportation, patient flow, and quality) as well as non-traditional problems driven by everchanging healthcare practice. Empirical, experimental, and analytical (model based) methodologies are all welcome. Papers may draw theory from across disciplines, and should provide insight into improving operations from the perspective of patients, service providers, organizations (municipal/government/industry), and/or society. Health Care Management Science Practice Departmental Editor: Vikram Tiwari, Vanderbilt University Medical Center The department seeks research from academicians and practitioners that highlights Management Science based solutions directly relevant to the practice of healthcare. Relevance is judged by the impact on practice, as well as the degree to which researchers engaged with practitioners in understanding the problem context and in developing the solution. Validity, that is, the extent to which the results presented do or would apply in practice is a key evaluation criterion. In addition to meeting the journal’s standards of originality and substantial contribution to knowledge creation, research that can be replicated in other organizations is encouraged. Papers describing unsuccessful applied research projects may be considered if there are generalizable learning points addressing why the project was unsuccessful. Health Care Productivity Analysis Departmental Editor: Jonas Schreyögg, University of Hamburg The department invites papers with rigorous methods and significant impact for policy and practice. Papers typically apply theory and techniques to measuring productivity in health care organizations and systems. The journal welcomes state-of-the-art parametric as well as non-parametric techniques such as data envelopment analysis, stochastic frontier analysis or partial frontier analysis. The contribution of papers can be manifold including new methodology, novel combination of existing methods or application of existing methods to new contexts. Empirical papers should produce results generalizable beyond a selected set of health care organizations. All papers should include a section on implications for management or policy to enhance productivity. Public Health Policy and Medical Decision Making Departmental Editors: Ebru Bish, University of Alabama Julie L. Higle, University of Southern California The department invites high quality papers that use data-driven methods to address important problems that arise in public health policy and medical decision-making domains. We welcome submissions that develop and apply mathematical and computational models in support of data-driven and model-based analyses for these problems. The Public Health Policy and Medical Decision-Making Department is particularly interested in papers that: Study high-impact problems involving health policy, treatment planning and design, and clinical applications; Develop original data-driven models, including those that integrate disease modeling with screening and/or treatment guidelines; Use model-based analyses as decision making-tools to identify optimal solutions, insights, recommendations. Articles must clearly articulate the relevance of the work to decision and/or policy makers and the potential impact on patients and/or society. Papers will include articulated contributions within the methodological domain, which may include modeling, analytical, or computational methodologies. Emerging Topics Departmental Editor: Alec Morton, University of Strathclyde Emerging Topics will handle papers which use innovative quantitative methods to shed light on frontier issues in healthcare management and policy. Such papers may deal with analytic challenges arising from novel health technologies or new organizational forms. Papers falling under this department may also deal with the analysis of new forms of data which are increasingly captured as health systems become more and more digitized.

Topics Covered (Recognized by AI)
Economics93.8%Medicine93.6%Political science88.3%Law88.3%Pathology86%Nursing85.4%Economic growth84.8%Health care83.7%Public health82.9%Health informatics74.1%Computer science71.1%Health administration68.1%Mathematics63.3%Engineering52.1%Business47.5%Statistics42.4%Operations management32.7%Biology32.7%Physics25.8%Management25.8%Psychology25.2%Mathematical optimization24.9%Internal medicine24.6%Operating system22%Operations research21%
Primary Research Areas

WoS Categories & Quartiles

Detailed JCR / JCI category rankings and quartile breakdown from Clarivate

Clarivate JCR & JCI
JCRSSCI2026

HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES

Q2
Rank42/125
IndexSSCI
JCISSCI2026

HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES

Q2
Rank41/125
IndexSSCI

Annual Historical Statistics & Publications

Track annual publication volume, total citations, and Impact Factor evolution

12 year
2026Latest
IF2.8
Articles / Year40
Total Citations7
2025
IF2
Articles / Year45
Total Citations82
2024
IF2.3
Articles / Year33
Total Citations164
2023
IF3.6
Articles / Year37
Total Citations362
2022
IF3.979
Articles / Year39
Total Citations405

SCImago & Scopus Journal Intelligence

Global SCImago ranking, SJR prestige index, Scopus coverage, and societal policy impact

Rank #7,535Scopus Q1SCImago Profile
Scopus Coverage:1998-2026
Scopus Broad Areas:Health ProfessionsMedicine
Scopus Citation Rank (SJR)Q1
0.751

Weighted prestige citation metric per document indexed in the Scopus database.

Quartile: Scopus Q1
Citations / Doc (2 years)
2.96

Average citations received per document published in the 2-year window.

2-Year Citation Window
Estimated Publication Fee (APC)
$3,219 USD

Estimated Article Processing Charge for Open Access publication.

Estimated cost / article

Scopus 3-Year Publication & Citation Window

3-Year Citations346
3-Year Documents116
Citable Documents114

Aggregated from Scopus database across the 3-year SJR evaluation window.

Societal Impact & Inclusivity (SCImago)

Policy Citations (Overton)0

Citations in government and international policy documents

Female Author Rate32.1%

Percentage of female authors published in the journal

Real-world societal policy reach and author gender diversity tracked by SCImago.

Scopus Subject Categories

Health Professions (miscellaneous)Q1
Medicine (miscellaneous)Q2
Academic Metric Intelligence

Journal Metrics & Citation Visualizations

Total Cites vs Self-Cites

Evaluation of scholarly independence and citation reach

Total citations steady growth
Self-citation: 13%

Citations per Document

Citation metric windows across 2, 3, and 4 years

Cites / Doc (4 years)Cites / Doc (3 years)Cites / Doc (2 years)

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Classification

Major / minor zone classification and CAS Early Warning List history

Major Category (Broad Field):
3区 (Zone 3)Medicine
Minor Category (Specific Field):
3区HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES
CAS Early Warning List History:
Updated annually: 2020 – 2024
2020
Not warned
2021
Not warned
2022
Not warned
2023
Not warned
2024
Not warned

Academic Intelligence Overview & Context

ImpaQ Analysis

Health Care Management Science (acronym: hcms, ISSN: 1386-9620) is a peer-reviewed international scholarly journal in the field of HEALTH POLICY & SERVICES, published by Springer Nature in Netherlands. The periodical holds a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of 2.80, ranking in quartile Q2 of Web of Science (SCIE), a Scopus SJR indicator of 0.751 (Q1), an H-index of 72.

The journal enforces rigorous peer evaluation with a publication frequency of 4 issues per year, an annual output of approximately 52 scientific articles. In terms of accessibility and author fees, it operates under the Hybrid model with an estimated APC of $3,219 USD. It serves as a benchmark publication platform for academics, researchers, and doctoral candidates seeking global research visibility.

Publishing & Editorial Information

Detailed publisher, peer-review turnaround, and publication cycle specifications

Open Access Model
Hybrid
Publisher
Springer Nature
Publication Language
English
Frequency
4 issues per year
Indexing & Databases
SSCIScopusPubMed

Similar Journals in Discipline

Journals in the same research field with comparable impact metrics

Record UUID: 6c315b34-b9d5-4823-b5ae-e7f3a1c0e030
Database Updated: 2026-09-29