From disruptive to consolidating: the role of declining journal impact factors quartiles in shaping research innovation

Abstract The Journal Impact Factor is not only one of the most widely accepted metrics for journal evaluation, but also serves as a guiding tool in shaping scientific content. Different direction innovation exhibits significant variations in terms of its conceptual definitions, diffusion processes, and societal impact. Therefore, exploring how JIF shapes the direction of innovation becomes a critical prerequisite for understanding innovation development. The paper focuses on a common negative signal—the declining JIF quartiles—to investigate how that affects the innovation direction of subsequent publications. To address this, the study employs the CD index to quantify journal’s innovation direction and utilizes staggered DID for empirical analysis. The results reveal that journal papers tend to be more conservative when the declining JIF quartiles, with disruptive innovations dropping by 23.81% from a quantitative perspective. Furthermore, this effect intensifies over time and exhibits significant variation across different quartiles. We further explored the potential origins of effect, suggesting that it may stem from the characteristics of disruptive innovations, which are misaligned with the interests inherent in the citation-based evaluation system.