Q: If a journal’s name and IF change, does this affect its published papers?

In the first year of name change of a journal, the new title does not have an IF. The IF is assigned to the old title and not the new one. So, on the year that the name change occurs, it will not impact the published paper in any way. Hence, logically speaking, any article published under the old journal name should not be affected in any way in the year of the name change.

The IF for the journal under the new name will drop in the second year after the name change. By that time, all the articles that have been published in the journal will already be a year old and would have received quite a few citations. However, in the second year, separate IFs are calculated for both the old and the new titles. So, for an author who has published in this journal, he/she can give the IF of the old title to organizations that they apply to.

However, these are the general rules applied to SCI journals when there is a journal name change. Most organizations follow such rules. Whether some Chinese organizations will recognize it or not, depends on the specific organization.