Analysis of the Impact of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Delisting from the Web of Science on the Field of Public, Environmental and Occupational Health

In March 2023, Clarivate delisted the flagship megajournal of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ( IJERPH ), e -ISSN: 1660-4601, which had ranked second worldwide in open access output in 2022, shocking the entire scientific community. This affected thousands of researchers since research assessment experts and funders consider WoS a " w hitelist" of journals. Among them, the ones in the field of public, environmental and occupational health stand out. In the previous years, attracted by its position in the first quartile (Q1) of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) ranking of the Clarivate's Journal Cita tion Reports (JCR), and taking advantage of a low article processing charge, a fast turnaround and a low rejection rate, they published around 20 % of the area production indexed in WoS in IJERPH . This paper analyses the consequences of IJERPH 's delisting from WoS on the publishing dynamics of the area, making especial focus on its researchers' output and its impact. Results show that, after IJERPH 's delisting, publications have not been reallocated within the area, losing more than 30 % of its output indexed in WoS in 2023. Moreover, neither megajournals of similar disciplines nor multidisciplinary ones absorbed the lost documents. Finally, even the frequent IJERPH 's authors lost half of their output indexed in WoS in 2023, degrading their JIF-Q1 presence (JCR 2022) in equal proportion.