In the 2002–2015 editions, JBR was modified on several occasions due to the changes in regulations adopted by the ministry responsible for science in the Serbian government, as well as due to the changing status of the JBR in these regulations. The major modifications include:

1. The classification of journals into research fields was changed in several cases, due to the shifts in their subject and scope.
2. Prior to appearance of the online edition of JCR and the Conference Proceedings Citation Indexes, the citation rates of the evaluated journals were calculated based on the CD editions of the JCR, covering a smaller number of journals/publications and, consequently, a smaller number of references.
3. The indicators of local impact were calculated based on the corpus of references from all evaluated journals, since all evaluated journals were indexed in SCIndeks; in 2013, this ceased to be the case.
4. The indicators of bibliometric quality were calculated for all journals, since all evaluated journals were indexed in SCIndeks; this practice changed in 2013, with the introduction of a new publication and funding model;
5. The composite indicators of bibliometric quality had not been available in the early editions of JBR, since they were introduced only in 2012;
6. The journal tier was assigned in various classification systems, using various criteria:
   1. until 2016, it was termed "preliminary tier";
   2. preliminary tiers were assigned on a numeric scale (1-5); since 2007, two different systems, using the same codes (e.g. M52) but different definitions and criteria (e.g. "Reputed national journal", instead of "Leading national journal") were used. The names and the content of tiers for different periods are displayed in tooltips under PK in the journal ranking tables;
   3. the journals awarded higher tiers (K24, K51, and K52) are considerably more numerous in 2016.

The above-mentioned changes have to be taken into account when interpreting the variations in the journals’ performance in individual years. In general:

1. the average citation rate of the evaluated journals in the WoS has increased, as a result of the increase in the overall number of journals and references in the WoS;
2. the average citation rate of the journals in SCIndeks has decreased since 2014 on, due to the reduced SCIndeks coverage;
3. the number of the journals awarded higher tiers has radically increased in 2016, as a direct consequence of the changes in the Rulebook adopted by the ministry responsible for science;
4. the procedure used to generate the basic indicators of bibliometric quality has been subject to minimal changes throughout the period, and the values of these indicators for different years may be considered to be comparable.