This paper investigates different uses of the Journal Impact Factor in national journal rankings and discusses the merits of supplementing metrics with expert assessment. Our focus is national journal rankings, where a cross-country comparison is used as evidence to support decisions about the distribution of institutional funding or career advancement. The seven countries under comparison are: China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Turkey—and the region of Flanders in Belgium. With the exception of Italy, top-tier journals used in national rankings include those classified at the highest level, or according to tier, or points implemented. A total of 3,565 (75.8%) out of 4,701 unique top-tier journals were identified as having a Journal Impact Factor, with 55.7% belonging to the first Journal Impact Factor quartile. Journal rankings in China, Flanders, Poland, and Turkey classify journals with a Journal Impact Factor as being top-tier, but only when they are in the first quartile of the Average Journal Impact Factor Percentile (AJIFP). Journal rankings that result from expert assessment in Denmark, Finland, and Norway regularly classify journals as top-tier outside the first quartile, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. We conclude that experts, when tasked with metric-informed journal rankings, take into account quality dimensions that are not covered by Journal Impact Factors.