PERSPECTIVES INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY (2006) 9:135-138 www.im.microbios.org James Testa The Thomson Scientific Director of Editorial journal selection process Development, Thomson Scientific, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA E-mail:
[email protected] several multidisciplinary citation indexes. In addition to its Introduction three major components, the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts The Web of Knowledge is an electronic platform that consists of and Humanities Citation Index, it includes Index Chemicus important searchable bibliographic databases and key analytical and Current Chemical Reactions. Since significant resources tools, such as the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Several of are dedicated to the selection of the most important and influ- these bibliographic databases pro- ential journals for inclusion in the WoS, we will examine the vide extensive coverage of the lit- journal selection process used erature of specific subjects, such to achieve this goal, particu- as the Life Sciences, Agriculture larly with regard to citation and Forestry, Food Science, Phy- analysis and the role of the sics and Engineering, Medicine, impact factor. Behavioral Sciences, and Animal The journal selection Biology (Fig. 1). The internation- process has been applied con- al patent literature and conference sistently for more than 45 proceedings are also key compo- years. Every journal included nents of the Web of Knowledge. in the WoS has been evaluated In all, this environment covers according to the highest stan- over 22,000 unique journals, more dards, which were originally than 60,000 conferences from defined by Eugene Garfield, 1990 to the present, and approxi- the founder and president mately one and a half million Fig.