The Thomson Scientific Journal Selection Process
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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. 1. Current Contents and Journal Citation Reports, two of the pub- Emeritus of ISI. This steady lications and bibliographic databases of Thomson Scientific. patents. application of quality has The cornerstone of the Web enabled continuous develop- of Knowledge, however, is the highly selective multidiscipli- ment of the WoS, whose primary purpose is to provide com- nary Web of Science (WoS), which the Institute for Scientific prehensive coverage of the world’s most important and influ- Information (ISI), and now Thomson Scientific, has devel- ential scholarly journals. Nonetheless, comprehensive does oped and maintained for over 40 years. The WoS comprises not necessarily mean all-inclusive, since it has been demon- strated that a relatively small number of journals publish the bulk of scientific results. Abstracted by Nicole Skinner, INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY, from a lecture given by the author at the Institute for Catalan Studies, Barcelona, An analysis of 7622 journals covered in the 2003 JCR on January 25, 2006. revealed that as few as 300 journals account for more than 136 INT. MICROBIOL. Vol. 9, 2006 TESTA half of what is cited and nearly one-third of what is pub- complete, and that journal coverage in every subject meets lished. It has also been shown that a core of 3000 of JCR the needs of our customers. journals accounts for about 80% of published articles and nearly 95% of cited articles. This core, however, is not stat- International diversity. The presence of an interna- ic; new journals join it while others disappear. Every year, tional base of authors and editors is a good indicator of the 2000 journals are evaluated, but only the most important and health of a journal and a predictor of its ability to continue to influential international and regional ones are selected, publish important research in the future. Thomson also seeks around 10%. to cover the best regional journals and to properly reflect the global context in which today’s scientific research is carried out. For example, in the infectious diseases category, there The Thomson Scientific are 41 journals published in eight countries, but a study at the selection process article level reveals a community of authors representing 115 countries not including the EU or the USA—where most of The team of editors select publications for the WoS. This the journals are normally published. team consists of information professionals with an education- al background in science and librarians, all of whom are Citation analysis. Authoritative citation analysis is a experts in the literature of their subject areas. There are four key factor in the evaluation of journals, because all cited ref- main components of the Thomson Scientific selection erences to articles in both covered and non-covered articles process of journals: are captured in order to measure the importance, influence, and overall usefulness of a journal. Discipline-specific cita- Journal publishing standards. (a) Timeliness: It is tion rates tend to vary greatly; for example, small fields such essential that each journal publishes according to its stated as crystallography do not generate as many articles or cita- publication schedule in order to be considered for coverage tions as do larger fields such as biotechnology or genetics. In in the WoS database. Three consecutive issues published on areas such as the arts and humanities, it may take a relative- time must be received to confirm this. With e-journals that ly long time for an article to attract a meaningful number of normally publish articles one at a time, editors look for a citations. These facts must be taken into consideration if cita- steady flow of articles over several months. (b) International tion data are to be used correctly. editorial conventions: Certain editorial conventions are Thomson Scientific’s citation analysis takes place on at essential since the point of indexing articles is to be able to least two levels: citations to the journal itself and citations to retrieve them in a search, and these include: informative jour- the contributing authors and the editorial-board members. nal titles, descriptive article titles, full address information This is particularly useful in evaluating new journals, for for every author, and complete bibliographic information for which a citation history does not exist. For established jour- all the cited references. (c) English-language bibliographic nals, the impact factor—the average number of times that information: English has become the standard language in recent articles in a journal were cited in a particular year—is the international research community, especially in natural used. For example, in 2004 the impact factor for the journal sciences. It is for this reason that Thomson Scientific tries to Emerging Infectious Diseases was 5.643. This means that, on focus on journals that publish their full text or, at the very least, their bibliographic information in English. (d) Peer Table 1. Calculation of the Impact Factor of a journal review: We expect peer review to be a part of the publishing process for all science journals. Application of the peer Journal: Emerging Infectious Diseases review process, which is normally done by the journal pub- 2004 Impact Factor: 5.643 lisher, is an assurance and an indication of a journal’s stan- dards, the overall quality of research presented, and the com- Citations in 2004 to articles published in: 2003 = 1577 2002 = 1572 pleteness of the cited references. Total 2 years = 3149 citations Editorial content. The editorial content is evaluated to Number of articles published in: 2003 = 281 ensure that the content of a new journal will enrich the Thom- 2002 = 277 Total 2 years = 558 articles son database or that the topic is already covered adequately. The goal of this process is to ensure that the overall editorial Calculation: 3149 / 558 = 5.643 content of Thomson journal products is comprehensive and JOURNAL SELECTION PROCESS INT. MICROBIOL. Vol. 9, 2006 137 Table 2. Citable items in evaluating the work of individual researchers and for measuring the importance or influence of their work in the Articles Reviews Combined Other items field. Number in JCR 371 3 374 7 in 2004 (A) Number of 8041 52 8093 6 Citation Indexes references (B) Ratio (B/A) 21.7 17.3 21.6 0.9 Science Citation Index Expanded and the Science Citation Index. The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) is an international, interdisciplinary index average, each article published in 2003 or 2002 received covering approximately 6200 journals in science, medicine, around five citations in 2004 (Table 1). We also note that, of agriculture, technology, and the behavioral sciences. Every the 374 articles published in the year 2004, 371 were original journal has been carefully selected according to the process research and only three were review articles; hence, this jour- above. The SCIE is available online through the WoS. The nal would not be compared directly to one that published Science Citation Index (SCI) is a subset of the SCIE that is mostly review articles (Table 2). The Thomson Scientific edi- available on CD-ROM and in print. Its coverage is limited to tors also examine the publishing record of the journal’s only the most highly cited, high-impact journals in each cat- authors and editorial-board members to determine whether egory, and it comprises approximately 3800 journals and their work has been cited. This is particularly revealing for book series. Whenever possible, it includes the best journal brand-new journals that do not have a citation history and is from each country provided it meets all the standard selection often an indicator of the journal’s future success. criteria. Self-citation rates relate