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: The Faculty Lounge

More on ISI's Selection Criteria for Journals

By Alfred Brophy

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Following up on my post yesterday about the 35 student-edited general interest law reviews in ISI's Social Sciences Citation Index -- and a few anomalies in there, I thought I'd post a little on what ISI says about its selection criteria. Their website has an article by James Testa, Senior Director, Editorial Development, Thomson Rueters, which explains the process of selection and the criteria they use.

Here's part of Testa's essay on the criteria for selection:

Journal evaluation and selection is ongoing at Thomson Reuters with
journals added to and deleted from the database as frequently as every
two weeks. Each year, Thomson Reuter's editorial staff reviews over
2,000 journal titles, and selects around 10-12% of the journals
evaluated for inclusion in the Thomson Reuters database. Moreover,
existing journal coverage in Thomson Reuters products is constantly
under review. Journals now covered are monitored to ensure that they
are maintaining high standards and a clear relevance to the products in
which they are covered. The journal selection process described here is
applied to all journals in Web of ScienceŽ, whether covered in Science Citation Index ExpandedTM, Social Sciences Citation IndexŽ, or Arts & Humanities Citation IndexŽ.
Some special consideration is given in the evaluation of social science
and arts & humanities journals, particularly with regard to
citation analysis. These considerations are noted below.

Many factors are taken into account when evaluating journals for coverage, ranging from the qualitative to the quantitative. The journal's basic publishing standards, its editorial content, the international diversity of its authorship, and the citation data associated with it are all considered. No one factor is considered in isolation, but by combining and interrelating the data, the editor is able to determine the journal's overall strengths and weaknesses.

ISI invites nominations for journals to include here. There's some really interesting stuff to talk about here, especially for someone like me, who's interested in citations. I'll come back to talk about the SSCI in the near future.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on September 19, 2009 (boomark / email).