RE: Citation databases and open access journals

["Pringle, James" <james.pringle@thomson.com>]

Questions have arisen on this list about coverage of open access journals
in the Web of Science(r). We have good news to report.

Thomson Scientific evaluates journals for coverage in its Thomson ISI(r)
citation databases according to clearly defined selection criteria (See
http://www.isinet.com/essays/selectionofmaterialforcoverage/199701.html/
). This is in line with our mission of helping researchers find the best
and most relevant scholarly content for their research. Our evaluation
criteria are the same for all journals, regardless of the business model
under which they are published and the access model under which they are
distributed.

As of June 30, 2004, we found a combined, deduplicated total of 1190 Open
Access journals listed in the DOAJ, SciELO, and J-STAGE directories. Of
these, 239, or about 20%, are currently included in the ISI citation
databases, and can be searched in the Web of Science. These titles include
PLOS Biology and a number of BioMed Central journals. Within the next
couple of weeks, we will be posting a full study of these 239 journals on
the Thomson ISI web site ( <http://www.isinet.com/>
http://www.isinet.com/). This study will update an earlier analysis, from
February of this year, which found 192 open access journals in our
databases at that time.

Jim Pringle
Vice President, Development,
Thomson/ISI

-----Original Message-----

From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu 
Sent: Wed Oct 20 22:09:38 2004
Subject: RE: Citation databases and open access journals

Heather, I agree with you. What I am hoping for in the meantime is
journals born digital will continue to be included in aggregators and
eventually into the WoS until we all figure out research impact of these
OA journals. An example is BE Press, whereby it is aggregated in EBSCO,
but we still buy it because we can own it, not just rental. I've not
understood through on receiving messages for many months as a subscriber
on ICOLC's or this listserve in resolving who owns the content if an
institution pays the fee to be published, if it's from the library end or
the researcher's end, depending who pays.

Regards,

Becky Smith, Head of the Business & Economics and Labor Libraries UIUC