Scopus, SJR, ISIS and WoS: A brief explanation

 

Another criteria for journal selection is to verify that your journal is ‘indexed’ in a recognized indexing source/database. For the social sciences, Scopus and SJR (Scimago Journal Rankings) are the most frequently used. Every year, approximately 3,500 new journal titles are suggested for inclusion in Scopus, but only 33% of those titles meet the technical criteria. And of those roughly 1,200 titles, only 50% are accepted after CSAB review. 

For SJR, citations are weighted depending on the sources they came from. The subject field, quality, and reputation of the journal also have a direct effect on the value of the citation, which is calculated by Scimago Lab based on Scopus data [176]. Remember that the SJR is a static image of a database (Scopus), which is changing every day. See their staff’s comments below concerning this:

In other disciplines, indexes maintained by Clarivate Analytics’ the Web of Science Group or the older name ‘Web of Knowledge’ [186], are frequently mentioned. However, over the years, these indexes have changed names and this gets rather confusing when using/discussing their services. An example of this is Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science (WoS) which is a leading scientific citation search and analytical information platform [26], which was previously the Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters [177]. In the fall of 2020, Clarivate Analytics announced that it was moving toward a future that calculated the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) based on the date of electronic publication and not the date of print publication. Moreover, according to the WoS website, WoS reviews 3,000 - 4,000 journals each year for inclusion into WoS, with only 10 - 12% being selected [178].

However, according to a whole country study in Norway (2015/2016) for both Scopus and WoS, Aksnes and Sivertsen determined that there are only minor differences between the coverages of the scientific literature in Scopus and the Web of Science Core Collection [200]. The patterns of coverage are very similar, with an only partial representation of some fields of research. Both databases have the same problems in terms of coverage of the social sciences and humanities literature and with coverage of non-English languages.

Once again, over the past few years, what this service is called has become confusing. Even though Clarivate Analytics acquired the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) name in 2016, and changed the name, they have gone back to the old name of ISI and re-established ISI as part of its Scientific and Academic Research group [179].

Eugene Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 1960 [180, 254], which was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992 and became known as Thomson ISI [181]. It then became part of the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters [182]. ISI offered bibliographic database services, whose specialty was citation indexing and analysis [183], a field pioneered by Garfield. It maintained citation databases covering thousands of academic journals, including a continuation of its longtime print-based indexing service, the Science Citation Index (SCI) [184], as well as the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) [185], and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) [186], All of these are available via ISI's Web of Knowledge database service [186]. 

Many universities, however, refer to Clarivate’s index database simply as ‘ISI.’ The Journal Citation Report (JCR) is part of this portal, which is a database that ranks journals by publications and citations. The Science Citation Index (SCI) is also part of this portal, and it is a bibliographic database. Journal ranking can be found here.

WARNING! – There is another ‘ISI’ in the UAE which has also created a fee-based index for Open Access journals. The name of this service is International Scientific Indexing which offers their own ‘International Citation Report-ICR’ (not to be confused with Clarivate's ISI Journal Citation Report-JCR).

The following image shows various university policies on the publication of academic research [188]. The Thai language version mentions ISI, Scopus, and SJR for doctoral program requirements. Malaysia’s MOHE also uses similar criteria.

In Thailand and across ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the ASEAN Citation Index (ACI), and the Thai-Journal Citation Index (TCI) are also used by some academics and institutions, especially in graduate programs below the doctoral level. In Korea, in November 2020 the Korean Citation Index (KCI) listed 5,810 journals.