As one intention of SOKI wiki is to place pages into the public domain, understanding how electronic documents are indexed is a worthwhile process. This page provides an overview of the two main avenues (currently) that we might consider utilising to increase the 'discovery' of articles created from SOKI as well as ensuring those articles of a sufficient scientific standard. The two avenues are Google Scholar and the Thomson Reuters Web of Science index. Their conditions of inclusion are a useful guideline for ensuring the right sort of information is captured in the page creation process.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar might be the best place to start with regarding exposure to peer-reviewed articles.
Google Scholar includes scholarly articles from a wide variety of sources in all fields of research, all languages, all countries, and over all time periods. Chances are that your collection of research papers will be a welcome addition to the index. To be considered for inclusion, the content of your website needs to meet the two basic criteria.
1. Scholarly articles
The content hosted on your website must consist primarily of scholarly articles - journal papers, conference papers, technical reports, or their drafts, dissertations, pre-prints, post-prints, or abstracts. Content such as news or magazine articles, book reviews, and editorials is not appropriate for Google Scholar. Documents larger than 5MB, such as books and long dissertations, should be uploaded to Google Book Search; Google Scholar automatically includes scholarly works from Google Book Search.
2. Showing abstracts
Users click through to your website to read your articles. To be included, your website must make either the full text of the articles or their complete author-written abstracts freely available and easy to see when users click on your URLs in Google search results. Your website must not require users (or search robots) to sign in, install special software, accept disclaimers, dismiss popup or interstitial advertisements, click on links or buttons, or scroll down the page before they can read the entire abstract of the paper. Sites that show login pages, error pages, or bare bibliographic data without abstracts will not be considered for inclusion and may be removed from Google Scholar.
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters (formerly known as the Institute for Scientific Information) has a page describing how a journal is selected for inclusion in the Web of Science here. Parts of the page are reproduced below.
The more traditional citation index (e.g. ISI) that most research scientists and academics would be familiar with sits under the Web of Science model.
In summary:
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 combination and interrelation of data, the Thomson Reuters editor is able to determine the journal's overall strengths and weaknesses.
The process is time consuming, involved and can change throughout the course of the year. Inclusion in the index for Web of Science is not continuous - journals can be removed from the list at any time if they are no longer regarded as suitable.
Each year, the Thomson Reuters editorial staff reviews over 2,000 journal titles for inclusion in Web of Science. Around 10-12% of the journals evaluated are accepted for coverage.
Basic Publishing Standards (extract from Thomson Reuters "The Thomson Reuters Journal Selection Process")
Timeliness
Timeliness of publication is a basic criterion in the evaluation process. As noted above, it is of primary and fundamental importance. A journal must be publishing according to its stated frequency to be considered for inclusion in Web of Science. The ability to publish on time implies a healthy backlog of manuscripts essential for ongoing viability. It is not acceptable for a journal to appear chronically late, weeks or months after its cover date. To measure timeliness we need to see three consecutive current issues, one after another, as soon as they are published. Timeliness is also essential for electronic journals, or e-journals. If the e-journal is publishing distinct issues at a stated frequency, these issues should appear online in a timely manner.
However, as noted above, when an e-journal publishes articles one at a time rather than collecting articles for release as an 'issue', Thomson Reuters takes a different approach. In these cases, the editor looks for a steady flow of articles over a nine-month period. The appropriate number of articles for the journal will be determined by the norms for its particular Web of Science category.
International Editorial Conventions
Thomson Reuters also determines if the journal follows international editorial conventions, which are intended to optimize retrievability of source articles. These conventions include informative journal titles, fully descriptive article titles and author abstracts, complete bibliographic information for all cited references, and full address information for every author.
Full Text English
English is the universal language of science. For this reason Thomson Reuters focuses on journals that publish full text in English, or at very least, bibliographic information in English. There are many journals covered in Web of Science that publish articles with bibliographic information in English and full text in another language. However, going forward, it is clear that the journals most important to the international research community will publish full text in English. This is especially true in the natural sciences. There are notable exceptions to this rule in the Arts & Humanities and in Social Sciences topics. This is discussed further below. Nonetheless, full text English is highly desirable, especially if the journal intends to serve an international community of researchers. In addition, all journals must have cited references in the Roman alphabet.
Peer Review
Application of the peer-review process is another indication of journal standards and signifies overall quality of the research presented and the completeness of cited references.6 Inclusion of Funding Acknowledgements is also strongly recommended. Not only do they help create a greater context for the journal, these acknowledgements also function as a confirmation of the importance of the research presented.
Editorial Content
As mentioned above, an essential core of scientific literature forms the basis for all scholarly disciplines. However, this core is not static — scientific research continues to give rise to specialized fields of studies, and new journals emerge as published research on new topics achieves critical mass. Thomson Reuters editors determine if the content of a journal under evaluation will enrich the database or if the topic is already adequately addressed in existing coverage.
With an enormous amount of citation data readily available to them, combined with their daily observation of virtually every new scholarly journal published, Thomson Reuters editors are uniquely well positioned to spot emerging topics and active fields in the literature.
International Diversity
Thomson Reuters editors look for international diversity among the journal's contributing authors, editors, and editorial advisory board members. This is particularly important in journals targeting an international audience. Today's scientific research takes place in a global context, and an internationally diverse journal is more likely to have importance in the international community of researchers.
Electronic Journals
As stated earlier, the basic mission of Thomson Reuters is to provide access to the world's most important and influential journals regardless of the media in which they are published.
Publishing standards, editorial content, international diversity, and citation analysis are all considered when evaluating a purely electronic journal.
Evaluating the timeliness of publication of an e-journal may require a somewhat different approach. If the e-journal is publishing distinct issues, the Thomson Reuters editor looks for the appearance of these in a timely manner. However, when an e-journal publishes articles one at a time rather than collecting articles for release as an issue, the editor simply looks for a steady flow of articles over several months.
The format of electronic journals is extremely important to Thomson Reuters. Following is a set of guidelines for electronic journal formats. Following these guidelines helps ensure correct citation of articles and reduces the possibility of ambiguity in citation of articles.
Publishers should insure that it is easy to identify the following elements:
- Journal Title
- Year of publication
- Volume and/or Issue Number (if applicable)
- Article Title
- Page Number or Article Number (one or the other is required; article number should not be the DOI) If your journal has page numbers and article numbers, list them separately and not merged together (for example: Art. #23, pp. 6-10 and not 23.6-23.10).
- Authors names and addresses
- Label all article identifiers such as DOIs, PIIs and Article Numbers
- A complete table of contents for each issue that includes the page/article number for each article (unless journal is being published as single articles)
Labeling these identifiers in both source articles and in citations helps insure their proper use by those referencing the article and correct labeling by abstracting and indexing firms such as Thomson Reuters.
- Each article must be assigned a unique page number or article number (whichever numbering scheme is being used) within any one given issue. Additionally, article numbers must be unique within an entire volume number. If the same article numbers are repeated in each issue within a volume, ambiguities will result when citing the original article. A citation to V 20, art. 1, May 2002, (even when adding the author's name), would be difficult to find if V 20, art. 1 June 2002 also exists. Avoid duplication of article numbers.
- Consider references to your journal — instruct authors to include the following information when citing your e-journal:
- Journal title (use one standard abbreviation for your journal; avoid acronyms that may be confused with other titles)
- Volume number (if applicable)
- Issue Number (if applicable; within parenthesis)
- Page number and/or article number (clearly identifying the article number as such)
- Year of publication