"Informationswissenschaftliche Zeitschriften in szientometrischer Analyse"

[Garfield, Eugene]

Since there are probably in excess of 15,000 periodicals that could be
seriously considered for inclusion in ISI products it is undoubtedly true
that sample copies of some journals have never been received at ISI.
However, there is a group of subject specialists who are reviewing journals
all the time and the field of information science is no exception.

ISI receives thousands of  announcements of new and old journals so there is
no shortage of potential titles. But ISI is an organization of humans and
therefore they may make errors or overlook relevant titles. Anyone can write
to ISI and provide data to support the inclusion of a journal in one or more
ISI products. The manager of the journal evaluation group is James Testa and
he and his colleagues are very devoted to this task.

Marketing alone is not sufficient. The problem is that so many journals are
of low impact. That does not mean, as I have stated, that they should not be
published. Their existence is determined by marketing and the willingness of
subscribers to support them. However, many journals receive state support
and may not necessarily meet ISI's standards of selection. The selection
criteria can be found on the ISI web site at
http://www.isinet.com/isi/journals/

An editorial by James Testa can be found at:
http://www.isinet.com/isi/hot/essays/selectionofmaterialforcoverage/199701.h
tml


Eugene Garfield, PhD. email garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
tel 215-243-2205   fax 215-387-1266
President, The Scientist   www.the-scientist.com
Chairman Emeritus, ISI  www.isinet.com
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org
Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology
(ASIS&T)  www.asis.org





-----Original Message-----
From: Loet Leydesdorff [mailto:loet at LEYDESDORFF.NET]
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 2:31 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] "Informationswissenschaftliche Zeitschriften
in szientometrischer Analyse"


>[...]  It is also possible that ISI does not know
>these periodicals at all, because they are hardly cited in ISI source
>journals.  This could just be evidence then of poor marketing on the part
of
>publishers and publishing companies.  In short, ISI is thoroughly open to
>expert opinions -- and that means in plain talk ''knocking on doors''!

Where does this lead? Is there any evidence for a causal connection between
marketing (by publishers) and the impact factor?


Loet


*************************************************************
Loet Leydesdorff
Science & Technology Dynamics, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX  Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20-525 6598; fax: +31-20-525 3681

http://www.leydesdorff.net/ ; loet at leydesdorff.net
http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff.htm