Indexing in ISI Web of Sciences: The Opportunities and Threats

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) as a citation databases covers over 8000 international journals following a basic task of providing comprehensive coverage of the world’s most important and influential research and helping researchers to identify high and frequently cited articles (1). The mission of ISI editorial team is to identify and evaluate promising new journals that will be useful to ISI subscribers, and rejecting jour- nals that have become less useful. The ISI Database also publishes the annual journal citation reports which list an impact factor for each of the journals that it tracks. Beside the scientific team, journal impact factors play a large but controversial role in determining the dignity of a scientist’s published research record.