The Thomson Scientific journal selection process.

The Web of Knowledge is an electronic platform that consists of important searchable bibliographic databases and key analytical tools such as the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Several of these bibliographic databases provide extensive coverage of the literature of specific subjects such as the Life Sciences, Agriculture and Forestry, Food Science, Physics and Engineering, Medicine, Behavioral Sciences, and Animal Biology (Figure 1). The international patent literature and conference proceedings are also key components of the Web of Knowledge. In all, this environment covers over 22,000 unique journals, more than 60,000 conferences from 1990 to the present, and more than one and a half million patents. The cornerstone of the Web of Knowledge, however, is the highly selective, multidisciplinary Web of Science (WoS) which the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and now Thomson Scientific, has developed and maintained for over 40 years. The WoS comprises several multidisciplinary citation indexes. In addition to its three major components, the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, it includes Index Chemicus and Current Chemical Reactions. Since significant resources are dedicated to the selection of the most important and influential journals for their inclusion in the WoS, we will examine the journal selection process used to achieve this goal, particularly with regard to citation analysis and the role of the impact factor.