Web of Science

A total of 162 regional social science journals have been added to Web of Science. This new collection includes journals that typically target a regional rather than international audience by approaching subjects from a local perspective or focusing on particular topics of regional interest. It includes 49 titles from the Asia-Pacific region and 91 from the European Union.

For more than two years, the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters is said to have reviewed thousands of regional journals in all areas of science, social science and arts and humanities. Although selection criteria for a regional journal are fundamentally the same as for an international journal, the importance of the regional journal is measured in terms of the specificity of its content rather than in its citation impact.

‘As the global distribution of Web of Science expands into virtually every region on earth, the importance of regional scholarship to our emerging regional user community also grows,’ said Jim Testa, senior director, editorial development and publisher relations at the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters. ‘We hope to be instrumental in expanding the audience for these journals and bringing attention to their scholarship.’

The company expects to further expand the current collection of journals to include a more diverse coverage of regional literature. All journals added to the Web of Science will go through a rigorous selection process. Regional journals, specifically, must be publishing on time, have English-language bibliographic information (title, abstract, keywords), and cited references must be in the Roman alphabet.