According to Thomson ISI, a business of The Thomson Corporation, journals published in the new Open Access (OA) model are beginning to register impact in the field of scholarly research. Of the 8,700 selected journals currently covered in Web of Science, 191 are OA journals. The same established set of criteria that is applied to traditionally published journals is also applied to OA journals as part of the selection process.

Thomson ISI recently conducted a study of the overall performance of OA journals as they are added to the mix of scholarly publications used by the research community. Using ISI citation metrics such as impact factor and cited half-life, the study focuses on determining whether OA journals perform differently from other journals in their respective fields. The study's initial findings indicate that there was no discernible difference in terms of citation impact or frequency with which the journal is cited.

Web of Science is a component of ISI Web of Knowledge. With content back to 1945, Web of Science covers scholarly journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities, providing users with bibliographic data, searchable author abstracts, and cited references. The Web of Science feature—cited reference searching—is designed to allow users to navigate forward, backward, and through the multidisciplinary literature to uncover relevant information. Cited reference searching also allows researchers to learn who is citing their work.

(http://www.isinet.com/oaj), (http://www.thomson.com), (http://www.thomsonscientific.com)

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