As science becomes increasingly participatory and multidisciplinary, researchers need to make sure that their research is reviewed as soon as possible. Researchers who want to publish their papers look for a journal that is indexed by leading and reputable databases. Indexing is critical to gaining credibility, superiority, and reputation. As a result, it also affects the impact of journal articles.
Why is indexing important?
For example, if a journal requests to be indexed in Clarivate Analytics, it must comply with its rules and standards. Journal indexing helps maintain ethics in publication, increases the credibility and visibility of the articles, and makes them accessible to a wide range of audiences. If your article is indexed in well-known databases hosted by top organizations, like PubMed, Elsevier, Clarivate Analytics, EBSCO, and Google Scholar, it will have a higher impact and be more visible. A recent report has stated that academic profiles, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, MathSciNet, and Google Scholar are the top sites that researchers visit when beginning their research. In addition, researchers prefer to submit their papers to trusted and well-known databases that are active in several disciplines.
Web of Science: ISI Indexing
The Institute for Scientific Information started in 1960. It was later acquired by Thomas Reuters and merged with Clarivate Analytics, and is now called the “Web of Science”. It has a collection of quality journals, articles, conferences, and books chosen for inclusion by a unique selection process. For each article, WOS includes specifications, such as author affiliations, abstracts, keywords, funding information (agency and grant number), and all citations. The exclusive organization name unification feature allows you to search for the full profile of a university or corporate institution. In addition, the appreciation of the indexing funding acknowledgments allows the identification of those who are more influential and effective in the research. Moreover, it provides a report from sources that offer information, such as the number of articles published and cited each year and also the total times and average times an article was cited, allowing for effective comparisons of citation impacts.
Scopus
Scopus is the most comprehensive database of abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed articles introduced by Elsevier in 2004. Regarding its covered articles, it is younger than WOS with records since 1996. Many researchers consider it a quality resource for the analysis of contemporary data because it includes almost all scientific journals covered by WOS. In addition, it has a wider scope and covers more geographical areas. An additional feature that Scopus offers is altmetrics data.
PubMed
PubMed, developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), is a searchable database of citations and abstracts and a free resource for researchers looking to publish their papers on medicine and life sciences. This database provides access to citations, abstracts, and the full text of articles in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, preclinical, and healthcare systems. Publishing your article in PubMed indexed journals helps to make it more visible.