The Development Southern Africa (DSA) management team is proud to announce that the journal has been accepted by Thomson's ISI (now known as Thomson Scientific) and included in their Social Sciences citation index.
DSA is now one of more than 1700 journals worldwide that are currently covered by this index. Thomson Scientific carefully evaluates journals for inclusion in its citation indexes, applying the strictest criteria. According to Thomson Scientific, ‘only 10–12% of the approximately 2000 journals evaluated each year are accepted for coverage in Thomson Scientific products’.Footnote1
Thomson Scientific states that ‘many factors are taken into account when evaluating journals, ranging from the qualitative to the quantitative’. They consider four factors when evaluating applicant journals: basic publishing standards (on-time publishing, highest standards in the review process, etc.), content, international diversity and citation activity. Citation activity is one of the most important outcomes of being ISI accredited.Footnote2
The Journal Citation Report was launched in 1975.Footnote3 Impact factors, which will now be provided annually by Thomson Scientific, will compare the impact of DSA with that of other similar accredited journals by calculating how many times articles published in DSA are cited in these journals. This will provide a measure of the relative importance (significance and usefulness) of DSA, on the premise that ‘the value of information is determined by those who use it’; that is, the value of a journal can be measured by the number of times its use is formalised in the form of a reference. A journal impact factor – the mean number of citations received by articles in a particular journal – is derived from this measurement. To calculate the impact factor, Thomson Scientific counts the number of citations in a particular year (say, 2008) of articles published in the previous 2 years (say, 2006 and 2007), and then divides this number by the number of those articles that were published in a particular journal in those 2 years. DSA will receive its first impact factor report in 2010, based on the articles it has published in 2008 and 2009.
Impact factors are widely accepted as the most authoritative measure of journal quality. Thomson Scientific's acceptance of DSA for its social citation index places a responsibility on DSA's management and Advisory Board to strive to receive a good impact factor in 2010 and to keep improving it in the years to come. Thomson Scientific guides journals to ensure that they maximise their impact factor by attending to four key elements:
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quality of articles published – the most direct driver of a high-impact factor,
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accessibility – easy and ready access to articles in the journal to users around the world,
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visibility – related to accessibility but also implying awareness of the journal and engagement with the journal, and
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communication – scholarly communication and engagement with core research networks.
We are sure you are as pleased as we are to see DSA receive this prestigious accreditation – a reflection of years of dedicated work not only by the management team but also by you, our valued contributors.
Notes
1 Thomson Scientific: everything you need to know – information supplied by Taylor & Francis, available on request from the DSA editor www.scientific.thomson.com