From a Correspondence by Brian Haynes in Nature 446, 725; 2007.

ISI has recently delisted a number of publications from the Web of Science without informing the affected publishers or editors, or publishing a full list of the excisions. The motivation seems to have been to focus the Web of Science on journals and to move conference proceedings to another, little-known product, ISI Proceedings — notwithstanding the fact that many journals have special issues containing conference proceedings.

Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, an important archive in the multidisciplinary field of combustion dating back to 1928, is one of the affected publications. Because its peer-reviewed papers are presented at the biennial International Symposium on Combustion, they will no longer be listed in the Web of Science. According to ISI, the decision to exclude this publication “was not based on an evaluation of its importance to the community of scholars it serves”.

This experience adds a new dimension to problems with excessive reliance on citation analyses. The Web of Science database itself is subject to unaccountable adjustments without scientific justification or regard to scientific importance.

Brian Haynes

The Combustion Institute, Pittsburgh, USA