Scientific Journal Indexing

Abstract

It is quite impressive the visibility of online publishing compared to offline. Lawrence (2001) computed the percentage increase across 1,494 venues containing at least five offline and five online articles. Results shown an average of 336% more citations to online articles compared to offline articles published in the same venue. If articles published in the same venue are of similar quality, then they concluded that online articles are more highly cited because of their easier access. Thomson Scientific, traditionally concerned with printed journals, announced on November 28, 2005, the launch of Web Citation Index™, the multidisciplinary citation index of scholarly content from institutional and subject-based repositories (http://scientific.thomson. com/press/2005/8298416/). The Web Citation Index from the abstracting and indexing (A&I) connects together pre-print articles, institutional repositories and open access (OA) journals (Chillingworth, 2005). Basically all research funds are government granted funds, tax payer’s supported and therefore, results should be made freely available to the community. Free online availability facilitates access to research findings, maximizes interaction among research groups, and optimizes efforts and research funds efficiency. Therefore, Ambi-Água is committed to provide free access to its articles. An important aspect of Ambi-Água is the publication and management system of this journal. It uses the Electronic System for Journal Publishing (SEER - http://www.ibict.br/secao.php?cat=SEER). This system was translated and customized by the Brazilian Institute for Science and Technology Information (IBICT) based on the software developed by the Public Knowledge Project (Open Journal Systems) of the British Columbia University (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/). The big advantage of using this system is that it is compatible with the OAI-PMH protocol for metadata harvesting what greatly promotes published articles visibility. Currently, there are 687 conformably registered repositories in OAI. The Public Knowledge Project – Open Archives Harvester2. lists Ambi-Água: http://pkp.sfu.ca/harvester2/demo/index.php/browse/ index/677. At the OAI base the URL of Ambi-Água is http://www.agro.unitau.br/ seer/index.php/ambi-agua/oai?verb=Identify. Therefore, all Service Providers are automatically capable of harvesting metadata from Ambi-Água articles.