Implications of Web of Science journal impact factor for scientific output evaluation in 16 institutions and investigators’ opinion

Web of Science (Web of Knowledge) is an online subscription-based scientific citation indexing service maintained by Thomson Reuters that provides citation search, which gives access to multiple databases that reference cross-disciplinary research, and allows for in-depth exploration of specialized sub-fields. Eugene Garfield, the “father of citation indexing of academic literature”, launched the Science Citation Index (SCI), which in turn led to the Web of Science (1). The multidisciplinary coverage of the Web of Science encompasses over scholarly books, journals and conference proceedings. The selection is made on the basis of impact evaluations and comprises multiple academic disciplines, including sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. However, Web of Science does not index all journals, and its coverage in some fields is less complete than in others. Web of Science’s usage increased along with the easier access to electronic information