Authors’ perception on abstracting and indexing databases in different subject domains

Abstract

The inclusion of a target journal in certain Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) databases is useful for authors to select an appropriate journal for publishing. This research aims to find the importance of a collection of A&I databases for authors. The reasons for targeting the journals included in certain A&I databases and challenges for publishing in the journals included in leading databases are among the main objectives of this research. This study conducted a web-based survey separately for authors in three subject domains. Approximately 40 to 50% of authors in each subject domain consider the inclusion of target journals in certain databases as very important. Social sciences and Technology authors give higher attention to Web of Science and Scopus while authors on Medicine consider PubMed and MEDLINE as the most important databases. The reputation of databases is the reason for considering the journals included in their preferred databases. Authors are used to checking the presence of target journals from the original sources to ascertain their inclusion in the target databases. The likelihood of rejection and inadequate financial support are the major obstacles to publish in journals included in leading databases. Further, this research has organized examined databases into three categories, namely, ‘Well-known databases’, ‘Subject-specific, but less-known databases’, and ‘Less-relevant databases’. In addition to authors, librarians, editors, publishers, administrators of academic institutions, and readers can use the results of this study to make critical decisions.