Science Citation Index under contestation

An article in Scientometrics is contesting the leadership of the Science Citation Index:

Some of the conclusions and statements:

“The number of serious scientific journals today most likely is about
24,000”

“The first question is whether the growth rate of scientific publication
is declining? The answer is that traditional scientific publishing, that is publication in peer-reviewed journals, is still increasing although there are big differences between fields. There are no indications that the growth rate has decreased in the last 50 years. At the same time, publication using new channels, for example conference proceedings, open archives and home pages, is growing fast.”

“SCI is covering a decreasing part of the traditional scientific literature”

“conference proceedings are especially important in scientific fields
with high growth rates. However, the growth rates for conference proceedings generally are not higher than those found for Journal Articles. It is clear that the increasing importance of conference proceedings is only partially reflected in SCI.”

“National Science Indicators is one of the products offered by Thomson
Reuters. Since this product is based solely on SCI/SCIE, SSCI and AHCI
the use of this product is problematic”

Larsen, Peder Olesen & Ins, Markus von. The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index. Scientometrics, Published online on 10th of March 2010: http://www.springerlink.com/content/2531345r116v3660/

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