Document categories in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Misunderstanding the Social Sciences?

Thomson Reuter’s ISI Web of Knowledge (or ISI for short) is used in the majority of benchmarking analyses and bibliometric research projects. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the limitations of data provided by ISI. This article deals with a limitation that disproportionally affects the Social Sciences: ISI’s misclassification of journal articles containing original research into the “review” or “proceedings paper” category. I report on a comprehensive, 11 year analysis, of document categories for 27 journals in nine Social Science and Science disciplines. I show that although ISI’s “proceedings paper” and “review” classifications seem to work fairly well in the Sciences, they illustrate a profound misunderstanding of research and publication practices in the Social Sciences.