UCU: Thomson Reuters control over the academic press

Motion

Motion text: Conference notes:
a) that appointment, review and promotions decisions in universities are increasingly governed by citation counts.
b) that the most widely used citation counts are those based upon Thomson Reuters owned Web of Science and thus researchers are coerced to publish in those journals included in the Web of Science.
c) that the criteria for inclusion in Web of Science are not public, nor are the membership of advisory panels published, nor are the processes publicly audited.
Conference expresses it deep concern that the careers of UK university staff are in the control of a private company.
Conference instructs the HEC to call for independent public scrutiny of the selection process for Web of Science and similar resources to ensure that all approaches to academic research are given equal treatment.