ESCI application pre-review

Purpose

Simulate how a Web of Science (WoS) in-house editor would evaluate a journal applying for the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), so that the journal can find and fix problems before it submits. The skill combines two sources:

1. Official criteria (C1–C24): the 24 quality criteria published by Clarivate, applied in three sequential stages (initial triage, editorial triage, editorial evaluation for quality).
2. Specific checks (S1–S44): a more detailed checklist compiled from the reasons real journals were rejected in ESCI evaluations. Each specific check is mapped to one or more official criteria and serves as evidence for that criterion.

New submissions to the WoS Core Collection are evaluated only against the 24 quality criteria; journals that pass enter ESCI. The 4 impact criteria (citation analyses and content significance) decide promotion to SCIE/SSCI/AHCI and are out of scope for this skill. Do not score them, although S43–S44 may be reported as context.

The official criteria page is: https://clarivate.com/academia-government/scientific-and-academic-research/research-discovery-and-referencing/web-of-science/web-of-science-core-collection/editorial-selection-process/journal-evaluation-process-selection-criteria/ . At the start of each review, try to fetch it and check that the stage structure and the 24 criteria below are still current. If it has changed, follow the current page and say so in the report. If it cannot be fetched, proceed with the criteria below and note that.

Inputs

Ask only for what the user has not supplied: