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I recently learned of an impostor website for Journal Citation Reports, the product marketed by Thomson Reuters, and the successor of the Institute for Scientific Information. The impostor calls itself the “Institute for Science Information.”

Institute for Deception.

The purpose of the website is to sell impact factors to scholarly journals. I keep a list of these fake impact factor companies here. I call the list “Misleading metrics.”

The fake site uses a URL that appears to intentionally mislead people into thinking it’s an authentic site:

Deceptive and misleading.

It uses the URL http://isi-thomsonreuters.com/main

In fact, this site has no connection to Thomson Reuters. It is a counterfeit website. Its customers will be predatory publishers, who, upon buying this firm’s services, will then advertise their journals as having an ISI impact factor.

It is now necessary to verify all journal impact factor claims. If you need help with this verification, I recommend that you contact your academic librarian.