The ScientificWorldJournal is a peer-reviewed

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

 scientific journal

Scientific journal

In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...

 covering fields in the life sciences

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 ranging from biomedicine

Biomedicine

Biomedicine is a branch of medical science that applies biological and other natural-science principles to clinical practice,. Biomedicine, i.e. medical research, involves the study of physiological processes with methods from biology, chemistry and physics. Approaches range from understanding...

 to environmental science

Environmental science

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...

s and its primary audience are research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

ers working in these fields.

Publication history

The journal was established in 2001 and is published online only. In 2011, the journal was acquired by Hindawi Publishing Corporation and converted to open access.

Organization

The journal is divided into "domains", each covering a particular subject (e.g., "Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

") and some of these domains can be joined further into "clusters" (e.g., "Neuroscience, Neurology

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

 & Psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

"). Each domain has its own set of principal and associate editors, as well as an editorial board

Editorial board

The editorial board is a group of people, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take.- Board makeup :...

. Published articles can be assigned to multiple, different domains, so that an article on, for example, air particulates

Air pollution

Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or cause damage to the natural environment or built environment, into the atmosphere....

 can be found easily both by researchers working in environmental

Environmental science

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...

 or Earth science

Earth science

Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...

s and biomedical researchers searching for causes of asthma

Asthma

Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...

.

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in Index Medicus

Index medicus

Index Medicus is a comprehensive index of medical scientific journal articles, published since 1879. It was initiated by John Shaw Billings, head of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, United States Army...

, PubMed

PubMed

PubMed is a free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez information retrieval system...

, Science Citation Index

Science Citation Index

The Science Citation Index is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information and created by Eugene Garfield in 1960, which is now owned by Thomson Reuters. The larger version covers more than 6,500 notable and significant journals, across 150 disciplines, from ...

, Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest...

, CrossRef

CrossRef

CrossRef is an official Digital Object Identifier Registration Agency of the International DOI Foundation. It was launched in early 2000 as a cooperative effort among publishers to enable persistent cross-publisher citation linking in online academic journals.-Background:CrossRef has who...

, Chemical Abstracts

Chemical Abstracts Service

Chemical Abstracts is a periodical index that provides summaries and indexes of disclosures in recently published scientific documents. Approximately 8,000 journals, technical reports, dissertations, conference proceedings, and new books, in any of 50 languages, are monitored yearly, as are patent...

, Biological Abstracts

Biological Abstracts

Biological Abstracts is a database produced by Thomson Reuters through its subsidiary BIOSIS. It includes abstracts from peer-reviewed academic journal articles in the fields of biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, pre-clinical and experimental medicine, pharmacology, zoology, agriculture,...

, CAB International

CAB International

CAB International is a not-for-profit inter-governmental organisation based in the United Kingdom....

, SwetsWise, EMBASE

EMBASE

Embase is an online information source of published literature designed to supportinformation managers and pharmacovigilance in complying with the regulatoryrequirements of a licensed drug. Through its unique and comprehensive content coverage,...

, GEOBASE

GeoBase

GeoBase is a geospatial platform developed by Telogis. As Telogis was founded as a GPS tracking company, a particular focus was placed on high-transaction spatial rule processing for GPS coordinates reported by remote assets....

, Scopus

Scopus

Scopus, officially named SciVerse Scopus, is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It covers nearly 18,000 titles from over 5,000 international publishers, including coverage of 16,500 peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical, medical,...

, TOXLINE, Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts

Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts

Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts is an abstracting and indexing service covering aquatic science and its subfields. It is maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations...

, Ecological Abstracts, Entomology Abstracts, CINAHL

CINAHL

CINAHL is an index of English-language and selected other-language journal articles about nursing, allied health, biomedicine and healthcare....

, Animal Behavior Abstracts, Oceanic Abstracts, Physical Education Index, and Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts. According to the Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Healthcare & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It has been integrated with the Web of Knowledge, by Thomson Reuters, and is accessed from the Web of Science to JCR Web. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and...

, the journal's 2010 impact factor

Impact factor

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...

is 1.524. This ranks it 13th out of 57 listed journals in the category Multidisciplinary Sciences.