Korea Citation Index
The Korea Citation Index is a non-commercial South Korean citation index operated by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Though it mainly covers researches written in Korean language, some of English language journals are also indexed in KCI. Established in 2007, KCI covers selected South Korean journals and their researches published from year 2004. KCI indexed journals are reported to respond faster than SCI and SSCI indexed journals.
KCI is directly linked to 'Korea Researcher Information', an unified national database for each researcher's personal data in South Korea, since KCI was designed to more precisely evaluate research competency of each South Korean universities. Researches written in Korean language cannot be evaluated appropriately under English language oriented global indices.
From year 2020, the NRF classifies KCI related journals into four categories; Not Accredited, Candidate, Accredited, and Excellent Accredited. While promotion from 'Not Accredited' to 'Candidate Journal' and 'Accredited Journal' only requires quantitative standards to be met, promotion from 'Accredited Journal' to 'Excellent Accredited Journal' should pass several strict qualitative evaluation criteria. The Excellent Accredited Journals are selected among top 10% of normal Accredited Journals.