Journal of Arid Land (JAL) launched the initial issue on the fourth quarter of 2009. On July 2011, JAL was selected for coverage in SCI-E and Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences, beginning from the initial issue in 2009. Now, the articles published in JAL can be searched from Web of Knowledge, with www.isiknowledge.com.

Web of Knowledge is an academic citation indexing and search service, which is combined with web linking and provided by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It is today's premier research platform, helping researchers quickly find, analyze, and share information in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. The Web of Knowledge platform suite encompasses the following databases: Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports, Biological Abstracts, Derwent Innovations Index, etc. Researchers could get integrated access to high quality literature through a unified platform that links a wide variety of content and search terms together, creating one common vocabulary and one seamless search.