What type of sources are used for NOAEL assessment?

All the sources employed to find a NOAEL for any given substance can be divided into two categories:

1. Specialized academic journals
2. Toxicological databases of international bodies/committees

We analyze the reliability of the source (both scientific journals and databases) and the studies that report NOAELs. If important requirements as OECD guidelines or Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) are missing or not specified, we report this lack in the toxicological sheet in order to refine it in the future.
SCCS opinions are obviously considered the best sources, but we always check for more updated reports.

A crucial parameter, essential to inspect the reliability of an academic journal over time is the impact factor (IF), that is is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal.

Example: Paper about safety assessment of Cocos Nucifera Oil toxicity
This study was published in the Malaysian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences1.
The authors state they have followed OECD guidelines and GLP, finding a NOAEL from a repeated dose toxicity study that lasted 28 days (subacute).
This article is not indexed in Pubmed Central (the most important/used search engine for references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics). Looking for the impact factor, we found that the volume 9 (containing the article of interest) has been cited only once in the last few years, obtaining an IF around 0,028 (source, update 2012).

We weren't able to find other repeated dose toxicity tests carried out in the same animals, so we decided to use this data, pointing out the limitations deriving from citing an acadamic journal with a very low impact on the scientific community.

Bibliography

¹A. M. S. Abdul Majid et al;  Malaysian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Vol. 9, No. 1, (2011)