The relative short history of tourism research is characterised by an ongoing debate on whether tourism is in fact an independent academic field with its own disciplinary matrix and standardisation of knowledge. On the other hand, the evidence shows that the categorisation of journals in the tourism field (together with hospitality, leisure and sport) in the JCR and Scopus internationally recognised indexed databases is a de facto form of recognition of the scientific status of "tourism". Publishing activities of Slovenian authors are analysed in order to support the need for Slovenian bibliographical databases to follow this trend and introduce a new categorisation to the Cobiss and Sicris databases.