Silica vanadic acid (vanadium has been supported on silica) is applied as an efficient, highly reusable and heterogeneous catalyst for the selective oxidation of sulfide to sulfoxide using hydrogen peroxide and in the acetonitrile as a solvent at room temperature. The catalyst can be easily recovered and reused for ten reaction cycles without considerable loss of activity. Also, some advantages of this method were applicable at large scales, high TON of catalyst, chemoselectivity, easy work-up and short reaction time. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.