Institute for Scientific Information

Last updated

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. [1] ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis, a field pioneered by Garfield.

Contents

Services

ISI maintained citation databases covering thousands of academic journals, including a continuation of its longtime print-based indexing service the Science Citation Index (SCI), as well as the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). All of these were available via ISI's Web of Knowledge database service. This database allows a researcher to identify which articles have been cited most frequently, and who has cited them. The database provides some measure of the academic impact of the papers indexed in it, and may increase their impact by making them more visible and providing them with a quality label. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that appearing in this database can double the number of citations received by a given paper. [2] The company's main product was Current Contents, which gathers the tables of contents for recent academic journals. [1]

The ISI also published the annual Journal Citation Reports which list an impact factor for each of the journals that it tracked. Within the scientific community, journal impact factors continue to play a large but controversial role in determining the kudos attached to a scientist's published research record.

A list of over 14,000 journals was maintained by the ISI. The list included some 1,100 arts and humanities journals as well as scientific journals. Listings were based on published selection criteria and are an indicator of journal quality and impact. [3]

ISI published Science Watch, a newsletter which every two months identified one paper published in the previous two years as a "fast-breaking paper" in each of 22 broad fields of science, such as Mathematics (including Statistics), Engineering, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.[ citation needed ] The designations were based on the number of citations and the largest increase from one bimonthly update to the next. Articles about the papers often included comments by the authors.

The ISI also published a list of "ISI Highly Cited Researchers", one of the factors included in the Academic Ranking of World Universities published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This continues under Clarivate. [4]

History

Initially, the company was named Documation. [1] In 1992, ISI was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare, [5] and became known as Thomson ISI. It was a part of the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters until 2016, when the IP & Science business was sold, becoming Clarivate Analytics. [6] In February 2018, Clarivate announced it will re-establish ISI as part of its Scientific and Academic Research group. [7] It exists as a group within Clarivate as of November 2018. [4]

ISI Highly Cited

"ISI Highly Cited" is a database of "highly cited researchers"—scientific researchers whose publications are most often cited in academic journals over the past decade, published by the Institute for Scientific Information. Inclusion in this list is taken as a measure of the esteem of these academics and is used, for example, by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. It was founded under ISI and as of 2018 continues under the same name at Clarivate. [4]

The methodology for inclusion is to consider papers in the upper first percentile based on citation counts [8] of all articles indexed in the Scientific Citation Databases and published in a single, fixed year. Papers in the upper first percentile with respect to their year of publication are called highly cited papers. Each paper in the data is assigned to one or more of 21 categories, based on the ISI classification of the journal in which the article was published. The Highly Cited Researchers list is compiled by selecting, in every field, those researchers with the highest number of highly cited papers in a 10-year, rolling time period. The number of highly cited researchers varies from field to field and is determined accordingly to the total number of researchers contributing to the single field.

The categories are as follows:

The publication list and biographical details supplied by the researchers are freely available online, although general access to the ISI citation database is by subscription.

See also

Related Research Articles

A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century Hebrew religious literature. Legal citation indexes are found in the 18th century and were made popular by citators such as Shepard's Citations (1873). In 1961, Eugene Garfield's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index for papers published in academic journals, first the Science Citation Index (SCI), and later the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). American Chemical Society converted its printed Chemical Abstract Service into internet-accessible SciFinder in 2008. The first automated citation indexing was done by CiteSeer in 1997 and was patented. Other sources for such data include Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, Elsevier's Scopus, and the National Institutes of Health's iCite.

The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science.

Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements in policy and management contexts. In practice there is a significant overlap between scientometrics and other scientific fields such as information systems, information science, science of science policy, sociology of science, and metascience. Critics have argued that over-reliance on scientometrics has created a system of perverse incentives, producing a publish or perish environment that leads to low-quality research.

Citation analysis is the examination of the frequency, patterns, and graphs of citations in documents. It uses the directed graph of citations — links from one document to another document — to reveal properties of the documents. A typical aim would be to identify the most important documents in a collection. A classic example is that of the citations between academic articles and books. For another example, judges of law support their judgements by referring back to judgements made in earlier cases. An additional example is provided by patents which contain prior art, citation of earlier patents relevant to the current claim. The digitization of patent data and increasing computing power have led to a community of practice that uses these citation data to measure innovation attributes, trace knowledge flows, and map innovation networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene Garfield</span> American linguist and businessman (1925–2017)

Eugene Eli Garfield was an American linguist and businessman, one of the founders of bibliometrics and scientometrics. He helped to create Current Contents, Science Citation Index (SCI), Journal Citation Reports, and Index Chemicus, among others, and founded the magazine The Scientist.

<i>Journal of Molecular Biology</i> Academic journal

The Journal of Molecular Biology is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of molecular biology. It was established in 1959 and is published by Elsevier. The editor-in-chief is Peter Wright.

Citation impact or citation rate is a measure of how many times an academic journal article or book or author is cited by other articles, books or authors. Citation counts are interpreted as measures of the impact or influence of academic work and have given rise to the field of bibliometrics or scientometrics, specializing in the study of patterns of academic impact through citation analysis. The importance of journals can be measured by the average citation rate, the ratio of number of citations to number articles published within a given time period and in a given index, such as the journal impact factor or the citescore. It is used by academic institutions in decisions about academic tenure, promotion and hiring, and hence also used by authors in deciding which journal to publish in. Citation-like measures are also used in other fields that do ranking, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, software metrics, college and university rankings, and business performance indicators.

<i>Journal of Biological Chemistry</i> Academic journal

The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1905. Since 1925, it is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It covers research in areas of biochemistry and molecular biology. The editor is Alex Toker. As of January 2021, the journal is fully open access. In press articles are available free on its website immediately after acceptance.

<i>Evolution and Human Behavior</i> Academic journal

Evolution and Human Behavior is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior, ranging from evolutionary psychology to evolutionary anthropology and cultural evolution. It is primarily a scientific journal, but articles from scholars in the humanities are also published. Papers reporting on theoretical and empirical work on other species may be included if their relevance to the human animal is apparent. The journal was established in 1980, and beginning with Volume 18 in 1997 has been published by Elsevier on behalf of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. The editor-in-chief is Debra Lieberman.

The Science Citation Index Expanded – previously titled Science Citation Index – is a citation index originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and created by Eugene Garfield.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social Sciences Citation Index</span> Citation index product of Clarivate Analytics

The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a commercial citation index product of Clarivate Analytics. It was originally developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index. The Social Sciences Citation Index is a multidisciplinary index which indexes over 3,400 journals across 58 social science disciplines – 1985 to present, and it has 122 million cited references – 1900 to present. It also includes a range of 3,500 selected items from some of the world's finest scientific and technical journals. It has a range of useful search functions such as ‘cited reference searching’, searching by author, subject, or title. Whilst the Social Sciences Citation Index provides extensive support in bibliographic analytics and research, a number of academic scholars have expressed criticisms relating to ideological bias and its English-dominant publishing nature.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is an annual publication by Clarivate. It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science Core Collection. It provides information about academic journals in the natural and social sciences, including impact factors. The JCR was originally published as a part of the Science Citation Index. Currently, the JCR, as a distinct service, is based on citations compiled from the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index. As of the 2023 edition, journals from the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and the Emerging Sources Citation Index will also be included.

<i>The FEBS Journal</i> Academic journal

The FEBS Journal is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies. It covers research on all aspects of biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, and the molecular bases of disease. The editor-in-chief is Seamus Martin, who took over from Richard Perham in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web of Science</span> Online subscription index of citations

The Web of Science is a paid-access platform that provides access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedings, and other documents in various academic disciplines. Until 1997, it was originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. It is currently owned by Clarivate.

Current Contents is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections.

<i>Functional Ecology</i> (journal) Academic journal

Functional Ecology is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering physiological, behavioural, and evolutionary ecology, as well as ecosystems and community ecology, emphasizing an integrative approach.

The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering both child and adolescent psychology and psychiatry providing an interdisciplinary perspective to the multidisciplinary field of child and adolescent mental health, though publication of high-quality empirical research, clinically-relevant studies and highly cited research reviews and practitioner review articles.

Clarivate Citation Laureates, formerly Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates, is a list of candidates considered likely to win the Nobel Prize in their respective field. The candidates are so named based on the citation impact of their published research. The list of awardees is announced annually prior to the Nobel Prize ceremonies of that year. In October 2016, Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property and Science Business was acquired by Onex and Baring Asia and the newly independent company was named as Clarivate.

Crop Science is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering agronomy. It was established in 1961 by founding editor-in-chief H.L. Hamilton and is published by ACSESS in partnership with Wiley. It is the official journal of the Crop Science Society of America. Since 2013, it is available online only.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarivate</span> American analytics company

Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business / market intelligence, and competitive profiling for pharmacy and biotech, patents, and regulatory compliance; trademark protection, and domain and brand protection. In the academy and the scientific community, Clarivate is known for being the company which calculates the impact factor, using data from its Web of Science product family, that also includes services/applications such as Publons, EndNote, EndNote Click, and ScholarOne. Its other product families are Cortellis, DRG, CPA Global, Derwent, MarkMonitor, CompuMark, and Darts-ip, and also the various ProQuest products and services.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Wouters, Paul (2017-03-01). "Eugene Garfield (1925–2017)". Nature. 543 (7646): 492. Bibcode:2017Natur.543..492W. doi: 10.1038/543492a . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   28332532.
  2. ↑ Varela, Diego (2013). "The Contribution of ISI Indexing to a Paper's Citations: Results of a Natural Experiment". European Political Science. 12 (2): 245–253. doi:10.1057/eps.2012.29. S2CID   144822423.
  3. ↑ "Master Journal List". Clarivate Analytics. Retrieved February 2, 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 "Global Highly Cited Researchers 2018 List Reveals Influential Scientific Researchers and their Institutions". Clarivate. November 27, 2018. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Thomson Corporation acquired ISI". Online . July 1992. Archived from the original on 2013-05-15. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
  6. ↑ "PR Newswire". ipscience.thomsonreuters.com. Archived from the original on 5 December 2016. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  7. ↑ "Back to the Future: Institute for Scientific Information Re-established Within Clarivate Analytics". 7 February 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2018.
  8. ↑ Welcome to Highly Cited Researchers, retrieved July 6, 2014
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.