Institute for Scientific Information
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| Institute for Scientific Information | |
|---|---|
| Name | Institute for Scientific Information |
| Formation | 1960 |
| Founder | Eugene Garfield |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Region served | International |
| Services | Citation indexing, bibliometrics, research evaluation |
Institute for Scientific Information The Institute for Scientific Information was a citation indexing and bibliometrics organization founded in 1960 by Eugene Garfield that pioneered citation indexing for science and scholarship, influencing institutions such as Thomson Reuters, Clarivate, National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, and Royal Society. Its work affected metrics used by Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, and California Institute of Technology and intersected with projects at American Chemical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Nature Publishing Group, and Science.
History
Garfield established the organization after earlier work with Science Citation Index concepts and collaborations with Michael Porter, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vannevar Bush, J. Robert Oppenheimer, John Tukey, and contacts at National Science Foundation and United States Department of Energy. Early developments involved partnerships with Institute of Scientific Information users including University of Chicago, Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University while navigating publishing landscapes shaped by Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer Nature, Pergamon Press, and Scientific American. Through the 1970s and 1980s the organization’s operations influenced citation practices at American Association for the Advancement of Science, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Max Planck Society, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Services and Products
The organization produced resources such as the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, and annual lists used by Times Higher Education, QS World University Rankings, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, Reuters, and Financial Times. It supplied citation reports to United States Department of Education, European Research Council, National Science Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and offered tools comparable to those from Scopus, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, PubMed, and Web of Science that were used by University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of Toronto, University of Melbourne, and Peking University.
Methodologies and Criteria
Methodological frameworks drew on citation analysis models influenced by work at Bell Labs, RAND Corporation, Brookings Institution, Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanford Research Institute, employing algorithms related to those used by PageRank, Bradford's law, Lotka's law, Zipf's law, and h-index discussions by Jorge Hirsch. The organization applied inclusion criteria interacting with publishers like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, SAGE Publications, Taylor & Francis, and Routledge and used editorial evaluation panels occasionally referencing standards from International Organization for Standardization, Committee on Publication Ethics, Crossref, and ORCID. Data curation processes paralleled projects at National Library of Medicine, British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Library of Congress, and WorldCat.
Impact and Reception
The organization’s metrics reshaped assessment practices at National Institutes of Health, European Commission, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and World Bank and provoked debate among scholars at University College London, London School of Economics, University of Leiden, University of Amsterdam, and University of Bologna. Critiques came from advocates associated with DORA, SPARC, Open Access, Plan S, and commentators in The Lancet, Nature, Science, PLOS ONE, and BMJ while supporters included librarians at American Library Association, research managers at Wellcome Trust, grant officers at National Science Foundation, and policy analysts at RAND Corporation.
Organizational Structure and Affiliations
Over time the organization integrated with corporate entities such as Institute for Scientific Information successors within Thomson Corporation, Reuters Group, Thomson Reuters, and later Clarivate Analytics and maintained collaborations with academic partners including University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Temple University, ETH Zurich, and University of Zurich. Its governance interacted with advisory boards containing members from Royal Society, Academia Europaea, National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and European Research Council while contracting services from vendors like IBM, Microsoft, SAP SE, and Oracle Corporation.
Notable Publications and Databases
Key outputs included citation databases and bibliometric reports analogous to Journal Citation Reports, subject indexes used by Chemical Abstracts Service, bibliographies akin to PubMed, and analytics products paralleling Essential Science Indicators, InCites, and specialized compendia used by World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Monetary Fund, and United Nations. The organization’s legacy appears in monographs and edited volumes by Eugene Garfield, analyses in journals such as Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, Research Policy, Information Processing & Management, and bibliographic compilations referenced by Royal Society Publishing and American Association for the Advancement of Science.