Information Today, Inc. Releases Important New Title in ASIST Monograph Series

Chicago, IL, November 13, 2000 — Information Today, Inc. (ITI) announced the publication of The Web of Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield at the opening of the annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) in Chicago. Edited by Blaise Cronin and Helen Barsky Atkins, The Web of Knowledge, the newest title in the ASIST Monograph Series from ITI, is being released in 2000 to commemorate Dr. Eugene Garfield’s 75th birthday. Dr. Garfield will be presented with a special leather-bound copy of the monograph at a private reception on November 14 during the ASIST meeting.

Dr. Garfield, the founder and chairman emeritus of ISI, devoted years to fulfilling his dream of creating a multidisciplinary citation index. The development of the Science Citation Index^® represented a fundamental breakthrough in scientific information retrieval. What began as a unique information resource for scientists, scholars, and researchers in virtually every field of intellectual endeavor has evolved into a sophisticated set of conceptual tools for understanding the dynamics of science. The concept of citation analysis today forms the basis of much of what is known variously as scientometrics, bibliometrics, informetrics, cybermetrics, and webometrics. Garfield’s exceptional intellectual contribution continues to have a profound impact on the way we think about and study scholarly communication.

The Web of Knowledge is the first ASIST monograph to comprehensively address the history, theory, and practical applications of citation indexing and analysis—a field which has grown from Garfield’s seed of an idea—and to examine its impact on scholarly research 40 years after its inception. Thomas H. Hogan, Sr., president and publisher of ITI, described the monograph as “one of the most important additions to the literature of information science and technology we have ever published.” Hogan said, “In bringing together the analyses, insights, and reflections of more than 35 leading lights, Blaise Cronin and Helen Barsky Atkins have produced both a comprehensive survey of citation indexing and its applications and a beautifully realized tribute to Eugene Garfield and his vision.”

In a recent interview, Blaise Cronin, one of the editors of The Web of Knowledge, stated, “Garfield’s lasting legacy will be the inter-disciplinary research community, denoted by the portmanteau label ‘scientometrics,’ which has evolved and cohered over the course of the last four decades as a direct result of his persistent belief that a simple principle—citation indexing—could ultimately be used to lay bare the lattice of relationships existing between authors, ideas, and texts.”
 

A SAMPLING OF CHAPTERS FROM THE WEB OF KNOWLEDGE

• Eugene Garfield: History, Scientific Information and Chemical Endeavor
• How the Science Citation Index Got Started
• The Development of Science Indicators in the United States
• The Role of Journals in the Growth of Scientific Knowledge
• Visualizing Citation Connections
• Collaboration Networks in Science
• Citations as a Means to Evaluate Biomedical Research 
• On the Garfield Input to the Sociology of Science
• Charting Pathways Through Science: Exploring Garfield’s Vision of a Unified Index to Science
• The Citation Network as a Prototype for Representing Trust in Virtual Environments

THE EDITORS
Blaise Cronin is Rudy Professor of Information Science and Dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University. Helen Barsky Atkins is Director of Database Development at ISI.

The Web of Knowledge is published by Information Today, Inc. Further information is available on the publisher’s Web site at https://www.infotoday.com/catalog/asist.htm. To order, contact the publisher directly at 800/300-9868 or 609/654-6266, fax 609/654-4309, e-mail custserv@infotoday.com, or order securely on the Internet by clicking on the "Order Now" button below.