|
 his
website—in cites—provides
commentary and analysis on some of the most influential scientific
discoveries of our time in the words of the scientists who made those
discoveries. It is designed to complement the publication, citation,
and citations-per-paper rankings, and other data, featured in
Essential
Science Indicators
from Thomson
Scientific. Essential Science Indicators
is a ten-year compilation of output and impact statistics
on research authors, institutions, countries, and journals. It also
includes listings of highly cited and so-called hot papers across 22
broad fields, as well as baseline citation statistics to gauge whether
a paper is cited above or less than average. [Note:
click to see the Essential Science Indicators latest
version info]
Having used citation-count data to identify top research
contributions and contributors, Essential Science Indicators
editorial staff solicits commentary by
scientists and science administrators in an attempt to understand
their achievements and air the stories behind their successes. As
such, incites is the
successor to Thomson Scientific’s popular Citation Classics Commentary feature,
which was offered in the print editions of Current Contents from 1977
to 1993.
No less an authority than Robert K. Merton, professor emeritus of
Columbia University and our most eminent sociologist of science,
praised those Citation Classic commentaries.
| "They
tell, in brief compass, how the research came to be; report
problems encountered in getting the work into print; and
reflect on what the authors take to be the reasons for that
work having received widespread notice," he wrote.
"These short, and sometimes pithy, accounts thus supply
the sort of contextual information that has been
systematically screened out of scientific or scholarly
publications by institutionalized editorial conventions. Those
conventions, as they have evolved over the centuries, call for
restricting accounts in the usual journals to what are defined
as ‘the essentials’: the design of inquiry, the technical
procedures employed, the findings, and their implications. But
not how the inquiry actually proceeded. The mores of
scientific and scholarly publication therefore lead authors to
write up their research in logically coherent (and preferably
cogent) rather than biographically descriptive and analytical
fashion." (in Eugene Garfield, Editor,
Contemporary
Classics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Thomson Scientific
Press:
Philadelphia, 1987, pg. vii). |
We encourage scientists, in incites, to tell us "how the
inquiry actually proceeded." We value the personal, biographical
details.
incites is organized into
sections: scientists, papers,
institutions, countries,
and journals. Each contribution is
prefaced with the information about its position in the Essential
Science Indicators rankings.
Also, each edition of incites
will be archived so that all commentaries will remain accessible and
citable, since each article has a citing month and URL at the top and
bottom of the article. We welcome your comments and links from your
individual or institutional web pages.
As mentioned, incites was
inspired by the founder of the Institute of Scientific Information
(ISI) - Eugene
Garfield - who first
published these vignettes of discovery and continues to do so in the
pages of his biweekly newspaper The
Scientist, where readers will
find commentaries by scientists on hot papers, which have been
identified through the citation data of Thomson Scientific.
|
cites
:
