Dr. Eugene Garfield, the founder 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 commercial product—a unique 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 invention continues to have a profound impact on the way we think about and study scholarly communication.

This new ASIST monograph is the first to comprehensively address the history, theory, and practical applications of citation analysis—a field which has grown from Garfield's seed of an idea—and to examine its impact on scholarly research forty years after its inception. In bringing together the analyses, insights, and reflections of more than thirty-five leading lights, editors Cronin and 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 honor of his seventy-fifth birthday.