Book Description

Garfield's greatest contribution to science was the Science Citation Index (SCI). It is a system that used to chart connections between pieces of scientific literature. It is not only an intellectual achievement, but also an information-engineering marvel covering millions of records, from numerous subject fields and communicated over worldwide networks. These databases became the foundation of the online research tool called the Web of Knowledge. And it has now become accessible electronically via the Web of Science. Garfield enabled information retrieval to scale up basically creating the entire information science field, as we know it today. His life and work will surely inspire generations of scientists in advancing the frontiers of human knowledge. This is Informatics Studies 4(2), which is Eugene Garfield Memorial Issue. It gives a bird's eye view of Garfield's life and work and consist of an 80 page interview of Garfield published in print for the first time presenting his views on impact of information systems in scientific research, NGOs, the future of Open Access, current research, and Big science which can guide academic administrators, science policy makers in governments and scientists.