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In the 1950s, Eugene Garfield, an intrepid scholar-entrepreneur, saw the possibility of
using the links between the articles and the cited references to construct a citation
index and define impact factors for journals (based on how often an article published in a
journal was cited on average in a given period) to measure the importance of different
journals in their fields. 14 The Institute for Scientific Information which he founded (and
which currently forms part of Thomson Reuters) started bringing out Science Citation
Index (SCI) and providing journal impact factors in the early 1960s. 15 Garfield followed it
up with a novel application, viz. The indices he developed to studying science. 16 Since
then policy makers and administrators in governments and funding agencies use citations
and impact factors as performance evaluation indicators. For example, the National Science
Foundation, USA, uses publication and citation data taken from SCI in its biennial
report Science and Engineering Indicators to assess the status of science in the US and
compare it with the status of science in other countries. 17 To give another example, in an
article published in Nature, Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the
Government of UK, used publication and citation data to show that eight countries, led by
the USA produced almost 85 per cent of the world’s most highly cited (top 1 per cent)
publications between 1993 and 2001 and the top 31 countries accounted for 97.5 per cent
of most highly cited papers while 162 other countries produced less than 2.5 per cent. 18 A
recent Royal Society report 19 provides a number of science indicators. Here is a summary
by Siemens 20 :
In 2008, the world invested almost $1.2 trillion on research, and there were 7.1
million researchers who together authored 1.58 million research publications (of
which less than 9 per cent came from social sciences and humanities).
The G-8 countries are still leaders in research, but will be overtaken by China in
the near future. In all probability China may overtake the United States as the
world's leading publisher of research papers as early as 2013.
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Garfield E (1955), Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association
of Ideas, Science, 122: 102-111; http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p468y1983.pdf.
Garfield E (1964), Science Citation Index — A New Dimension in Indexing, Science, 144: 649 – 54;
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v7p525y1984.pdf.
Garfield E (1970), Citation Indexing for studying science, Nature, 227: 669 – 671;
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/V1p132y1962-73.pdf.
National Science Board, (2010). Science and Engineering Indicators 2010. National Science Foundation,
Arlington, VA; http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/front/fronts6.htm.
King, D A (2004), The Scientific Impact of Nations, Nature, 430: 311-316 DOI: 10.1038/430311a.
The Royal Society (2011), Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific Collaboration in the
21st century, RS Policy document 03/11; http://www.ukcds.org.uk/_assets/file/publications/2011-03-
28-Knowledge-networks-nations.pdf.
Simmons G (2011), Knowledge, Networks and Nations, Elearnspace,
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2011/04/04/knowledge-networks-and-nations/comment-page-
1/#comment-78747.
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