Eugene Garfield
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Eugene Eli Garfield (September 16, 1925 – February 26, 2017) was an American
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
and businessman, one of the founders of
bibliometrics Bibliometrics is the application of statistical methods to the study of bibliographic data, especially in scientific and library and information science contexts, and is closely associated with scientometrics (the analysis of scientific metri ...
and
scientometrics Scientometrics is a subfield of informetrics that studies quantitative aspects of scholarly literature. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citati ...
. He helped to create ''
Current Contents ''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections. History ''Current Contents ...
'', ''
Science Citation Index The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) is a citation index owned by Clarivate and previously by Thomson Reuters. It was created by the Eugene Garfield at the Institute for Scientific Information, launched in 1964 as Science Citation Index ( ...
'' (SCI), ''
Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publication by Clarivate. It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science Core Collection. It provides information about academic journals in the natur ...
'', and ''Index Chemicus'', among others, and founded the magazine '' The Scientist''.


Early life and education

Garfield was born in 1925 in New York City as Eugene Eli Garfinkle, his mother being of
Lithuanian Jewish {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Litvaks , image = , caption = , poptime = , region1 = {{flag, Lithuania , pop1 = 2,800 , region2 = {{flag, South Africa , pop2 = 6 ...
ancestry. His parents were second generation immigrants living in
East Bronx The East Bronx is the part of the New York City borough of the Bronx which lies east of the Bronx River; this roughly corresponds to the eastern half of the borough. Neighborhoods include: Baychester, Castle Hill, City Island, Co-op City ...
in New York City. He studied at the
University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...
and
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
before getting a Bachelor of Science degree in
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
from
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
in 1949. Garfield also received a degree in Library Science from Columbia University in 1953. He went on to do his PhD in the Department of
Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
, which he completed in 1961 for developing an
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...
for translating
chemical nomenclature Chemical nomenclature is a set of rules to generate systematic name#In chemistry, systematic names for chemical compounds. The nomenclature used most frequently worldwide is the one created and developed by the International Union of Pure and Appli ...
into
chemical formula A chemical formula is a way of presenting information about the chemical proportions of atoms that constitute a particular chemical compound or molecule, using chemical element symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as pare ...
s.


Career and research

Working as a laboratory assistant at Columbia University after his graduation, Garfield indexed all previously synthesized compounds so that not to remake them, which helped him understand that his inclination to information towards science was bigger than towards chemistry. In 1951, he got a position at the Welch Medical Library at
Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
in Baltimore, Maryland, where most of the
National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. I ...
information systems were developed. There he built search and cataloging system methods using punch-cards. In 1953, at the First Symposium on Machine Methods in Scientific Documentation, Garfield got introduced to
Shepard's Citations ''Shepard's Citations'' is a citator used in United States legal research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. The verb ''Shepardizing'' (sometimes written lower-case) refers t ...
. In 1960, Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), which was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the 1990s, ISI was faced with bankruptcy and was acquired by JPT Holdings who later sold it to Thomson (Thomas Business Information) where it formed a major part of the science division of
Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational corporation, multinational content-driven technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and maintains its headquarters at 1 ...
. In October 2016 Thomson Reuters completed the sale of its intellectual property and science division; it is now known as
Clarivate Analytics Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business and market intelligence, and competitive profiling ...
. Garfield was responsible for many innovative bibliographic products, including ''
Current Contents ''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections. History ''Current Contents ...
'', the ''
Science Citation Index The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) is a citation index owned by Clarivate and previously by Thomson Reuters. It was created by the Eugene Garfield at the Institute for Scientific Information, launched in 1964 as Science Citation Index ( ...
'' (SCI), and other citation databases, the ''
Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publication by Clarivate. It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science Core Collection. It provides information about academic journals in the natur ...
'', and ''Index Chemicus''. He was the founding editor and publisher of '' The Scientist'', a news magazine for life scientists. In 2003, the
University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States, and other campuses in St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg and Sarasota, ...
School of Information was honored to have him as lecturer for the Alice G. Smith Lecture. In 2007, he launched Histcite, a bibliometric analysis and visualization software package. Following ideas inspired by
Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II, World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almo ...
's highly cited 1945 article ''
As We May Think "As We May Think" is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush which has been described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of information society. It was first published in ''The Atlantic'' in July 1945 and republished in an abridged v ...
'', Garfield undertook the development of a comprehensive
citation index A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century H ...
showing the propagation of scientific thinking; he started the
Institute for Scientific Information The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis, ...
in 1956 (it was sold to the
Thomson Corporation Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organization and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to form Thomson Reut ...
in 1992). According to Garfield, "the citation index ... may help a historian to measure the influence of an article — that is, its 'impact factor'". The creation of the ''Science Citation Index'' made it possible to calculate
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ...
, which ostensibly measures the importance of scientific journals. It led to the unexpected discovery that a few journals like ''
Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
'' and ''
Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
'' were core for all of hard science. The same pattern does not happen with the humanities or the social sciences. His entrepreneurial flair in having turned what was, at least at the time, an obscure and specialist metric into a highly profitable business has been noted. A scientometric analysis of his top fifty cited papers has been conducted. Garfield's work led to the development of several
information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...
algorithms, like the
HITS algorithm Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search (HITS; also known as hubs and authorities) is a link analysis algorithm that rates Web pages, developed by Jon Kleinberg. The idea behind Hubs and Authorities stemmed from a particular insight into the creation of w ...
and
PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. Accordin ...
. Both use the structured citation between websites through hyperlinks. Google co-founders
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...
and
Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on D ...
acknowledged Gene in their development of PageRank, the algorithm that powers their company's search engine. Garfield published over 1,000 essays.


Honors and awards

Garfield was honored with the Award of Merit from the Association for Information Science and Technology in 1975. He was awarded the
John Price Wetherill Medal The John Price Wetherill Medal was an award of the Franklin Institute. It was established with a bequest given by the family of John Price Wetherill (1844–1906) on April 3, 1917. On June 10, 1925, the Board of Managers voted to create a silv ...
in 1984, the
Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal The Derek de Solla Price Memorial Award, or Price Medal, was conceived to honor Derek J. de Solla Price for his contributions to information science and for his crucial role in developing the field of scientometrics. The award was launched by Tibor ...
in 1984, and the Miles Conrad Award in 1985. He was also awarded the Richard J. Bolte Sr. Award in 2007. He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
that same year. The Association for Library and Information Science Education has a fund for doctoral research through an award named after Garfield.


Criticism

Writing in ''Physiology News'', No. 69, Winter 2007, David Colquhoun of the Department of Pharmacology,
University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...
, described the "
impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a type of journal ranking. Journals with higher impact factor values are considered more prestigious or important within their field. The Impact Factor of a journa ...
," a method for comparing scholarly journals, as "the invention of Eugene Garfield, a man who has done enormous harm to true science." Colquhoun ridiculed C. Hoeffel's assertion that Garfield's impact factor "has the advantage of already being in existence and is, therefore, a good technique for scientific evaluation" by saying, "you can't get much dumber than that. It is a 'good technique' because it is already in existence? There is something better. Read the papers."


Personal life

Garfield is survived by a wife, three sons, a daughter, two granddaughters, and two great-grandchildren.


References


External links

* * * (The Penn Libraries digitally archived this webpage. It is now available via thi
Wayback Machine
link.) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Garfield, Eugene Eli 1925 births 2017 deaths American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Bibliometricians University of South Florida faculty Columbia College (New York) alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Social scientists from New York City Businesspeople from New York City Members of the American Philosophical Society