I founded the Institute for Scientific Information (www.isinet.com) in 1954 but did not begin publishing the Science Citation Index regularly until 1964. The Scientist appeared more than two decades later, in 1986, and soon went online as one of the first full-text electronic Web sites. A few years later The Scientist was spun off when I sold my shares in ISI. I published it until December 2001, when it became a joint venture with Vitek Tracz of Current Science Inc. I have remained chairman emeritus of ISI, now wholly owned by the Thomson Corp., even though I am no longer a shareholder. But I revel in describing innovative ISI products.
ISI has now made a quantum leap forward in providing free access to a new database called ISI Highly Cited.com. This database provides detailed publication, citation, and biographical data on several thousand authors in categories such as molecular biology, chemistry, ...
