ISIHighlyCited.com - Release 1.1 in September 2003

In November of 2000, the Author Relations staff at ISI began contacting individual scientists whom we had identified as "Highly Cited Researchers" (for more information on this analysis, see:  How does ISI identify Highly Cited Researchers).  To date, we have contacted over 4400 researchers in 21 categories, and their response has been enthusiastic;  we have received nearly 2700 complete cv's and publication lists. The impressive careers they record result in an average of over 300 journal articles per researcher.  Including other publication types,  we were faced with over 1.2 million publications.  Members of ISIHighlyCited.com are responsible for some of the most significant and fruitful citation relationships in ISI products.  Our goal  is to represent these important contributions in an on-going cooperation with the researcher, and to show each author's work in the context of the ISI Citation Databases, where its influence on subsequent publications can be traced through the citations links, as well as to present influential articles as aspects of the contribution of the scientists who conducted the research. 

For the past year, while continuing to identify and contact Highly Cited Researchers from new categories, we have also been developing a new version of the ISIHighlyCited.com infrastructure that will more readily enable us to meet these goals.  Although the upgrade itself involved an extensive restructuring of our production system and its underlying databases, the changes seen by Highly Cited Researchers and visitors to the site are relatively small.  The 1.1 release of ISIHighlyCited.com had two goals:  to fully integrate ISIHighlyCited.com with the bibliographic and citation data in ISI Web of Science; and to simplify the display and updating of publication lists.

Fully integrate author records with ISI Web of Science:  ISIHighlyCited.com is freely available to any internet-connected computer; however, students and scientists who access ISIHighlyCited.com from institutions that subscribe to ISI Web of Science are able to link from individual items in the author biography to the full bibliographic listing in ISI Web of Science.  There they can view indexed references from the article, as well as navigate to subsequent works that have cited the article.  Thus, beginning from a view of an individual's corpus of publications, users can see each article in the context of closely related works. 

Beginning in September, millions of users of ISI Web of Science worldwide will see a new link on certain bibliographic records. 
The Author Biography link will display on articles that appears in the publication list of one or more Highly Cited Researchers. 

Using the Author Publication Number (APN), we have linked items from the bibliography of each Highly Cited Researcher to the equivalent source record in ISI Web of Science.  Clicking the Author Biography button will allow users to navigate from an article to the specific author(s) record in ISIHighlyCited.com 1.1.  The researcher record displays the current affiliation of the researcher, independent of his/her address information at the time the article was published.  Each record in ISIHighlyCited.com will contain additional publications by the researcher.  Depending on the information he/she has provided to ISIHighlyCited.com, a researcher record can also contain current contact information, a link to a lab or university homepage, and a description of on-going research interests. Now, students and scientists using ISI Web of Science, can connect an individual article to one or more of the researchers behind the work.  The link to ISIHighlyCited.com allows ISI Web of Sciences users to view the article in the context of a more complete career.
Click here to take a brief tour of how the screens and links will appear.

Simplified publication lists: The list of publications for each Highly Cited Researcher is a critical point of interest in ISIHighlyCited.com, and we want to keep these lists as current and complete as possible.  Each Highly Cited Researcher has secure access to edit and update all the information in their biography and publication list. 

While the previous version of ISIHighlyCited.com contained separate links to each different type of publication, we found that these separate pages could obscure important relationships between the publication of a journal article, and the nearly concurrent presentation of research results in the form of a report of proceedings of a scientific meeting or symposium.  We will still include all the publication types provided by the researchers, journal articles, patents, conference proceedings, books and book chapters;  however, they will be presented in reverse chronological order on a single list, making it easier to view these records as the continuous development of a career. 

ISIHighlyCited.com visitors will see only a single link to researcher publications.  The button will link to the list of publications compiled for the author.  When the Highly Cited Researcher has not provided us with a c.v. or with a complete list of their publications, we present a selected set of their recent, heavily cited work.
Click here to view an image of a sample publication list. 

Simplified updating:  Highly Cited Researchers will see a marked change in how they can edit and add to their publication lists.  The new add and edit screens will require entry only of the publication year (to allow effective sorting of the list) and the complete text of the reference in the author's preferred format.  You can simply cut-and-paste reference items from your c.v., text document, or bibliographic management files into the publication list on ISIHighlyCited.com. 
Click here to see a sample of the "Add New Publications" screen. 

Editing a publication list has also been greatly simplified, with direct in-line editing using the same two fields from the "Add New Publications" screen. 
Click here to see a sample of the "Edit Publications" screen. 

We hope the improved process will encourage Highly Cited Researchers to enhance their records with recent journal articles, meeting proceedings, internet resources or on-line preprints.

When will my record be posted?
ISIHighlyCited.com will greatly speed internal production as well.  Many Highly Cited Researchers were contacted and graciously supplied us with materials for inclusion in ISIHighlyCited.com only to wait months for their record to be posted.  As it became clear that the completion of the new systems for Publication lists would be significantly delayed, the Author Relations staff began to publish biographies-only, rather than protract the lag-time.   

When ISIHighlyCited.com is re-launched in September of 2003, we will be able to load publication lists into all existing researcher records, as well as to speed the production of the remaining records.  By the end of the year 2003, we hope to have completed our analysis of the 200-250 most cited researchers in all 21 categories, for the data years 1981-1999. 

The staff of ISIHighlyCited.com appreciates the patience and continued interest of the many, outstanding scientists and authors whom have contacted throughout the past 3 years.  This has been a fascinating, if occasionally frustrating undertaking, and we hope our users and the Highly Cited Researchers who participate in ISIHighlyCited.com w ill be pleased with the changes.  We welcome your comments or questions.