The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific in 1992 and was known as Thomson ISI and now Thomson Scientific.

ISI offers bibliographic database services. Its speciality is citation indexing and analysis, a field pioneered by Garfield. It maintains a citation database covering thousands of scientific journals, known as the Science Citation Index (SCI) which is made available online through the Web of Science service. This database allows a researcher to identify which articles have been cited most frequently, and who has cited them.

ISI also publishes an annual Journal Citation Report which lists an impact factor for each of the journals that it tracks. Within the scientific community, journal impact factors play a huge but controversial role in determining the kudos attached to a scientist's published research record.

See also

• GetCITED - an attempt to replicate Web of Science
• Impact factor

External links

• Thomson ISI home page

Library and information science | Academic publishing

Institute for Scientific Information | Instituto para la Información Científica | Institute for Scientific Information | Mokslinės informacijos institutas | Institute for Scientific Information