1963

PREFACE

Dr. Garfield’s article on citation indexing which appeared in Science in 1955 first brought this tech-
nique to my attention and was my first introduction to the organization now known as the Institute for
Scientific Information. Citation Indexing seemed a clever idea at the time and I wondered whether it
would ever come to fruition.

A few years later the suggestion recurred and I was puzzled how to find out whether there had been
any follow-up on Garfield’s first suggestion. I had no idea how to look up the literature in the docu-
mentation field and from past experience with subject indexing in science had little confidence in
the utility of a literature search.

This was the very incident that convinced me of the need for the citation index-- it was parallel to
many others in my own research activity. How often I have run across some older reports on methods
of on some curiosities of bacterial variations and been frustrated in attempts to find later work on
the same subject and, especially, critical enlargement on the earlier work.

For many reasons genetics is an especially apt field for the introduction of citation indexing. It is
inherently interdisciplinary, cutting across biochemistry, Statistics, agriculture, and medicine so
that geneticists need insight into a wide range of scientific literature. While there have been many
revolutionary developments, many facets of genetics still rely heavily on older work, The principles
of Drosophila research of 40 years ago are first finding their application in human cytogenetics today.
Geneticists have tended to be perceptive about the historical development of their concept and to
fulfill their responsibility in furnishing the appropriate citations in their bibliography. Their concern
with parent-offspring relationships perhaps makes geneticists more perceptive ,to the understanding of
the structure of scientific activity that is inherent in citational references. It was, therefore, most
gratifying that the review panel of the NIH and NSF concurred in Supporting this trial in the field
of genetics.

Citation indexing is, of course, only one aspect of literature searching, There will be many disap-
pointments in its use--but a negative result within the scope of the index is perhaps more meaningful
than with any other technique. Other methods generally place great reliance on subjective classifica-
tion with which the final user can rarely be entirely familiar. Citation indexing can uncover unex-
pected correlation of scientific work that no other method could hope to find, and a successful match
can often be located with great speed and assurance. The chief limitation is perhaps merely the
scope of the indexing effort in the sample--in a given year there may have been no literature on a
given reference. A cumulative index to all of science would, of course, be a large undertaking but of
course no larger than the problem to which it is addressed. In fact the machine basis of this approach
should make it far less costly and more expeditious than any other technique now apparent. Until a
complete index is available we may not know the full value of the technique, but the present sample
is a noble effort which should give many investigators substantial help in their present retrieval
problem and show the way to an ultimate, even more satisfactory, result.

My own contribution to the project has been too limited to inhibit me from commending Dr. Garfield and
his associates for organizing and implementing a project which has required an unimaginable attention
to detail, technical skill, enthusiasm, and above all, an irrepressible concern for meeting the real need
of scientists. To flourish, science has many needs but none are more vital than responsible communi-
cation with history, society, and posterity embodied in what we casually call the scientific literature,

Joshua Lederberg
Stanford University