Eugene Garfield, a Pioneer in Information Science

Eugene Garfield can certainly be considered one of the giants of information science. Garfield’s life, as shared in his obituary by Subbiah Arunachala, is intertwined with the history of the development of machine indexing and use of the computer’s capability to enable access to scientific papers by exploring the basic tool of the citation.  This pioneer in information studies created Current Contents, Science Citation Index and his company ISI. He did groundwork that led to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). He made great leaps by recognizing the value of the citation itself and developing a way to make them more accessible to researchers. 

Websites Referenced

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/112/06/1282.pdf

https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/#/fieldSearch

His website:  http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/

His essays:  http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/category.html

including Was the Science Citation Index concept inevitable? (mentions the value of the citation). Link at http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/geneticscitationindex.html

 

Additional tributes:
http://www.against-the-grain.com/2017/03/atg-newschannel-original-the-passing-of-a-giant-eugene-garfield-dies-at-90/ 

Unpaywall, a new tool to locate free full text

Here’s a new way to find full text content offered freely somewhere online! 

Easily install Unpaywall’s little lock symbol to your tool bar (Chrome or Firefox required). Then if you encounter an article for which a free full text source is available, a larger lock will appear on the right. A simple click takes you to the article. Since Unpaywall only matches with legally uploaded versions, it can be a great addition to your web search tools and will compliment other resources you may use.

   

Unpaywall should be officially released in early April, and developer Impactstory welcomes input.

Websites Referenced

http://unpaywall.org/

http://unpaywall.org/faq

http://blog.impactstory.org/unpaywall/

Journals - What’s New in Your Favorites? Easy eTOCs!

A new PubMed Labs experiment offers a super awareness tool, PubMed Journals. It is a fast and current way to follow the latest releases from your favorite health science journals that are indexed in MEDLINE – or at least know when they show up in PubMed. First you do need to have a My NCBI account, a service that offers lots more useful features and doesn’t send you junk mail. Once you have that, set it to stay signed in so any time you go to PubMed you’ll be in your account. If you want to see what the library offers, be sure to use our unique address (or this one if you are on staff at the med school).

Then locate PubMed Journals in the lower left of the PubMed home page. Enter a title in the search box at PubMed Journals (if you type slowly a suggestion list will appear!). No additional sign-in is needed, no registration at the publisher website. No email alerts clogging up your in-box! Your list of titles followed is right on the page. Easily discontinue by clicking “Following” to “Follow” – the title will disappear from the list the next time you return to the page. The page also lists popular journals for easy access.

A tip – to return to PubMed from PubMed Journals or My NCBI, just scroll to the very bottom to click on PubMed in the “Popular” column.

Add PubMed Journals to your own “Popular” list of websites today!

Websites Referenced

https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2016/09/07/pubmed-journals/ (and check the comments section there to learn more and provide development input!)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/

http://boneuponlibrarynews.blogspot.com/2015/12/my-ncbi-valuable-tool-for-proactive.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?holding=txudtslib
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?holding=txudtslib,utswmlib 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/journals/