Research Fronts 2014 : 100 Top Ranked Specialties In The Sciences And Social / quote 7 of 9
Citation indexing provides an effective method for representing the structure of scientific research
In “Citation indexes for sociological and historical research,” published in 1963, he stated that citation indexing provided an objective method for defining a field of inquiry. That assertion rested on the same logical foundation that made information retrieval in a citation index effective: citations revealed the expert decisions and self-organizing behavior of researchers, their intellectual as well as their social associations. In 1964, with colleagues Irving H. Sher and Richard J. Torpie, Garfield produced his first historiograph, a linear mapping through time of influences and dependencies, illustrated by citation links, concerning the discovery of DNA and its structure5. Citation data, Garfield saw, provided some of the best material available for building out a picture of the structure of scientific research as it really was, even for sketching its terrain.