"ISIHighlyCited.com gives anyone working in the sciences a new and invaluable resource," said James Pringle, ISI’s vice president of product development. "ISIHighlyCited.com provides a comprehensive view of pivotal influences on a scientific field. Researchers and scientists will be able to identify key individuals, departments, and laboratories that have made fundamental contributions to the development of science and technology in recent decades. Legal professionals will be able to find expert witnesses. Corporations and government agencies can locate centers of excellence. In addition, the information can be used to help inform policy decisions."

"Researchers are not bound by their field, but follow ideas, concepts, and models that cross many areas of research. ISIHighlyCited.com displays how these relationships are constructed, and the influence the authors have on their field and others," said Marie E. McVeigh, product development manager at ISI.

ISIHighlyCited.com will bring together the publication and achievement records of pre-eminent researchers in each of 21 broad categories in life sciences, medicine, physical sciences, engineering, and social sciences.

Researchers are selected for inclusion in the expert gateway based on the total number of citations received by their articles within a given category—a quantifiable demonstration of their impact or influence—as recorded in the ISI Citation Database 1981–1999. These same researchers will be continuously adding data to ISIHighlyCited.com. In addition, since new material is published daily and citation counts are adjusted at the same time, ISI will regularly expand the list of highly cited researchers as new fields and their leaders emerge.

According to McVeigh, approximately 19 million articles or source records were identified and evaluated to determine the most highly cited researchers in their respective disciplines. The researchers selected for ISIHighlyCited.com comprise less than one half of one percent of the almost 5 million researchers in the ISI Citation Database 1981–1999.

Author records contain both biographical and publication information. Biographical data includes education, faculty or professional posts, society memberships and/or offices, and current research interests. Publication information lists journal articles, books or book chapters, conference presentations, and Web sites or other Internet resources. This information is searchable by individual, category, country, or institutional affiliation through ISIHighlyCited.com.

In addition, over 4 million researchers worldwide who have access to the ISI Web of Science will be able to link to full bibliographic records, abstracts, citation data, citation navigation, and often to the full text of the featured researchers’ works. The ISI Web of Science is the Web interface to the ISI Citation Databases: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. 

ISIHighlyCited.com will be available online at http://www.isihighlycited.com beginning next month with four categories: neuroscience, engineering, physics, and chemistry. Seventeen additional disciplines will be available online by December.

Source: ISI, Philadelphia, 800/336-4474, 215/386-0100; http://www.isinet.com.