Abstract
Eugene Garfield ubiquitous presence in scientometrics masks to some extent his influential contributions in diverse areas. Taking this as a premise for this study, the article attempts to trace Garfield’s contributions in four key domains: in data analytics, in influencing scholars involved in the study of science as an epistemic practice and a knowledge product, his engagement with scholars in developing countries and in innovation and entrepreneurship. The article however provides only a glimpse of his deep engagement in the above domains. The study concludes by arguing for scientometrics to develop strong connect with the different strands of research in science studies and other cross-disciplinary areas which pioneer like Garfield undertook through his writings, developing social networks and creating knowledge products.
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Notes
PageRank builds upon citation linkages concept to identify important web pages. Importance of a webpage is decided on two criteria (a) backlinks from other web pages which are similar to academic citations and (b) distinguishing each backlink in terms of their importance. A webpage citation can be more important than another webpage citation if a citing webpage has higher backlinks then the other. Thus a page has high rank if the sum of the ranks of its backlinks is high; covers both the case when the page has many backlinks and when a page has a few highly ranked backlinks (see for example The Page Rank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web (http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf).
Kuhn has described scientific activity in terms of oscillating patterns of development (biphasic model), oscillating between paradigmatic growth (‘normal science’) and revolutionary turmoil. He characterised ‘normal science’ as puzzle solving during which all participants in a given area work in the same direction. Revolutionary science applies to episodes during which fundamental changes are made to basic concepts leading to discarding the established paradigm. Kuhn also classifies pe-paradigmatic phase which he attributes as immature science open to all kinds of external” influences.
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Bhattacharya, S. Eugene Garfield: brief reflections. Scientometrics 114, 401–407 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2620-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2620-7