Eugene Garfield’s scholarly impact: a scientometric review

Abstract

The concept of citation indexing has become deeply involved in many parts of research itself and the broad environment in which research plays an integral role, ranging from research evaluation, numerous indicators, to an increasingly wider range of scientific disciplines. In this article, we pay tribute to Eugene Garfield and present a scientometric review of the intellectual assets that he brought to us. In addition, we explore the intellectual landscape that has subsequently evolved in connection to many of his ideas. We illustrate what systematic reviews of the scientific literature may reveal and what we may learn from the rich information conveyed through citation-induced patterns. The study is conducted with CiteSpace, one of many science mapping tools based on data from the Web of Science and Scopus. Without Garfield’s inventions, none of these would be possible.