Bahía Blanca, Argentina – April 26, 2006 — The Universidad Nacional de Sur (The National University of the South--UNS) is the largest national university in southern Argentina, and has long been dedicated to furthering the research capabilities conducted at the university. To advance this mission, the university has made a significant investment in the Web of Science® and Journal Citation Reports® components of ISI Web of KnowledgeSM.
ISI Web of Knowledge facilitates discovery by offering seamless navigation to the highest-quality, multidisciplinary journal literature, patent data, Web content, evaluation tools, and bibliographic management products. Given university status in 1955, the UNS has taken a significant step toward expanding their research capabilities with the purchase of a 10-year set of Web of Science content and Journal Citation Reports.
About the Universidad Nacional de Sur
Located in the city of Bahía Blanca in Buenos Aires province, the Universidad Nacional de Sur is an hour’s flight just south of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. The university was originally founded in 1946 as the Instituto Tecnológico del Sur. The institution was given university status in 1950 but its status was rescinded in 1952, making the institution a dependency of Argentina’s Ministry of Economy. In 1955, following the fall of President Juan Perón’s government, the institution sought status as a national university. After a study by an advisory committee, designated by the national government, the Instituto Tecnológico del Sur became the Universidad Nacional de Sur, established by a decree from the national government on January 5, 1956. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the university’s founding as a national university.
The Universidad Nacional de Sur Investment
Web of Science indexes approximately 8,700 of the world’s most influential scholarly journals, offering complete bibliographic data, searchable author abstracts, and cited references. With a wealth of multidisciplinary content back to 1900 and the Thomson Scientific-pioneered, cited reference searching, Web of Science is the leading scientific information resource of choice for information professionals and researchers worldwide. Journal Citation Reports and its unique “Impact Factor” have set the standard in providing a systematic, objective way to evaluate, categorize, and compare the world's leading scholarly journals and to gauge their influence on the global research community.
In celebration of their research community gaining access to ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific staff joined officials, faculty, staff and students from Universidad Nacional de Sur for a day-long celebration on April 26th at the university’s Rectory Auditorium (Auditorio Del Rectorado). The day before, Thomson Scientific engaged in a number of activities with local press in an attempt to raise awareness about the event and the university’s purchase of Web of Science. That morning, Carlos Martinez, director; Daniel Singer, associate Manager; and José Claudio Santos, regional manager of Latin America Sales at Thomson Scientific, were interviewed by a popular Bahía Blanca and surrounding area FM radio station. During the interview, Thomson Scientific commented that university’s purchase of Web of Science marked an important step in enhancing the competitiveness not only of the university’s researchers, but also of the research community throughout Argentina.
That afternoon, a local affiliate of Argentina’s national television network Canal 9 interviewed Carlos Martinez, Dr. Oswaldo E. Agamennoni, UNS general manager of science and technology (Secretario General de Ciencia y Tecnología), Dr. Luís María Fernandez, UNS president (Rector), and Mtro. Luís Herrera, former library director of UNS and now manager of user services (Dirección de Atención al Usuário) for the National Library of Argentina (Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina) in Buenos Aires. UNS staff commented upon the increasingly demanding needs of the university’s researchers, and how the acquisition of Web of Science fulfills these needs.
UNS staff further commented that Web of Science will allow their researchers to compete with their colleagues throughout the world. Mtro. Herrera lauded the unique attributes of Web of Science, stating that the university had subscribed to the resource for years in CD-Rom and print formats (Science Citation Index) and their continuous over these years successfully culminated in the adoption of Web of Science.
In addition to the aforementioned activities, the event was promoted in two Argentine national newspapers: Clarín and La Nación. Both newspapers are distributed nationwide throughout Argentina.
The Event: Enhancing Scientific and Scholarly Research through the ISI Web of Knowledge Platform
After the continental breakfast, Dr. Luís María Fernandez, President, UNS, discussed the history and expansion of the university over the past fifty years. Dr. Fernandez remarked how the acquisition of Web of Science marked an important step for the university in its drive to invest in its research community. He remarked how Thomson is the world leader in scientific information publishing, and also touched on the important role that Web of Science and the ISI Web of Knowledge platform will play in advancing the quality of research conducted at the Universidad Nacional de Sur. He reiterated the university’s mission to become a major contributor to the invaluable research being conducted in Latin America and around the globe.
First up for Thomson Scientific was Carlos Martinez, Director, Thomson Scientific. After greeting the attendees and thanking them for there support, he launched into a presentation entitled ‘Thomson Scientific: Linking Scientific and Scholarly Research in the 21st Century.’ In it, Martinez provided an overview of The Thomson Corporation tradition of excellence and long-standing reputation as a leading global provider of integrated information-based solutions to business and professional customers. Martinez explained that Thomson Scientific is a business of The Thomson Corporation and is a leading research information provider, focusing on multidisciplinary, scholarly journal and patent literature. “It produces some of the most heavily used, high-quality and technologically-advanced information tools to over 8 million researchers, students, and information professionals in 72 countries,” explained Martinez.
The presentation continued with an explanation of the Thomson Scientific mission and the vision of Dr. Eugene Garfield—a pioneer in the field of information science and scientific communication. Dr. Garfield’s 1955 article in Science introduced citation indexes as a new type of classification tool. In addition, Martinez explained the Web of Science and the citation indexing from just a single record within the Web of Science by simply using the links designed to drive discovery.
Martinez concluded by offering a glimpse into the Thomson Scientific product offerings, and explaining that there are more than 240 site-wide Web customers in Latin America and more than 2,200 institutions that subscribe to Web of Science worldwide. He re-affirmed the Thomson Scientific commitment to its Latin American customers.
Next, Paul Torpey, manager of Global Sales Support at Thomson Scientific, delivered his presentation on the Thomson Scientific editorial process. He began by explaining the Editorial Development team’s purpose and composition that includes professional librarians and information specialists, with graduate degrees in science or the humanities.
Torpey then provided an in-depth review the Thomson Scientific journal selection process, explaining that Web of Science aims to be comprehensive, but not all inclusive. “A small number of journals publish the bulk of significant scientific results. Therefore we employee a selection process to identify only the highest quality journals based on such criteria as publishing standards, editorial content, international diversity, and citation analysis,” revealed Torpey.
The presentation concluded with a look at the number and types of journals within Web of Science. For a complete essay on the Thomson Scientific journal selection process, click here.
Torpey continued with another presentation entitled ‘ISI Web of Knowledge: A Premiere Platform for Scientific and Scholarly Research.’ He began by discussing scientific trends in Argentina, revealing that between 1981 and 2003 the total output of published scholarly papers rose from approximately 6,000 to more than 22,000. He also pointed out that the impact, or average number of citations to these published works, increased from an Impact Factor of just over 1.5 to approaching 3.0.
Torpey than revealed to the captive audience the top fields for Argentina based on total citations to papers published in individual fields. Clinical Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Biology/Biochemistry, and Plant & Animal Science were the top five.
Next, Torpey provided an overview of the rich and diverse ISI Web of Knowledge content. “Anchored by the Thomson Scientific core journal and patent literature and bibliographic management tools, and complemented by carefully selected partner content, ISI Web of Knowledge provides “deep, diverse coverage of published research and technology,” he explained.
He concluded by giving in-depth examples of each of the components within the ISI Web of Knowledge platform. He highlighted the unique Web of Science feature, Cited Reference Searching, that allows users to navigate forward, backward, and through the multidisciplinary literature to uncover all the information relevant to their work. He also emphasized the Analyze tool, which enables Web of Science users to analyze and refine results by author, publication year, journal subject category, institution, and language or source title. Torpey concluded by giving the attendees a ‘sneak peak’ at the new Web Citation IndexTM—the multidisciplinary citation index of scholarly content from institutional and subject-based repositories. “Web Citation Index transcends the capabilities of traditional Web search engines, providing users with a robust citation-based discovery vehicle for preprints, technical reports, dissertations, proceedings, and other gray literature,” said Torpey.
Following Torpey, Jose Claudio Santos, Regional Manager for South America was up with his presentation entitled ‘ISI Web of Knowledge: The Researcher’s Path to Smart Discovery’. He began by outlining the key components of ISI Web of Knowledge: Web of Science, Current Contents Connect®, Journal Citation Reports®, and BIOSIS Previews®.
Santos then briefly explained the evolution of Thomson Scientific, from the Thomson acquisition of ISI® in 1992 to employing more than 2500 today. Santos showed the Thomson Scientific presence throughout the world, including major consortia deals in Spain, Portugal, Venezuela, Chile, and Brazil.
Santos concluded by visually displaying all of the components of ISI Web of Knowledge, the publishing partners whose journal articles comprise the ISI Web of Knowledge content, and provided a quick demo on conducting a search and managing search results.
Santos’ second presentation focused on Journal Citation Reports (JCR). “Available in science and the social science editions and collectively covering approximately 7,000 journals within 200 disciplines, the statistical data in JCR provides a systematic and objective way to determine journals with the highest impact within a given subject area, explained Santos.
He demonstrated the new JCR expanded analytical capabilities that go beyond the journal level to include the category level. This category level data provides performance metrics that can be used to understand the journal content, and analyses that show the citation dynamics common to a large collection of articles and journals in a subject. “These enhancements have transformed JCR into an essential tool that librarians and information professionals can use to identify trends in journals coverage, making it easier to manage collections,” commented Santos. He wrapped things up by showing the JCR new Related Journals list, which measures the concentration of citations between two journals or between a journal and a category to reveal closely-related, interrelated titles. “Researchers can use the list to identify journals they may want to consider reading or publishing articles. Librarians can build collections that include the most relevant journals in a particular area. And publishers will be able to spot competitor journals and the most effective advertising opportunities,” offered Santos Back for a third presentation, Paul Torpey concluded the lectures with a presentation entitled ‘Essential Science IndicatorsSM: An Analytical Look at the Scientific Landscape’. He began by discussing ISI Web of Knowledge stating that the goal is to enhance the entire research process by allowing both novice and expert users to quickly locate the essential, relevant information they need, when the need it, directly from the desktop. As an integral part of ISI Web of Knowledge, Torpey also explained that ISI Essential Science Indicators is an evaluation tool that helps researchers, administrators, deans, and directors measure the productivity, influence, and impact of worldwide research activity in 22 fields of science and the social sciences.
The formal presentations were followed by an informative question and answer session, facilitated by a panel consisting of both representatives from Thomson Scientific and officials from the Universidad Nacional de Sur.
Next, Carlos Martinez presented Dr. Fernandez with a plaque in recognition of its research excellence and continued commitment to advancing the research conducted throughout Argentina and the world.
The presentation of the plaque was followed by a catered lunch hosted by Thomson Scientific.
After lunch, attendees were given a general training overview by Mirta Guglielmoni, customer trainer at Thomson Scientific, concluding the exciting day-long event. Guglielmoni remained in Bahía Blanca for the next two days to conduct more in-depth training for university faculty, staff, students, and others whose work will be positively impacted as a result of the Web of Science acquisition.
To cap off the day-long event, a celebratory dinner was held with Thomson Scientific staff and key university officials at Pavarotti Restaurant in downtown Bahía Blanca. Everyone toasted and celebrated the event’s success. Surely, the university’s investment in Web of Science will be the first in many investments made by Argentine institutions to advance research in Argentina, by providing researchers with the tools they need to remain competitive on a global scale.
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