San José, Costa Rica - April 28, 2004 — In celebration of the Universidad de Costa Rica (University of Costa Rica) becoming the only site in Central America to offer its researchers access to both Web of Science® and Current Contents Connect®, the university and Thomson ISI held an all-day educational and social event to mark the occasion. Web of Science and Current Contents Connect are key components of ISI Web of KnowledgeSM, which facilitates discovery by offering seamless navigation to the highest-quality, multidisciplinary journal, patent, and Web content, evaluation tools, and bibliographic management products. 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 from content back to 1945. Current Contents Connect is the companion current awareness resource, providing access to complete bibliographic information from over 8,000 of the world’s leading scholarly journals, 2,000 books, and a premium collection of evaluated scholarly Web sites
The Universidad de Costa Rica
Founded originally as the Casa de Enseñanza de Santo Thomás (St. Thomas House of Learning) in 1814, and after being closed 45 years later, on August 26, 1940 the institution emerged as the Universidad de Costa Rica. With its main campus housed in the San Pedro de Montes Oca section of San José, the university is ideally situated among numerous prominent businesses, government agencies, and international organizations. Demonstrating its commitment to world-class research, in 2002, the university completed construction on a special Research Campus that brought together principal research centers and institutes, as well as essential academic units dedicated to scientific discovery.
Today, the Universidad de Costa Rica is viewed as one of the most prominent institutions of higher learning in Central America. With the purchase of Web of Science and Current Contents Connect, the university joined just one other Costa Rican institution accessing Thomson ISI information solutions: the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. It is also the only site in Costa Rica to provide its researchers with access to Web of Science and is the only university in all of Central America whose research community will benefit from both Web of Science and Current Contents Connect, thereby advancing its mission to be a major entrant in the area of research excellence.
The Event: Integrated Web Solutions for Scientific and Scholarly Research
Held at the university, the event was attended by more than 120 information professionals, as well as researchers and officials from the Universidad de Costa Rica and neighboring Central American countries including Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. The event coincided with the VIII Regional Assembly of the Network of Integrated Documentation Systems (in Spanish, RED SIID), assigned to the Consejo Superior Universitario Centroamericano (The Central American Council for Higher Education of CSUCA, per its Spanish acronym. (See www.csuca.edu.gt.)
The day’ events commenced with opening remarks from Licda. María Eugenia Briceño Meza, the Director for the Directorate of Libraries, Documentation and Information (SIBDI per its Spanish acronym), Universidad de Costa Rica who welcomed both Thomson Scientific representatives and attendees from Costa Rica and the CSUCA member institutions. Licda. Briceño exclaimed her enthusiasm with regard to the acquisition of Thomson Scientific information solutions, and how they would benefit not only the Universidad de Costa Rica, but also subsequently other academic institutions throughout Central America. The efforts of the Thomson Scientific team were appreciated, as no other international information provider had organized an event of this magnitude in Costa Rica or in the region
Amy Hueber, Vice President for the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Thomson Scientific, followed with her presentation entitled: "Thomson ISI: Linking Scientific and Scholarly Research in the 21st Century." Ms. Hueber’s presentation provided an overview of the Thomson ISI tradition of excellence and the company’s long-standing reputation for providing the global research community with the highest-quality products and services. "Thomson ISI has been the leading secondary publisher, focusing on multidisciplinary scholarly journal literature for over 40 years and produces some of the most heavily used, unique research tools in the industry," explained Hueber.
Her presentation continued with an overview of the markets that Thomson ISI serves, reaching more than seven million researchers worldwide. Ms. Hueber also explained the composition of the Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), who acquired ISI® in 1992. "Thomson ISI is a business of the Thomson Scientific & Healthcare market group, and its products assist professionals at every stage of research and development—from discovery to analysis to product development and distribution," said Hueber.
Ms. Hueber conclude her presentation with a look into the Thomson ISI product offerings, explaining that there are more than 200 site-wide Web customers in Latin America and more than 2,200 institutions that subscribe to Web of Science worldwide.
Next, Jeff Dougherty, Manager of Global Product Support for Thomson Scientific, provided an overview of the key factors that make ISI Web of Knowledge an invaluable resource to the information and scientific community. Mr. Dougherty began by outlining the core content from Thomson ISI and Thomson Derwent, including Web of Science, Current Contents Connect and Derwent Innovations IndexSM. ISI Web of Knowledge integrates this core content with analytical and evaluation tools (Essential Science IndicatorsSM and Journal Citation Reports®), proceedings information (ProceedingsSM), life sciences literature (BIOSIS Previews®), bibliographic management resources (EndNote®, ProCite®, Reference Manager®), hosted content (INSPEC, PsycINFO, CAB Abstracts, and Food Science & Technology Abstracts).
"ISI Web of Knowledge does not simply play host to quality databases and provide for Cross Search of these resources. Information within all databases is integrated so that wherever a common element exists a link is made, including inter-database links and links to full text, cited references, times cited, and citing articles," explained Dougherty.
Mr. Dougherty concluded by describing some key enhancements including a redesign of the homepage, unlimited number of records retrieved, summary analysis (by author , publication year, category, journal, etc.), citation alert from a single button click, and the addition of author e-mail addresses.
Following Mr. Dougherty, was Guadalupe Jimenez, Regional Manager for Mexico and Central America, Thomson Scientific, with presentations of three components of ISI Web of Knowledge: Web of Science, Current Contents Connect (CC Connect®) and Journal Citation Reports® on the Web (JCR Web®). First, Ms. Jimenez explained that Web of Science enables users to search current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from nearly 8,700 of the world’s most influential research journals. Ms. Jimenez detailed the Web of Science powerful search capabilities, which enable users to instantly find the most relevant information to their research. She also explained cited reference searching—the unique Web of Science feature that allows users to navigate through an era, taking a seminal idea, researching its origins, and discovering its impact over time.
Next, Ms. Jimenez focused on CC Connect—the multidisciplinary current awareness resource that provides access to complete table of contents, and bibliographic information from nearly 8,000 leading scholarly journals and more than 2,000 books and proceedings published worldwide. Specifically, she detailed the Current Contents eSearch and eFirst technology. Current Contents eSearch applies advanced search criteria to mine the content of pre-evaluated and selected Web sites. "Current Contents eSearch extracts the relevant documents within each site to deliver essential information about preprints, funding and grants, and other research activities (proceedings, dissertations, meeting abstracts, and reviews of scholarly Web sites)," explained Jimenez.
Ms. Jimenez went on to explain that eFirst significantly enhances the value of CC Connect by providing access to the bibliographic information from peer reviewed journal articles in electronic form before the complete journal issue is published. "eFirst offers the author and user communities the advantage of a shortened publishing cycle, and benefits publishers by helping them to differentiate between their electronic and print products," she said.
Her final presentation outlined JCR Web explaining that the statistical data in JCR Web provides a systematic and objective way to determine journals with the highest impact within a given subject area. JCR Web is available in science and the social science editions, collectively covering approximately 7,000 journals within 200 disciplines.
Jeff Dougherty concluded the formal lectures with a presentation entitled "Essential Science Indicators: An Analytical Look at the Scientific Landscape." He began by discussing ISI Web of Knowledge stating that the goal of ISI Web of Knowledge 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. Mr. Dougherty also explained that 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. He added that Essential Science Indicators is an integral part of ISI Web of Knowledge.
The event culminated with Amy Hueber presenting Magíster Jorge Badilla Pérez with a plaque in recognition of the Universidad de Costa Rica’s commitment to scientific and scholarly research in Central American. Magíster Badilla accepted the plaque on behalf of Dr. Gabriel Macaya Trejos, the Rector of the University. Following the presentation of the plaque, guests enjoyed a catered lunch.
After a the light lunch, attendees were give product training sessions conducted by Mirta Guglielmoni, Customer Training and Support for Thomson Scientific, which was followed by a cocktail reception and dinner at the Restaurante El Monasterio to put a perfect end to a very productive and triumphant occasion.
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