For a planned review and clearinghouse, I am interested in learning of projects, research, products, or services that have applied Citation Indexing to Web resources. Citation Indexing is a method of locating potentially relevant documents on a given subject by identifying subsequent documents that cite a previously published document. The Science Citation Index developed by Eugene Garfield and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is a premier example of a Citation Index.

If the Web is viewed as a hyperlinked corpus, or a collection of cited sites, we may be able to enhance identification and access to the most relevant sites for a specific topic through application of Citation Indexing and related approaches.

In the Web environment we need not be interested in the priority of publication, but would consider the number and percentage of primary and secondary links shared by linked homepages. Those pages that share the highest relative and absolute number and percentage of homepages could be considered pages of greatest relevance on a specific topic; those with the least could be considered least relevant.

Certainly, other kinds of associations can be calculated and presented in ways analogous to the enhanced features found within the Science Citation Index CD-ROM. Information Visualization could greatly facilitate the navigation of content and concepts within these cited sites and provide enhanced access to non-Web citation databases as well. I will be investigating the application of Information Visualization for non-Web and Web citation databases later this year in a new project entitled mrsPEEL.

As always, any recommendations, suggestions, reactions, contacts, or leads about these ideas would be very much appreciated. Thanks to Jerry Morine, Bemidji, for crystalizing my thinking about the possibility of Citation Indexing for the Web and to Ray Larson for his innovative application of bibliometrics to a Web corpus that I have profiled in Project Aristotle(sm).

As sites and projects are identified and reviewed they will be profiled at this site at the following URL:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/Cited.htm

Gerry McKiernan, Curator, CyberStacks(sm), Iowa State University, Ames IA

CyberStacks(sm)

Cited Sites = Sitations