Henry Small

Henry Small (born 1941)[1] is an information scientist and leading researcher of document co-citation. Small was awarded the 1987 Derek de Solla Price award for his work in the field of co-citation. In 2003 Small became the first member-elected president of the International Society for Scientometrics and Infometrics (ISSI).[2]

Photo Available @ https://www.issi-society.org/awards/derek-de-solla-price-memorial-medal/

Life

Small received a joint Ph.D. in Chemistry and the History of Science from the University of Wisconsin.

Contributions

After a brief career as a historian of science at the American Institute of Physics’ Center for History and Philosophy of Physics, he joined the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, now part of Thomson Scientific) in 1972.[3] In 1973, Small worked with the Soviet Intelligence scientist Irina Massakova to introduce the term "co-citation network" within the field of science mapping. Small published a paper on the topic in JASIS (1973). Small continued his work in co-citation with Belver Griffith and in 1974, they expanded the process of mapping trends in specialized fields based on co-citation usage. They studied trends of group mechanism and published their research on trends in collagen research in 1977.[4]

Small received the 1987 Best JASIS Paper Award for "The Synthesis of Specialty Narratives from Co-Citation Clusters" and in 1998 he received the Award of Merit from ASIS. Small was named an AAAS Fellow in 1989.

In 2001, Small was named Chief Scientist at Thomson ISI, where he also served as Director of Research Service Group. Small has been Senior Scientist at SciTech Strategies since 2011.[5]

Publications

• Small, H. (1999). Visualizing science by citation mapping. JASIS 50(9): 799-813. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:9<799::AID-ASI9>3.0.CO;2-G
• Small, H. (1993) "Macrolevel changes in the structure of co-citation clusters: 1983–1989". Scientometrics 26(1): 5–20.
• Small, H. (1990). Bibliometrics of Basic Research. OTA Contractor Report. National Technical Information Service (NTIS), U.S. Department of Commerce.

• Small, H. (1973). Co-citation in the scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between two documents. JASIS 24(4): 265-269. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630240406

Awards

• Elected President, International Society for Scientometrics and Infometrics (ISSI), 2003-2007
• Honorary Fellow of the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services (NFAIS), 2001
• ASIS Award of Merit, 1998
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1989
• Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal, International Society for Scientometrics and Infometrics (ISSI), 1987
• ASIS Best JASIS Paper, 1987

Further Reading

• "Henry Small (information scientist)". Wikipedia. 2026.[6]
• Chen, Chaomei. (2013). Mapping scientific frontiers: The quest for knowledge visualization (Second ed.). London: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-5128-9
• Small, H. (Senior Researcher). "Bio". ASIST Doctoral Seminar on Research and Career Development. 2004.[7]