Blaise Cronin

Blaise Cronin | Credit Indiana University Bloomington

Blaise Cronin (born 1949) is an Irish-American information scientist and bibliometrician. He coined the term "hyperauthorship" and is also known for his work in strategic intelligence and scientometrics. He is the Rudy Professor Emeritus of Information Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was Dean of the School of Library and Information Science for 17 years.

Life

Cronin was born in Newry, Northern Ireland, in 1949. He was delivered by his grandfather, Dr. Thomas Cronin, who was a surgeon. Cronin's father, Gerald, was the Town Clerk and his mother, Sheila Devenish-Meares, was a music teacher and the leader of the Newry Symphony Orchestra. Cronin wrote about his hometown of Newry in his book titled Your Newry Bucket List: 70 Things to do in Newry Before You Die.[1]

Cronin began his education at the Abbey Christian Brothers' Grammar School, where he played football. He went on to attend Trinity College Dublin, where he earned a master's degree, and subsequently worked in the Research and Consultancy Division at Aslib. Cronin was a librarian in the London Borough of Brent, and in the Westminster City Libraries.[2] At Queen's University Belfast, he earned a Ph.D. (1983) and a D.S.Sc. (1988).[3]

Contributions

From 1985 to 1991, he held the Chair of Information Science and was Head of the Department of Information Science at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, U.K. In 1991 Cronin became Dean of the School of Library and Information Science and in 1999 became the Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Cronin consulted in over 30 countries: clients included the World Bank, NATO, UNESCO, U.S. Department of Justice, Brazilian Ministry of Science & Technology, European Commission, British Council, Her Majesty's Treasury, Hewlett-Packard Ltd., and Chemical Abstracts Service. He was a keynote speaker at conferences in several countries. Around 1989, Cronin became a founding co-director for the Scottish electronic publishing start-up Crossaig, which was acquired by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia) in 1992. He retired from Indiana in 2019 and has received four visiting professorships in the United Kingdom.

Cronin was founding editor of the Journal of Economic & Social Intelligence. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (2009 to 2015) as well as Editor of volumes 36 (2002) to 45 (2011) of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST). He has written and edited over 300 research articles, including 14 monographs and 132 peer-reviewed journal articles.[4]

Publications

• Blaise Cronin and Cassidy R. Sugimoto (Eds.). 2016. Scholarly Metrics Under the Microscope: From Citation Analysis to Academic Auditing. Information Today.
• Cronin, B., & Sugimoto, C. R. (Eds.). (2014). Beyond bibliometrics: Metrics-based evaluation of research. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
• Larivière, V., Ni, C., Gingras, Y., Cronin, B., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2013). Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science. Nature 504: 211–213. https://doi.org/10.1038/504211a
• Lee, C.J., Sugimoto, C.R., Zhang, G. and Cronin, B. (2013). Bias in peer review. JASIST 64 (1): 2-17. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22784
• Cronin, B. (2005). The hand of science: Academic writing and its rewards. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
• Cronin, B. (2002). Peeking behind the covers of ARIST. Bulletin of ASIST 28 (5): 18-19. https://doi.org/10.1002/bult.249
• Cronin, B. & H.B. Atkins (Eds.). (2000). The web of knowledge: A Festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ: Information Today. https://archive.org/details/webofknowledgefe0000unse
• Cronin, B. (1998). Information professionals in the digital age. The International Information & Library Review 30 (1): 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1006/iilr.1998.0082
• Cronin B., & Hert C.A. (1995). "Scholarly foraging and network discovery tools". Journal of Documentation 51 (4): 388–403. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026957
• Cronin, B. (1995). The scholar’s courtesy: The role of acknowledgements in the primary communication process. London: Taylor Graham.
• Cronin, B. (1984). The citation process: The role and significance of citations in scientific communication. London: Taylor Graham.
• Cronin, B. (1981). The need for a theory of citing. Journal of Documentation 37(1): 16–24.

Awards

• Jason Farradane Award, 2014
• Derek John de Solla Price Medal, 2013
• ASIST Award of Merit, 2006
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), 1998
• Honorary D.Litt. (contributions to information science) from Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, 1997
• Fellow of the Institute of Management (FCIM), 1989
• Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists (FIInfSc), 1988
• Fellow of the Library Association (FLA), 1984

Further Reading

• "Blaise Cronin". Wikipedia. 2026.[5]
• "Blaise Cronin: People Directory". luddy.iu.edu. 2025.[6]
• "Jason Farradane Award Winners". cilip.org.uk. 2025.[7]
• O'Hare, Columba. "Newry born author's latest book explores the ultimate Newry Bucket List". newry.ie. 2024-10-09.[8]
• "The Morphing Author. Blaise Cronin, JASIST". FIMA UB YouTube. 2015-09-29.[9]
• Sugimoto, Cassidy R. (2014). Blaise Cronin wins the 2013 Derek John de Solla Price Medal. Scientometrics 98, 5–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1169-3
• Hill, R. "[Asis-l] Ceasing publication of ARIST". facweb.ischool.illinois.edu. 2010-03-30.[10]
• ASIST Staff. (2007). Award of Merit: ASIS&T Award of Merit to Blaise Cronin. Bulletin of ASIST 33 (3): 10-10. https://doi.org/10.1002/bult.2007.BULT1720330307
• "People". (1990). College & Research Libraries News 51 (10): 993. https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.51.10.992