Thomson Scientific and the Consortium Sponsor Event in Caracas 
Caracas, Venezuela - October 20, 2004 - In celebration of the 32 academic institutions and research centers that comprise the Venezuelan Consortium obtaining access to Web of Science®, the consortium and Thomson Scientific (a business of The Thomson Corporation) sponsored an all-day workshop. Held at the luxurious Hotel Gran Meliá Caracas, the event was attended by more than 120 information professionals and researchers from the consortia universities, as well as officials from Oficina de Planificación del Sector Universitario (Office of University Sector Planning or OPSU) and the Fondo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología, e Innovación (National Foundation for Science, Technology, Innovation or FONACIT). The event was held Wednesday morning in the luxurious Gran Meliá Caracas Hotel in downtown Caracas.
 
Venezuelan Consortium of Institutions
The Venezuelan Consortium is comprised of 32 academic institutions and research centers throughout Venezuela. The consortium's access to Web of Science was secured jointly by OPSU and FONACIT- the two federal government funding agencies.
 

The technical unit of the Consejo Nacional de Universidades (National Council of Universities), OPSU is charged with implementing national policies and strategies for higher education. OPSU advises and supports Venezuelan institutions of higher education in the realization of their goals and with the development of programs. For more information in Spanish, visit www.cnu.gov.ve.

 

Until 1984, FONACIT was known as the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas. It is an autonomous federal agency under the jurisdiction of the Ministerio de Ciéncia y Tecnología (Ministry of Science and Technology) and is charged with providing support to Venezuelan researchers and research projects throughout the country. For more information in Spanish, visit www.fonacit.gov.ve.

 
The Event: Enhancing Scientific and Scholarly Research through ISI Web of Knowledge
The program commenced with the introduction of Thomson Scientific staff and officials representing the consortia. The introductions were following by welcoming remarks from Dr. Luis Marcano, Vice-Minister for the Ministry of Science and Technology. Dr. Marcano expressed his enthusiasm at being able to secure the necessary funding to offer researchers at the universities access to ISI Web of KnowledgeSM-demonstrating OPSU and FONACIT's commitment to improve Venezuela's research capability in order to conduct world-class research. He further added that the acquisition of Web of Science would strengthen the capacity of research centers and academic institutions in Venezuela, facilitating the activities of researchers and librarians throughout the country. Dr. Marcano thanked Thomson Scientific for the company's perseverance in bringing what is considered an extremely valuable information source to Venezuela, as well as the directors and university officials for attending the event.
 

Amy Hueber, Vice President for the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa for 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 Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and its Thomson Scientific business. Ms. Hueber also gave a thorough history of Citation Indexing, the development of Web of Science®, ISI®, and Dr. Eugene Garfield, founder and President Emeritus of ISI® (which was acquired by Thomson in 1992). She went on to explain 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. "For over 40 years, ISI has been the leading secondary publisher committed to focusing on delivering the highest-quality, multidisciplinary scholarly journal literature to researchers and information professionals worldwide. As the pioneer of cited reference searching, the company produces some of the most heavily used and unique research tools in the industry. A unique Web of Science feature, cited reference searching allows users to navigate forward, backward, and through the multidisciplinary literature to uncover all the information relevant to their work, allowing researchers to learn who is citing their work, and the impact they, or their colleagues, are having on the global research community," explained Hueber.

 

Her presentation continued with an overview of the markets that ISI products serve, reaching more than seven million researchers worldwide. Next, Ms. Hueber provided a profile of customers, which exceeds 2,200 institutions, government agencies, corporations, and not-for-profit organizations involved in research throughout the world. Her presentation concluded with a look at the significant growth in the number of customers in Latin America, explaining the number of consortia agreements and that there are more than 200 site-wide Web customers in the region.

 

Next, Katherine Jakielski, Product Support Manger for Thomson Scientific, provided an overview of the content and key innovations that make ISI Web of Knowledge an invaluable resource to the information and research community. Ms. Jakielski outlined the core content that comprises ISI Web of Knowledge, including Web of Science, Current Contents Connect® and Derwent Innovations IndexSM. She explained that ISI Web of Knowledge integrates this core content with analytical and evaluation tools such as ISI Essential Science IndicatorsSM and Journal Citation Reports®, proceedings information from ISI ProceedingsSM, the life sciences literature in BIOSIS Previews®, structural chemistry from ISI ChemistrySM, the renowned bibliographic management resources-EndNote®, ProCite®, Reference Manager®, hosted content from partner organizations (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 Jakielski.

 

Ms. Jakielski concluded by describing some key enhancements to ISI Web on Knowledge 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.

 

Mr. José Claudio Santos, Regional Manager of South America, Thomson Scientific followed with an in-depth description of three key components of ISI Web of Knowledge: Web of Science, Current Contents Connect (CC Connect®) and Journal Citation Reports on the Web (JCR Web®). First, Mr. Santos 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. Mr. Santos detailed the Web of Science powerful search capabilities, which enable users to instantly find the most relevant information to their research, and the new Analyze Tool that allows users to analyze and refine results by author, publication year, journal subject category, institution, and language or source title. He also explained cited reference searching-the unique Web of Science feature that allows users to take a seminal idea, research its origins, and discovering its impact over time.

 

Next, Mr. Santos focused on Current Contents 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 Santos.

 

Mr. Santos 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," he said.

 

Mr. Santos concluded with an outline of Journal Citation Reports on the Web (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. He noted that the new JCR Web delivers enhanced navigation and data display, offering more tools for informed analysis including links from the journal record and the cited and citing journals list, links from the journal record to a library's OPAC record, and a graphic display of the cited journal data that provides insight into how Impact Factor, Cited Half-Life and Immediacy Index relate to total citations.

 

Katherine Jakielski concluded the formal lectures with a presentation entitled "ISI Essential Science IndicatorsSM: An Analytical Look at the Scientific Landscape". She 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.

Ms. Jakielski explained that ISI Essential Science Indicators is an integral part of ISI Web of Knowledge, and that the evaluation tool 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 culminated in a spirited session, where Thomson employees and OPSU and FONACIT officials answered questions from the audience.
 

Following the Q & A, Amy Hueber presented Jasmin Jaimes, President of OPSU and Ernesto Perez Lanz, General Manager of FONACIT with a plaque in recognition of their dedication to advancing Ernesto Perez Lanz scientific and scholarly research in Venezuela.

 

After the presentation of the plaques, guests enjoyed a catered lunch hosted by Thomson Scientific.

In the afternoon, representatives from many of the consortium-member institutions attended an overview of the features of Web of Science presented by Mirta Guglielmoni, trainer, Thomson Scientific. Participants received training materials and were encouraged to share the information with colleagues. In addition, training visits will be scheduled in 2005 at consortium member sites.

 

Later that evening, Thomson Scientific staff and key officials from both FONACIT and OPSU were invited to attend a dinner reception held at the L'Albufera Restaurant located within the Gran Meliá Caracas.

 

Dr. Luis Fuenmayor Toro, Director of OPSU, gave a few words during the dinner to express his appreciation on the investment made by both OPSU and FONACIT in bringing Web of Science to researchers throughout Venezuela.