Blaise Cronin

Blaise Cronin (born 1949) is an Irish-American information scientist and bibliometrician. 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 seventeen years. 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.

Early life, education, and career

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." Circa 1990, he became a Rudy Professor Emeritus of Information Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Circa 2009, Cronin became editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology until 2015.

Cronin is well known for his work in bibliometrics and scientometrics. In over two decades, Cronin has written and edited over 300 research articles, monographs, technical reports, conference papers, and more. Cronin's work also includes consulting both in the United Kingdom and abroad in over 30 countries.

Awards and honors 2014 Jason Farradane Award 2013 Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal for "outstanding contributions to the fields of quantitative studies of science." Honorary Visiting professor, Department of Information Science, City University London, 2007– Visiting professor, School of Computing, Mathematical and Information Science, University of Brighton, 2007–2010 Award of Merit, American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2006 Rudy Professor of Information Science, Indiana University, 1999– Talis Information Visiting professor of Information Science, Manchester Metropolitan University, 1996–2003 Visiting professor, School of Computing, Napier University, Edinburgh, 2000– Visiting professor of Information Management, Napier University, Edinburgh, 1999–2000 Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa), Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, 1997 Fellow, Royal Society of Arts, 1998 Fellow, Institute of Management, 1989 Fellow, Institute of Information Scientists, 1988 Fellow, Library Association, 1984

Publications Blaise Cronin has written and edited more than 300 documents, including monographs, scientific articles, opinion papers, conference papers. Among his publications are:

1981: "The Need for a Theory of Citing." Journal of Documentation 37(1). https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026703 1984: The citation process. The role and significance of citations in scientific communication. London: Taylor Graham, 1988: Post-professionalism: transforming the information heartland. London: Taylor Graham (with Elizabeth Davenport). 1991: Elements of information management. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press (with Elizabeth Davenport). 1995: The scholar's courtesy: The role of acknowledgement in the primary communication process. London: Taylor Graham. 2000: The web of knowledge: A Festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield. Medford, NJ: Information Today (with H.B. Atkins, Eds.). 2005: The Hand of Science: Academic Writing and its Rewards. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. 2013: "Bias in Peer Review." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64(1). DOI:10.1002/asi.22784 (with Carle J. Lee et al.). 2013: Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishers Limited (Editor). 2014: Beyond Bibliometrics: Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Scholarly Impact. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (with Cassidy R. Sugimoto). 2018: The sociological turn in information science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (with Alan Gilchrist, Eds.).