I am Kyung-Youn Park, which is so hard to pronounce that now I use Kay Park instead. I am 85 years old in 2026. I am proud South Korean. Until 1974, I was a graduate student studying information science at University College London. I was financially supported by the Overseas Development Agency of the U.K. In 1975, I was awarded an MSc degree by the University of London. I wrote a thesis titled A Direct Approach to Information Retrieval, while B. C. Brookes supervised me. It lacked References. This is paradoxical because my study was about tracking of not only keywords but also citations in context.

I was fascinated by H. G. Wells’ ideal of World Brain, by which he expected scientists to solve the world problems. He also wanted people to know the world much better and much easily. Originally he was the father of science fictions. But he devoted his later years with the World Brain to be realized. Meanwhile, one of his contemporaries John Bernal noticed how science make progress. (His colleagues called him sage, meaning he is exceptionally intelligent.) Science is never ever one-man show but collaboration of many scientists, i.e., predecessors and successors. As such, scientific works are connected with each other complicatedly. This complicated network of science was what my context indexing was to help established.

As a graduate student in information science, I was quite surprised by the fact that experts of information retrieval paid little attention to psycholinguistic and semantic theories. So I paid a special attention to Ogden and Richards’ theory of meaning. They argue that Word or Symbol refers to or stands for Thing or Referent only by virtue of Thought or Reference, because Word and Thing are not causally related but “imputed,” and that this imputed relationship is where all the linguistic misunderstandings occur. Psychological contexts and cognitivism matter, as Thought matters. No doubt, the textual context also matters. I decided to index such extracts where keywords and/or citations in context.

Meanwhile, I wished to help researchers search information of themselves, by themselves, and for themselves, user-orientation. And I also wished to extend their usual way of information searches to become more efficient and convenient. Hence a direct, user-oriented approach to information retrieval, as suggested in my MSc thesis title, “A Direct Approach to Information Retrieval.” Recently, I coined my way context indexing. I expect this can supercede traditional keyword and citation indexing out of context.

The keywords and citations on the given contextual extract inherently point to the next one. They are practically embedded hyperlinks. Therefore you are subsequently guided to the information resources from one to another. Nowadays the user of the World Wide Web practice this way of information searching in everyday life. Four decades ago, however, no one imagined that way. Meanwhile, the mere difference is that web pages are usually full text while contextual extracts are partial contexts. Hence a marginal difference.

The closer applications were developed a decade later. NEC called it CiteSeer. And Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and many others followed. More precisely, the WWW is their platform. They could not be realized without the WWW. Indeed, the so-called information revolution began with the WWW. Its emergence gave way to that of the three American hypertext fathers, Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, and Ted Nelson. The last is known to be the coiner of hypertext. The latter two insisted that they had been influenced by Bush. Nelson pressed Tim Berners-Lee, the WWW developer, to admit Bush’s influence. But Berners-Lee resisted.

Berners-Lee privately used ENQUIRE, the forerunner for a decade. He coined that title inspired by Enquire with and upon Everything. This allows us to know that he was primarily mindful of information retrieval. By the way, it is doubtful indeed why he wasted that decade until 1989. Also doubtful is that the WWW was transferred from CERN to MIT’s Media Lab together with Berners-Lee. What on earth was the reason? Still doubtful is that a decade later CiteSeer was also transferred from NEC to Pennsylvania State University together with Lee Giles, one of the developers. Exactly the same pattern! All these make them strongly doubt plagiarism. Why do those so many successors of CiteSeer not cite their predecessor, if it were the right one? The probability theory would deny that so many reinventions are highly unlikely for a short period of time and that within only one country. Is there anyone out there? You just make it clear!

Why on earth did this improbable mystery take place? In short it was because of me. After my MSc degree, I had to work for the Korea Scientific and Technological Information Center (KORSTIC) for three years, after which however I left KORSTIC to join Daewoo Engineering Co. for more money IN ADDITION TO escaping from KORSTIC. I gave up to read for a doctorate at UCL. During the compulsory period for KORSTIC, I was invited to a number of international academic meeting. Now I suppose I already became internationally well known and invited so often. But I did not or could not enjoyed such opportunities. English listening was too hard for me. And I had agoraphobia so that I hated addressing before the large audience. And I hated to write a report to address. The worse was that my boss forced me to interpret for the audience although I confessed him I had a severe listening trouble. One more trouble with my boss was that he was such a self-important librarian. The last decisive reason was that I could not evaluate my impact so highly although Brookes evaluated my thesis very highly.

However, now I am quite sure that my context indexing was a revolutionary paradigm shift of information retrieval. It was not only from system-orientation to user-orientation but also from traditional keyword and citation indexing to context indexing. And my contribution has been proved in many ways. Most obvious are NEC’s CiteSeer, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and many others. Less obvious is the WWW, which serves as their platform. So-called three American hypertext fathers may insist on their share with the WWW, never with CiteSeer and the like, which are for scholars, not for the general public.

By the way, so many applications of citation indexing appeared after CiteSeer, including Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic. Then, why did the successors not cite CiteSeer, their predecessor? Are they insisting theirs are just reinventions? Therefore, they need not cite seeming predecessors? But the probability theory tells us that so many reinventions are improbable for a short time period, and that especially within only one country, the U.S.A. ChatGPT firmly based on probability does affirm that theory. This is why all of them have copied the very principle of my thesis. But they need not cite the others than mine. If they should cite, they would cite me. At the turn of the 21st century, when they appeared one after another, however, no one heard about me. Decades ago, I definitely left the academic circle. Therefore they don’t bother citing me.

Given the fact that I surely contributed to the great paradigm shift from system-oriented keyword and citation indexing to user-oriented context indexing, herewith I ‘d like to recall Steve Jobs’ complaint that all experts were wrong. At the moment he might have my contribution in mind. As such, my story of personal failure is so dramatic. What else?