ISSI-2001 in Australia, July 2001: A Report of the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics

Citation

Davis, M. (2001), "ISSI-2001 in Australia, July 2001: A Report of the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918jac.001

ISSI-2001 in Australia, July 2001: A Report of the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics

ISSI-2001 in Australia, July 2001: A Report of the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics

Mari Davis

In July 2001, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, was host to the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics. The conference was held over five days in the University's newly built conference and function centre, "The Scientia". The co-chairs of the ISSI-2001 conference were Dr Mari Davis and Dr Concepción Wilson of the University of New South Wales, School of Information Systems, Technology and Management. The Conference is held every two years under the auspices of the International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI). Previous conferences in this prestigious series have been held in Belgium, Canada, India, Germany, the USA, Israel, and Mexico. To date, the tradition has been that meetings are held in alternate locations around the world, either north, south, east or west of the previous one. This is the first time the conference has ventured south of the equator.

Scientometrics is a newly emerging field that investigates quantitative aspects of science; it is the quantitative arm of the science of science, scientific communication studies, and science policy studies. Informetrics investigates quantitative aspects of information (communication) processes, particularly those using text; it is the quantitative arm of information science and of library science. Informetrics incorporates the older field of bibliometrics and the new areas of cybermetrics and Webometrics. Scientometrics and informetrics are bound through their mutual interest in scientific literatures.

The types of research problems and topics investigated by the field include: studies of the dynamics (growth, diversification) of scientific fields; issues of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinary fields, mathematical modeling of informetric laws, a whole range of studies using citations (end-of-article reference lists) as evidence of scientific impact, quality or recognition in academic and scholarly endeavour; evaluation of research performance; development of indicators for science and technology, e.g. impact factors (IF); mapping and visualisation of knowledge; institutional and national publication productivity and research cooperation; the role of collaboration in research; library management, e.g. journal evaluation, or circulation control; economic factors in information production and dissemination; and science policy analysis and forecasting.

The Vice-Chancellor of the UNSW, Professor John Niland, opened the Conference with the Official Welcome Address. Professor Henry Small of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia, USA, gave the keynote address. Dr Small spoke of the early influences on his career in scientometrics and of his long association with Dr Eugene Garfield, founder of the ISI and the citation indexes. He used the metaphor of a jigsaw to illustrate how various findings are useful in piecing together understanding and knowledge of the growth of science, and about how various measurements of research performance, production, influence, and impact have been developed over time by the ISI.

During the conference over 70 papers were delivered in 20 concurrent sessions, including a further 15 papers in two special plenary sessions. In addition, over 35 poster papers were presented at specific times during the conference. A highlight of the conference was the special session devoted to an examination of the role and use of journal impact measures chaired by Dr Wolfgang Glänzel (Germany/Hungary) and (in absentia) Dr Henk Moed (The Netherlands). During this session, there was lively discussion on issues relating to this crucial indicator and its many variations. Over time, there have been many scholars who have devised other impact measures that could provide better measures for a range of purposes. The JIF, as calculated by the Institute of Scientific Information in Philadelphia, was never intended adequately to support the range of purposes to which the ISI impact factor is now put. A direct outcome of this plenary session is that the ISSI Board voted to create a working party under the direction of Dr Grant Lewison (UK) to canvas views and to come up with guidelines about impact measures.

On the last day, a special session on a new field of research – cybermetrics – focused on Internet information use and the state of play in examining the WWW. This session, chaired by Dr Isidro Aguillo (Spain), editor of the e-journal, Cybermetrics, and Dr Ronald Rousseau (Belgium), covered some of the basic problems of measurement in the Internet. There were also several papers involving measurement of the Web presented during other sessions.

During the conference, Dr Andras Schubert of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences presented the Derek de Solla Price Medals at a special ceremony during the conference. The Price Medal is awarded by the international journal, Scientometrics, to scientists with outstanding scholarly contributions to the fields of quantitative studies of science. The medal was first awarded in 1984. Two scientometricians, Dr Leo Egghe, Limburgs, University, Belgium, and Dr Ronald Rousseau, KHBO, Belgium, were honoured for their many contributions to the literature on theoretical and mathematical aspects of the measurement of science. They were also responsible for organizing and hosting the first meeting in Belgium in 1987, which established the conference series. One of Egghe's research collaborators, Dr Ravichandra Rao (India), spoke of their achievements in informetric and scientometric research.

This highly successful conference attracted significant financial support from the Thomson Learning Inc., of which the Institute of Scientific Information that produces the Science Citation Index is part. The Eugene Garfield Foundation of the USA also gave generously to the ISSI-2001 travel grant program to assist scholars from developing nations and the former Soviet countries to attend the conference. UNSW's Faculty of Commerce and Economics, through the Dean, Professor Roger Leyton, provided infrastructure and financial support, and the Bibliometric and Informetric Research Group (BIRG) also provided travel grants to enable young PhD candidates from around the world to attend. With the support that was provided from these organizations, the conference chairs were able to provide support to over 40 scholars through various scholarships and direct grants.

The informetric and scientometric community is a truly international one; 35 different nations were represented by delegates and presenters. The larger delegations came from countries well known for scientometric research, namely Belgium, India, France, Germany, Mexico, The Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. Because of the location in Sydney Australia, the conference was able to attract many delegates from the Pacific and South-east Asian region, including some countries not previously well represented at these conferences, namely, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan and Thailand. These conferences provide an important stimulus for researchers, particularly for new entrants to the field who have previously not published or presented their work internationally.

China, the next host country, was represented with a larger than usual delegation of ten members. At the end of the conference, the Australian Conference Committee officially handed over to the delegation from the Chinese Association for Science of Science and Science Policy, the organization that will be responsible for the ISSI-2003 Conference in Beijing.

The ISSI-2001 Conference Proceedings (2 volumes), published in time for distribution at the conference, are available from the conference organisers at a cost of Australian $95.00 plus postage and handling charges. The Proceedings contain 72 full papers, extended abstracts for the journal impact measures special Session, and 26 poster abstracts. To reserve your copy, use the printable order form available online at the ISSI-2001 Web site. Payment by Visa or MasterCard, bank cheque or money order made out in Australian dollars is available. Go to: http://sistm.web.unsw.edu.au/conference/issi2001/order.htm, click on "Print this Page" to obtain a clear print of the form, fill in the correct details and send by postal service, with payment, to the address printed on the form.

Mari Davis(m.davis@unsw.edu.au) and Connie Wilson are both based at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.