| History of the ISSI
Conferences
|
Leo Egghe and Ronald Rousseau initiated this series of international
conferences by organising the first conference in 1987 in Belguim. The
idea of a conference was an experiment. Egghe and Rousseau were unsure of
whether there were sufficient numbers of scholars interested in this
emerging field of research to support a single conference. The first
conference was called "International Conference on Bibliometrics and
Theoretical Aspects of Information Retrieval". At that time, the idea
of starting a continuous series of conferences nor of forming a
professional association was far from their minds. However, history shows
that there was significant interest and the first conference was followed
by a second organised in 1989 by Jean Tague from the University of Western
Ontario in Canada.
By 1993, there were moves to create a professional association which was
duly voted on by participants at the Berlin Conference. From that time on,
the official name for conferences became International Conference on
Scientometrics and Informetrics. These meetings of scientometric
and informetric scholars from around the world have been held biennially
since 1987.
It has become somewhat of a tradition that host countries will alternate
among 'old' world countries of the Northern Hemisphere and 'new' world
countries, predominantly in the Southern Hemisphere. On examining the list
of conferences and host countries, you will see that the idea of
north-south/east-west distribution of conferences has been upheld, even if
not to the letter of strict geography. This distribution of locations of
the conferences gives opportunities for host countries to encourage and
showcase scientometric and informetric research in their home institutions
to an international audience. Further, each host country has the privilege
of introducing their country and its research to a range of international
scholars as well as being able to invite a range of its own scholars who
might otherwise not have been able to attend. The conferences stimulate
the kind of scholarly conversations that may lead to international
collaboration and lead to better understanding and interaction among the
international community of scientometric scholars.
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