BIR 2020 Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval




                          Bibliometrics-aided retrieval: A success story?

                                                           Wolfgang Glänzel

                                  ECOOM and Department of MSI, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
                                                   wolfgang.glanzel@kuleuven.be




                           I am Wolfgang Glänzel, Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Sciento-
                      metrics. Using the opportunity of virtual communication, I would like to send my
                      warmest greetings to the organisers and all attendees of the BIR2020 workshop
                      by video message.
                           This is a very special occasion indeed. This year the workshop series on
                      Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval organises and celebrates its 10th
                      event. BIR is a not only an international but a truly global endeavour as well.
                      The BIR workshops have been held in nine countries ranging from locations
                      in Europe to the US and Japan so far. And BIR is a truly interdisciplinary
                      endeavour too as it developed synergies between subdisciplines of information
                      science, computer science, computational linguistics and quantitative science and
                      technology studies. This is the reason why bibliometricians like me have attended
                      and do attend these workshops. I had also the pleasure to co-organise several
                      special issues on events of the series for the journal Scientometrics. My special
                      thanks are due to Philipp Mayr and Guillaume Cabanac, who served as guest
                      editors already several times.
                           Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval also called Bibliometric-aided
                      Retrieval by bibliometricians (so much for synergies ;)) has a quite long his-
                      tory even if pioneering work in this topic was not called so. It goes back, for
                      instance, to research done and needed for scientific information by the former
                      ISI in Philadelphia by using citations and bibliographic links to enhance theirs
                      services. It was actually at the STI conference in 2006, when Michel Zitt and
                      Élise Bassecoulard from INRA in France and our staff at Leuven independently
                      from each other introduced the concept Bibliometric-aided Retrieval from the
                      perspective of bibliometricians based on their specific needs, which were closely
                      linked to topic delineation and research assessment. In the meantime, retrieval
                      experts in information and computer science as well as bibliometricians system-
                      atically elaborated their concepts and methodology by joining their approaches
                      and developing synergies.
                           Information scientists and bibliometricians know the concept of invisible col-
                      leges with their initially small but fast-growing communities very well. To be-
                      come visible, they create their own specific communication channels aiming to
                      establish internal networks of broader and even public outreach. By doing so,
                      the pioneers of BIR launched their workshop series in 2014 and in this way the
                      ?
                          A companion video is hosted at https://youtu.be/GkN4ngT1RIs.




Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
                                                BIR 2020, 14 April 2020, Lisbon, Portugal.
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                                                               BIR 2020 Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval




                      community could create its own academic forum and by editing special journal
                      issues of selected papers supplementing their workshop proceedings, the com-
                      munity also gained large visibility and is perceived a specific research topic by
                      colleagues in information science, science studies, research evaluation and even
                      by stakeholders in science policy. I am also very thankful that representatives of
                      BIR have contributed to the European Summer School for Scientometrics,1 the
                      last event of which had laid its special focus on BIR.
                          I sincerely hope that the future will bring together research scientists from
                      all contributing communities to reach an even closer collaboration, to increase
                      synergy effects and international and broad reception as a unique multifaceted
                      endeavour that creates benefits and added-values to both researchers and users
                      in many disciplines. With this in mind, I wish the organisers and all participants
                      of the present workshop success, fruitful discussions and a wonderful time in
                      Lisbon.




                      1
                          https://www.scientometrics-school.eu




Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
                                                BIR 2020, 14 April 2020, Lisbon, Portugal.
                                                                   125