Merinne Whitton, research metrics lead in the Research Services team, reports back from the recent Lis-Bibliometrics Conference.
In January 2024 I joined the organising committee of the LIS-Bibliometrics Community as the Open Research Officer. Not long after this, I joined the sub-committee responsible for the delivery of the Community’s annual conference. The 2024 conference was planned as a hybrid event, the first face to face conference since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Having never been involved in organising a conference before, this was a really interesting experience for me. The conference committee was international and egalitarian, and finalising the key priorities – funding, date, venue, them and keynote speakers – took time and patience. As it had been a long time since the conference had convened face to face, we were working without a ‘template’, and the hybrid nature of the conference, and the complexities of our commitments to our sponsors, made timetabling extremely complex.
The University of Brighton were excellent hosts, with the Vice-Chancellor Andrew Lloyd giving the opening remarks before handing over to the LIS-Bibliometrics Committee Chair, Dr Barbara Lancho Barrantes.
The theme of the conference was “Exploring the Bibliometric Universe”, and we were fortunate to be able to secure a trio of eminent keynote speakers: Professor Jennifer Byrne gave an overview of the growth of paper mills and citation mills and its impact on the validity of bibliometric data; Professor Caroline Wagner discussed how bibliometrics can inform decision-making; and Dr Álvaro Cabezas Clavijo drew the line between pragmatic use of metrics and the idealism of CoARA.
Beyond the keynotes, the conference had a range of interesting speakers looking at bibliometrics from a range of angles – from AI-generated metrics and metrics for AI, to real-world applications for metrics such as using analytics to anticipate government research funding priorities, and to align teaching to enhance graduate employability for local collaborators.
The sponsors gave interesting presentations as well, with a dynamic presentation about OpenAlex, a detailed exploration of the metrics around patents from Clarivate, and an example use case of mapping scholars to government priorities using Overton data. During the closing remarks by the Committee Chair, she announced a further in-kind sponsorship from Overton of £2000 earmarked from their Policy Impact Grant for projects proposed by LIS-Bibliometrics Community members.
The conference was streamed by IET, enabling participants from around the world to listen to and engage with the speakers online. The recordings are now available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtkJV5-YUJHXF1jKVHyesgg.
Having learned so much from the conference committee and enjoyed participating in the design and delivery of LIS-Bibliometrics 2024, I have volunteered to be on the 2025 committee, and am currently exploring the possibility of hosting at the University of Leicester. It would be very exciting to bring this conference, the main event for bibliometricians in the UK, to our institution, and to build on what I’ve learned to deliver another excellent event for the community.