Introduction to the Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators

From 5 to 7 October 1995 the Fourth International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators was held in Antwerp, Belgium. It was the fourth conference in a successful series (Leiden, The Netherlands, 1988; Bielefeld, Germany, 1990; Leiden, 1991). The general scope was "performance at the national, regional and institutional level", broadly characterized by three main themes: design, development, and application of science and technology indicators in science policy, with a focus on their potential and limitation; relations of indicator research to science and technology studies in general; advances in information systems on science and technology. The audience of the conference (about 160 participants from more than 20 countries), included researchers in the field of science and technology studies, science and technology indicators in particular; policy makers; R&D managers in the business sector; information scientists, particularly those engaged in science and technology; science publishers; science and technology writers and journalists. The organizers of the conference made special effort succesfully to get scientists from the EastEuropean countries actively involved in this conference. Whereas the three foregoing conferences in this series resulted in impressive conference proceedings, we now decided to publish the results of this fourth conference in special issues of three journals. We think that this publication strategy will considerably enhance the dissemination of the many very good papers presented during the conference. A special issue of the Journal o f the American Society f o r Information Science (JASIS) will cover the more information-science and data-systems oriented papers. A special issue of the journal Research Evaluat ion will focus on the practice of evaluation and assessment procedures, as well as on policy-oriented work in the analysis of innovations.