Web Science Trust

Web Science Trust

Founded	2006 (2006)
Type	Private company limited by guarantee
Location	University of Southampton, U.K. / London, U.K. (registered office)
Key people	James Hendler, chair of the board Wendy Hall, managing director
Website	http://www.webscience.org/

The Web Science Trust is a UK Charitable Trust with the aim of supporting the global development of Web science. It was originally started in 2006 as a joint effort between MIT and University of Southampton to formalise the social and technical aspects of the World Wide Web. The Trust coordinates a set of international "WSTNet Laboratories" that include academic research groups in the emerging area of Web science.^[1]

It was first announced at MIT on November 2, 2006 as the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), changing its name in 2009 to the Web Science Trust.^[2] Tim Berners-Lee originally led this program, now run by a Board of Trustees, which aims to attract government and private funds to support their many activities. The Web Science Trust supports curriculum development in universities and research institutions to train future generations of Web Scientists. Given the similarities between Web Science and Information Science, Web Science overlaps with the interests of the ISchool movement,^[3] particularly in the United States, but focuses more specifically on the Web itself. The annual Web Science conference brings together participants from many fields including those studying both the social and the computational aspects of the World Wide Web.

Areas of interest include:

• Social networks
• Social machine
• Collaboration
• Understanding online community
• Analyzing the human interactions inherent in social media
• Web observatories
• Developing "accountability" and other mechanisms for enhancing privacy and trust on the Web.

Key personnel

Directors/trustees

• Wendy Hall
• Nigel Shadbolt
• Daniel Weitzner
• James Hendler
• Noshir Contractor
• JP Rangaswami
• George Metakides
• John Taysom
• Anni Rowland-Campbell
• Joanna Lewis

Fellows

• Tim Berners-Lee (also Founding Director)
• Sir John Taylor

Patron

• Rennie Fritchie, Baroness Fritchie

Conferences

The first Web Science conference (WebSci09: Society on Line) was sponsored in part by WSRI and was held in Greece in March 2009.^[4] The conference had over 300 registrants from a number of fields including computing, social science, law, economics, philosophy, psychology. The conference has since continued as a yearly event.

Web Science conferences

Conference	Date	Place	Keynote speakers	registrants
Web Science 2018	27-30 May 2018	Netherlands, Amsterdam	Tim Berners-Lee, John Domingue
Web Science 2017	26–28 June 2017	Troy, NY, USA	Steffen Staab, Jen Golbeck
Web Science 2016	22–25 May 2016	Hannover, Germany	Daniel Miller, Andrew Tomkins, Daniel Olmedilla, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Jure Leskovec, Helen Margetts
Web Science 2015	28 June–1 July 2015	Oxford, UK	Markus Strohmaier, Mia Consalvo, Rachel Gibson
Web Science 2014	23–25 June 2014	Bloomington, Indiana, USA	Wendy Hall, J.P. Rangaswami, Laura DeNardis, Daniel Tunkelang
Web Science 2013	2–4 May 2013	Paris, France	Vint Cerf, Cory Doctorow
Web Science 2012	22–24 June 2012	Evanston, Illinois, USA	Luis von Ahn, Sinan Aral, danah boyd, Jon Kleinberg, Sonia Livingstone, Siva Vaidyanathan	200
Web Science 2011	14–17 June 2011	Koblenz, Germany	Barry Wellman, Jaime Teevan	190
Web Science 2010	26–27 April 2010	Raleigh, North Carolina, USA	Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Jennifer Chayes, Melissa R. Gilbert
Web Science 2009	18–20 March 2009	Athens, Greece	Noshir Contractor, Nigel Shadbolt, Jacques Bus, Sir Tim Berners-Lee	300+

See also

• Internet Strategy Forum
• List of I-Schools
• World Wide Web
• Webometrics
• Web Engineering

Bibliography

• Lohr, Steve (November 2, 2006). "Group of University Researchers to Make Web Science a Field of Study". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/technology/02compute.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. 
• Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, Daniel J. Weitzner (August 2006). "Creating a Science of the Web". Science 313 (11): 769–71. doi:10.1126/science.1126902. PMID 16902115. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5788/769?ijkey=o66bodkFqpcCs&keytype=ref&siteid=sci. 
• Julià Minguillon, Daniel Riera, Kieron O'Hara and Wendy Hall (October 2008). "Web Science (dossier)". UOC Papers (7): 25. http://www.uoc.edu/uocpapers/7/dt/eng/webscience.html. 
• James Hendler, Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, Tim Berners-Lee, Daniel J. Weitzner (July 2008). "Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the web". Communications of the ACM 51 (7): 60–69. doi:10.1145/1364782.1364798. http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/7/5366-web-science/fulltext. 
• Web Science: Studying the Internet to Protect Our Future, an article by Tim Berners-Lee.

References

External links

• Press release
• Audio: Web Science: A Conversation with the Inventor of the Web

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