Nordic Research School in Library and Information Science

Research School Director

Prof. Olle Persson
e-mail: Olle.Persson@soc.umu.se
homepage: www.umu.se/inforsk

Address:
Prof Olle Persson
NORSLIS
Department of Sociology
Umeå university
SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden

Professor Olle Persson is a pioneer in the Nordic LIS-field and has contributed in establishing LIS as an academic discipline in Sweden. From the early 1970ies up to about 1985 he specialized in user studies and evaluation of information systems. He took his PhD degree in sociology in 1980 at Umeå University. After 1985 he has mainly specialized in bibliometrics/scientometrics and is now one of the leading scholars in Europe in this sub-field. He was among the first in Europe to develop bibliometrics as a research tool for indicators of scientific and technological activity, impact and collaboration as well as cognitive mapping of research fields. His work has been documented in a large number of journal articles, some of them quite frequently cited. Among other things he has developed a software for bibliometric analysis that is widely used, not only in the Nordic countries, but also throughout the World.

During the years he has been leading a substantial number of research projects within the Inforsk research group. In Sweden he is currently coordinating work on science indicators and he is involved in collaborative work with colleagues in the Nordic countries as well as with leading scholars in Europe. In 2001 he chaired an expert group on "Mapping excellence in Nanotechnologies" on behalf of the European Commission.

He is founder and coordinator of a series of annual Nordic Bibliometric Workshops that started seven years ago. This has contributed in making the Nordic LIS-departments quite skilled in bibliometrics and informetrics, and several PhD-students, also through Nordic mobility, are applying these kind of methods in their thesis work.

On the international scene he is on the editorial board of the journal Scientometrics and he was also guest-editor for a Nordic isssue of the same journal. He has several times been on the board of reviewers for the European Science and Technlogy Indicators Conference since its start in 1988. In year 2005 he will chair the World conference of ISSI (International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics) to be held in Stockholm.

Within research training in LIS he chaired a 10 ECTS NORFA-sponsored course in Bibliometrics in 2001 with about 20 PhD students from all Nordic and Baltic countries.

He has been the main responsible person for the planning of NORSLIS and this application, thus coordinating the activities, needs and expertise among 15 different local programmes.

At Umeå University he has started both the master programme in LIS as well as the local PhD-programme. For the moment he supervises three doctoral students at his own department as well as one doctoral student in Uppsala and one in Borås. Due to his special expertise he is frequently consulted by students in the other Nordic countries who are doing work within bibliometrics and informetrics. Since 1997, five of his research students in Umeå have taken their PhD:s, and he has served at several doctoral examinations as member of committees and as external opponent.

At the Department of Sociology he has a central role in sharing the administrative leadership of the department, and he is also actively involved in the sociology PhD programme. At his own university he is member of the University Library Board, and he has been engaged in developing information and computer policies.