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
Mission	Working with global partners to understand what the Web is, engineer its future, and ensure its social benefit.
Website	http://www.webscience.org/

The Web Science Trust is UK Charitable Trust which helps to support activities related to the field of Web Science. It was originally started in 2006 as a joint effort between MIT and University of Southampton to bridge and formalize the social and technical aspects of the World Wide Web. The Trust now coordinates a set of international "WSTnet Laboratories" that include many of the top academic research groups in the emerging area of Web science.

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.^[1] Tim Berners-Lee originally led this program, now run by a Board of Trustees, which also aims to attract government and private funds, and is involved in creating new undergraduate and graduate curricula. Given the similarities between Web Science and Information Science, Web Science overlaps with the interests of the ISchool movement,^[2] 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.

Some initial areas of interest are:

Social Networks
Collaboration
Understanding online communities
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

Other members of the board

Anni Rowland-Campbell

Fellows

Tim Berners-Lee (also Founding Director)
John Taylor

Conferences

The first Web Science conference (WebSci09: Society on Line) was sponsored in part by WSRI and was held in Greece in March 2009. 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 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+