Web Science Trust

Web Science Trust
Founded	2006
Type	Private company limited by guarantee
Location	University of Southampton, U.K. / London, U.K. (registered office);
Key people	JP Rangaswami, chair of the board; Wendy Hall, managing director
Website	www.webscience.org

The Web Science Trust (WST) 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 2 November 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

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. The first fully virtual Web Science conference was held in July 2020 as a result of travel restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Web Science conferences
Conference	Date	Place	Keynote speakers	registrants
Web Science 2024	21-24 May 2024	Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany	Eszter Hargittai, Jie Tang, Dirk Hovy, Hannes Werthner
Web Science 2023	April 30-May 1, 2023	Austin, Texas, USA	Bob Metcalfe, Dhiraj Murthy, David Rand
Web Science 2022	26-29 June 2022	Barcelona, Spain (Hybrid conference)	Leila Zia, M.C. Schraefel
Web Science 2021	21-25 June 2021	Southampton, UK (Virtual conference)	Deen Freelon, Martha Lane Fox
Web Science 2020	7-10 July 2020	Southampton, UK (Virtual conference)	Jim Hendler, Gina Neff
Web Science 2019	June 30 - July 3, 2019	Boston, USA	Fabien Gandon, Sandra González-Bailón
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+