Elvira and Vicky Present Their Thesis Work at the STI 2025 Conference
At the beginning of September, our colleagues: Nicolás, Elvira, and Vicky attended the 29th Annual International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators, which was held this year in Bristol. For Elvira and Vicky were a great opportunity to share their thesis work and to bring us a brief summary of their experience there.
Elvira
This was my third time at STI-ENID. The first time I was a volunteer (Granada 2022), last year I had an oral presentation and this year I got to do what I hadn’t done before: I presented a poster and chaired a session. The poster was called “Contagion of disrespect: Is there an inverse relation between gender parity and citation impact?” (you can find the submission here and the poster here). People seemed interested in the research and I spent an hour and a half non-stop talking about it, so I think it went pretty well!
I realise this might sound like LinkedIn talk, but I really do find these kinds of gatherings really fulfilling and enriching. Everyone is very nice and you get to talk to people from all around the world about many things, academic or not. Academic work can feel sometimes lonely or like there is only one way to do it and in these spaces you can really see that a) there are many people out there who also care about bibliometric databases and b) there are many many things you can do with them! I can’t wait for STI 2026!
Vicky
I was really excited to go to STI this year, as it was my first time both attending and presenting at such a mythical conference. I gave an oral presentation of my work-in-progress titled “Testing the knowledge bridging function of non-mainstream journals in scholarly communication”, which I’m developing together with Rodrigo Costas Comesaña and Nicolas Robinson-Garcia. I must admit that I felt a bit overwhelmed when I entered the mesmerizing Wills Reception, the room where I was scheduled to present. Its dark wooden-paneled walls, intricate ceiling details, and heavy crimson curtains made me suddenly aware of the long academic history that precedes me, so I shakily began to set up my slides, feeling quite small and inadequate. But after my previous conference at Georgia Tech (Atlanta, USA), I had promised myself that I would do a better job at presenting next time — and this was it! So I buckled up, reminded myself to breathe calmly, and started to speak, following my notes just like I had rehearsed back home. Seeing my supervisors nodding in the audience was very encouraging, and it kept me going even when I perhaps took a few too many minutes to answer a question from a German researcher. Still, I ended up very happy with my performance, and the presentation seems to have come through, as it later generated several conversations and requests for materials from fellow attendees. Once again, my favourite part of the conference was reconnecting with the most wonderful community in science. Sharing a few days with them, attending their talks, and learning from their thoughtful comments — at none other than the ancient, Hogwarts-like Wills Memorial Building of the University of Bristol — was truly a dream for me.