The Ideal Form of Academic Societies | Hideyuki Tokuda (Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)
2007.12.07
Shortly after ORF2007 successfully concluded on November 22–23, from November 25 to 30, I participated in three symposiums and a meeting of the Information Processing Society of Japan's Ubiquitous Computing System Research Group under the name Akihabara Ubiquitous Week . This time, two students from the Tokuda Laboratory, one first-year master's (M1) and one third-year bachelor's (B3), presented their papers. Although both seemed nervous as it was their very first academic presentation, they received a lot of valuable comments from the audience. I hope they will continue to actively engage in these kinds of "inter-style matches" both in Japan and abroad.
Now, while I have previously mentioned reports on attending international conferences with students in the "Okashira Nikki" (Dean's Diary), I haven't had the chance to talk about academic societies themselves. The academic societies I have been a part of since my student days include the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE), the Japan Society for Software Science and Technology, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), and the IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.). Each of these societies has its own characteristics, but a common thread is that the ideal form of an academic society is changing dynamically with the spread of the internet and the digitization of journals and magazines.
Here, I would like to introduce the case of the Information Processing Society of Japan. The IPSJ is a society I feel a great affinity for, having become friendly with its administrative staff through part-time jobs at its national conventions since my undergraduate days. I have previously served as a chair of research groups like SIGOS and SIGUBI and as a board member, and since this May, I have once again been appointed as a director in charge of planning.
One of the roles I am responsible for is to expand the role of the society itself. For a society that has traditionally centered its activities on academic researchers, I am promoting forums (called IT Forums ) that allow professionals engaged in information-related work in society to participate freely without becoming members.
Currently, the following eight forums are active, and they hold presentation sessions at the Software Japan event, which takes place every January.
■ IT Architect and CIO Forum ■ Web 2.0 Forum ■ Service Science Forum ■ Welfare Information Systems Forum ■ User Study Forum ■ IT Diversity Forum ■ Innovative Social Infrastructure Forum ■ Advanced IT Human Resource Development Forum
Similar to the activities of the forums, the way people access the journals published by the society is also changing significantly. Materials that were traditionally distributed as paid print media are now not only available for online access, but a digital library has also become available, similar to other academic societies. Furthermore, there are also discussions about making some of these materials open access after a certain period.
Some people with an older mindset might think of academic societies as very formal and authoritarian places. However, today's societies are enhancing their member services and exploring ways to be more open to society. Academic societies may be left behind by society if they do not evolve rapidly.
(Posted on: 2007/12/07)