It’s summertime! After a long and exciting year, the time has come to put the metaphorical pen down and both chill and reflect on everything that we’ve done and what we took away from it. That’s exactly what we set up to do in this note. So, firstly, here’s a recap of the highlights of everything that the EC3 group has done during the 2022-23 academic year:
First and foremost, we hosted the 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI 2022) at the University of Granada.
We also participated in many other scientific events around the world, such as the European Summer School of Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), the Ensuring Inclusive Research Careers Conference in Dublin (Ireland), the Design and Applications of Bibliometric Analysis Course in San José (Costa Rica), and the 9th Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy (United States).
In addition to traveling, we continued to strengthen our online presence with the #YoSigoPublicando platform and its wide range of courses, which will very soon be offered in more languages.
Our two main projects, InfluScience and COMPARE, remained very active, and the EC3 team as a whole grew with the incorporation of two new doctoral students. We also welcomed several term research assistants (miss you Pedro, Jenny and Carlos!), and even invited dear colleagues Cassidy, Vincent, Diego, Tina, Lauranne and María to work alongside us in their role as visiting scholars.
In short, we did lots of teaching (in fact, Dani and Rafael obtained their positions as professor and associate professor respectively), lots of publishing (check out Dani’s, Wences’ and Nico’s latest paper together), and a whole lot of talking and sharing also at the team level in our monthly PhD Reading Club and daily morning coffees.
Wow! Let that sink in! Without wanting to get too cheesy, us writing this note (Victoria & Elvira) believe this year was exceptional. We’ve had some experiences with the academic world before, but it was during this year (our first PhD year) that we’ve actually gotten the chance to grasp what the research world is about.
And we believe we’ve been extremely lucky with the people we’ve encountered here in Granada. We did not expect to receive so much help, insightful recommendations and thoughtful advice, and we can strongly say that we are starting this summer break with the feeling of a job well done.
We want to thank old EC3 members, new members, and (if we believe we can play with time) future members for creating such an enriching working environment. We just have one thing left to say: get ready for next year! As the saying goes, “mañana más pero no mejor, porque es imposible”. See you soon!