Paul Wouters

Wouters has a Masters in biochemistry (Free University, Amsterdam, 1977) and a PhD in science and technology studies (University of Amsterdam, 1999). In between these degrees he has worked as, among others, science journalist and as editor-in-chief of a daily newspaper (De Waarheid). He has published on the history of the Science Citation Index, on scientometrics and on the way the criteria of scientific quality have been changed by citation analysis. Paul has been coordinator of the Dutch STS Graduate School WTMC for four years together with Annemiek Nelis (2001-2005). From 1991 onwards, Wouters was member of the Science Dynamics research institute at the University of Amsterdam. During this period, Wouters combined part-time work as a science journalist with writing a PhD thesis on the history and sociology of citation indexing. Together with Willem Schoonen, editor at the daily newspaper Trouw, he founded the journal “Onderzoek Nederland”, a Dutch-language professional biweekly about science policy and science funding. In 1999, he was appointed as leader of a new research group at an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Netherlands Institute of Scientific Information (NIWI). The group, called NERDI (Networked Research and Digital Information) focused on analyzing the development of information technologies for research, both as research instruments and as new communication media. After the dissolution of NIWI by the KNAW board, Wouters obtained a competitive grant and was appointed as the program leader of a new institute of the KNAW during 5 years, the Virtual Knowledge Studio (VKS). In 2006, he was appointed as visiting professor in cybermetrics at the University of Wolverhampton. In 2007, he was appointed as director of the affiliate of the VKS at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), the Erasmus Virtual Knowledge Studio and as special professor in the department of sociology at the EUR. The VKS and the Erasmus Studio studied the development of digital humanities from the perspective of science & technology studies. In September 2010, Wouters was appointed by the University of Leiden as director of CWTS and as professor in scientometrics.

Wouters is member of the editorial boards of Social Studies of Science, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Scholarly Communication, and Cybermetrics. He has been member of the council of the Society for the Social Study of Science and is currently member of the board of the Dutch graduate school Science, Technology, and Modern Culture (WTMC). He is involved in the European project NESSHI and is PI of the 7th Framework project ACUMEN.