We would like to invite nominations for the first annual International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) Paper of the Year award. The goal of this award, established by the 2016 ISSI Board of Directors, is to stimulate and recognize high quality research in the field of scientometrics and informetrics.

Eligibility. The paper must be published in 2015 or 2016. Publication can be defined as posting a preprint, acceptance and online publication in a journal, or final publication of a work. A paper cannot be nominated more than twice for the award. The authors of the paper do not need to be members of ISSI.

Nomination. Any paper on a topic in the field of scientometrics and informetrics can be nominated, without restriction to specific journals. Only members of ISSI are eligible to nominate papers and nominations must be made by August 1, 2016. The nomination must include a short text (no more than 500 words) explaining the importance of the contribution. Nominations should be emailed to Dr. Cassidy R. Sugimoto, President of ISSI, at sugimoto@indiana.edu.

Selection. The ISSI Board will appoint a subcommittee of no more than five members and chaired by the President of ISSI, to determine the validity of the nominations and to select ten papers to forward to the ISSI membership for voting. Selection will be based on the quality of the papers and the arguments made by the nominators in the nomination packet.

Voting. Electronic ballots will be sent to all members of ISSI, who will be provided with the full bibliographic material as well as links to the nomination material for each of the ten selected papers. Each member will be allowed to cast three ranked votes across the set, with the top ranked choice receiving three points, the second ranked choice two points, and the three ranked choice one point. The paper receiving the most votes will be selected as the Paper of the Year. Two runner-up papers will also be selected.

Announcement and award. Awardees will be notified no later than November 1, 2016. Awardees will be announced in the ISSI Newsletter and notification of the winners will be sent to the editors of Scientometrics and Journal of Informetrics, to encourage recognition in these venues. Notification will also be sent to the journal in which the work was published. Awardees will formally receive their award in ceremony at the 2017 ISSI conference in China and will be invited to present on their award winning work, if this work has not been previously presented at ISSI. Conference registration will be provided for one presenter.