In conjunction with the 19th International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators, the VP Institute is sponsoring the 4th Global TechMining Conference. “Tech-mining” tools include bibliometric and text-mining software (e.g., VantagePoint, TDA) as well as other analytical & visualization applications. The goal of the conference is to help build cross-disciplinary networks of analysts, software specialists, and researchers to advance the use of textual information in multiple science, technology, and business development fields. Conference themes will include, but are not limited to: 

Data
o Sourcing, preparing and interpreting data resources, including patents & publications, web data extraction (web scraping, web crawling), full-text handling, meta-data assignment, business & market information, genetic & other novel data sources

Text-mining tools and methods
o Advances, best practices and/or cases of topic modeling, term clumping, association rules, term manipulation, etc.
o Visualization, data presentation, and novel ways to communicate findings 

Applied research
o Future-Oriented Technology Analyses (FTA)
o Intelligence generation for private-sector decision-making (e.g., Management of Technology)
o R&D assessment, portfolio management & knowledge diffusion in the public sector Suggested topics include case studies/research results, development of new methods, and development of enhanced software tools (e.g., macros).

The conference organizing committee invites submissions for:
1) Oral presentations. Oral presentations (15 minutes + questions) address well-advanced research.
2) Special sessions. Sessions provide a multi-perspective presentation on an issue facing the field of tech mining. The overall abstract should describe the general session topic and how two (45 minute session) or four (90 minute session) presenters will offer coordinated presentations.
3) Extended-media presentations. Extended-media consists of an abbreviated oral presentation (5 minutes, 4 PowerPoint slides) followed later in the day with an interactive poster session. The objective of the abbreviated oral presentation is to deliver a lively, concise description of your research and its impacts in order to spark further discussion and questions during the poster session.
4) Posters. This formal graphic presentation format offers an excellent opportunity for gathering detailed feedback on your work and reporting on tech mining results.