The head of the Department of Informatics and Applied Mathematics at ITMO University, Dmitry Muromtsev explained that in some scientific fields, the main platform for knowledge exchange between researchers are not publishing in scientific journals but rather conferences. Therefore, when ITMO University joined the organization of the FRUCT (Finnish-Russian University Cooperation in Telecommunications) international conference, the University staff tried to contribute to enhancing its attractiveness to young researchers. The last eight FRUCT conferences were held with the support of the international scientific society IEEE, and three of them were conducted at ITMO University, thereby making the University the most frequent venue of the conference in recent years. The conference proceedings are published in IEEE Xplore and indexed in citation databases such as Web of Science and Scopus. Moreover, this year the conference proceedings were included in the index of Scimago journal.
"Scimago Journal Rank is one of the standard scientometric indicators that ITMO University uses to assess the activities of international scientific laboratories. Over the last two years we have undertaken a number of efforts so that the FRUCT conference would be included in this index. From the beginning, its’ SJR indicator was already about 0.3. It should be noted that many scientific journals have a lower SJR, since its value depends on various factors. Despite the fact that we didn’t participate in the organization of FRUCT conference from the beginning, it's safe to say that when collaboration began with ITMO University, the conference reached a new level of quality, and indexing papers in Scimago is yet another contribution to the development of our University’s brand", – says Dmitry Muromtsev.
Another criterion for evaluating the significance of the conference is the so-called acceptance rate – the ratio of the number of submissions to the number of articles subsequently accepted for publication in the conference proceedings. For example, in ordinary conferences this threshold can be higher than 50%, and in leading conferences up to 10%. According to the results of the spring session of FRUCT approximately 35% of papers were accepted for publication. As President of the FRUCT Association and the leading researcher of the "Intelligent information processing methods and semantic technologies" laboratory, Sergey Balandin explains, FRUCT became the first Russian youth conference, which now is indexed by a part of Scimago Journal Rank. The organizers hope that it will positively affect the quality of the submitted works.
"A thorough peer review is not only a criterion for choosing articles, but it also helps the authors raise their work to the required level. When a young scientist is just beginning his scientific career, it is very important to get feedback," adds Dmitry Muromtsev.
The nineteenth FRUCT conference will be held from 7 to 11 November in the city Jyuvyaskyulya (Finland). Please, submit your papers by September 30.
