Twenty-Four Years of ITiCSE Authors

Abstract

The 25th ITiCSE might be considered an appropriate occasion for reflection on the history of the conference. In the 24 years since it began, ITiCSE has published more than 1400 full papers and working group reports. This paper presents an analysis of the authors of these papers and reports: who they are, where they come from, the numbers of authors per paper, and more. We highlight ITiCSE's most prolific authors, and note those with the greatest number of co-authors in ITiCSE publications. We apply Lotka's law to the population of authors: notwithstanding the handful of authors who have contributed to many ITiCSE papers, we find that the return rate for authors is not as high as Lotka's inverse-square law would suggest. We analyse the level of collaboration evident in papers with more than one author, and find a high level of collaboration between countries, presumably as a consequence of the nature of ITiCSE's working groups.