Literati awards - 2002

Citation

(2002), "Literati awards - 2002", Kybernetes, Vol. 31 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2002.06731gab.001

Literati awards - 2002

Awards for excellence

The Literati Club marked the 10th Anniversary of its Literati Awards for Excellence at the Home of English Cricket, Lord's Cricket Ground, London, UK on the 11th April 2002.

The Norbert Wiener Award for an Outstanding Paper published in Kybernetes, Vol. 30, 2001, together with awards to the authors of "Highly Commended" contributions were presented by Keith Howard, Managing Director, Emerald, the publishers of Kybernetes. Guest speaker at the ceremony was Maxine Gabriel, an experienced Management Consultant with an impressive background in total quality management, human resources and law. Her use of the Business Excellence Model has led to improvements and the winning of the United Kingdom Quality Award. Professor David Weir, who is Professor of Management at a number of prestigious University Management and Business Centres was the guest speaker at the Awards Dinner which followed the presentation ceremony. Details of the Kybernetes Awards were published in Kybernetes, Vol. 31 Nos. 5/6, 2002.

The Awards ceremony also marked the 30th Anniversary of the founding of Kybernetes which was celebrated in the Special Anniversary Double Issue (Vol. 30 Nos. 9/10, 2001).

The Editor-in-Chief of Kybernetes, Professor Brian H. Rudall received the Norbert Wiener Award for Excellence on behalf of the literary heirs of Professor Pesi R. Masani who had been postumously honoured. The Kybernetes Editorial Team was also commended with the award of "Leading Editor" to Professor Rudall for consistently achieving the high standards for which they are noted.

One new feature of the awards ceremony was the presentations by selected authors about their outstanding papers and the research involved. This was a particularly succesful change to the traditional programme and gave everyone an insight into the background and preparation required to produce a contribution of depth and quality. This was followed by a series of short presentations by Emerald about the Literati Club; Editorial Year; Emerald Partnerships; Copyright Policy and finally the announcement and details of the Research Fund Awards 2002.

Some interesting facts were reported about the work of the Literati Club and of the publisher Emerald. Today the Literati Club has more than 16,000 members worldwide which must make it unique as an organisation concerned with author/ publisher relationships. The company, in 1996, launched a searchable CD-ROM archive for many journals as precursor to putting all its publications online. This collection was branded Electronic Management Research Library Database – EMERALD. Today, we are told, Emerald is a searchable collection of more than 32,000 papers collected from more than 130 titles published by the company, and is growing at around 6,000 new papers each year.

Whilst Emerald has gone from "strength to strength" so has Kybernetes which during its thirty years has grown from its original 4 issues (approx. 250 pp) per annum to its present-day 10 issues (approx. 1500pp) with Special Issues devoted to a range of topics regarded as essential to research and development in interdisciplinary endeavours. Today, of course it is not only online but also part of a comprehensive multiple access information service.