The Post-Graduate Program in Information Science (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação – PPGCI) offers Masters and Doctorate courses in Information Science, aiming at the academic qualification in research and development of high-level professionals committed to the advancement of knowledge in this field. PPGCI is developed in an association between the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia – IBICT) and the School of Communication (Escola de Comunicação – ECO) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ).
The Program dates back to 1955 when the Course of Scientific Documentation (Curso de Documentação Científica – CDC) was created by IBICT. It was a specialization course offered continuously for thirty-five years. In 1970, IBICT started a Masters Course in Information Science, a pioneer in the introduction of this field of knowledge in Brazil and Latin America. Throughout the first years, foreign professors of high international expertise were part of its academic staff, among them Tefko Saracevic, Wilfrid Lancaster, LaVahn Marie Overmyer, Bert Roy Boyce, Jack Mills, Derek Langridge, John Joseph Eyre, Ingetraut Dahlberg, Suman Datta, and Derek de Solla Price. Many of them were advisers during the first master’s dissertations. Doctorate courses in Information Science began in 1994.
The PPGCI was developed by IBICT through the academic system of UFRJ until 1981 and, from 1982 to 2002, as part of the academic structure of ECO/UFRJ. From 2003 to 2008, the PPGCI functioned under an agreement with the Fluminense Federal University (Universidade Federal Fluminense – UFF), returning to the academic office of UFRJ at the end of 2008.
Concentration Area
Research projects and courses in the PPGCI are structured in one area of concentration that is in turn organized into two lines of research, in which their professors and students work.
The Concentration Area is Information and Social and Technological Mediations for Knowledge:
Issues of interdisciplinarity and evolution of information society in their social aspects and technological developments. The study of information involving which individual and collective agents perform the processes of generation, organization, preservation, dissemination, access and electronic and conventional retrieval, and the socially significant uses of information. Transformation in memory, knowledge and meta-knowledge, strategies, decision, and action, encompassing the transfer of information.
Lines of Research
Line 1: Communication, Organization, and Management of Information and Knowledge
Historic and epistemological studies in Information Science and methodologies of Social and Applied Sciences. Communication and dissemination in Science and Technology, bibliometric, informetric, webometric, and scientometric analyses, and applications. Systems of knowledge organization and representation, ontologies, web semantics, and contributions of linguistics. Processes of search, access, retrieval, and use of information. Conceptual and semiotic dimensions of structures and flows of information and knowledge in different contexts. Information and management, technological monitoring, strategic management of information and knowledge in organizations and public policies. Organizational culture.
List of Faculty members from Line 1
Line 2. Sociocultural, political and economic configurations of information
Studies on ethics, politics, and policies of information and technologies of information and communication in contemporary society, and the regime of information. Interfaces of information with ethics and environmental sustainability in the contemporary world. Science, technology and innovation policies; institutional and regulatory legal frameworks of scientific production; scientific and technological indicators; innovation dynamics and their indicators. Sociocultural studies of information and communication, science, and technology. Economic perspectives of information and knowledge; critique of political economy and micro-economy of information. Language, knowledge, and information in labor transformations in current capitalism. Sociocultural and technological conditions of usage and competence in information. Communication networks, collaboration and production of information: political, social and economic characteristics and implications.
List of Faculty members from Line 2
For for information, please consult the Program Statute and Regulations (available in Brazilian Portuguese only)