EURAS Proceedings 2014

Preface
​A couple of days ago I noticed that the EURAS conferences have been to lots of different capitals lately: From the only temporary capital city in Europe during the Interwar period (Kaunas, 2011) to the 2013 Capital of Culture (Košice, 2012) to the European capital (Brussels, 2013). And this time it’s the capital of Serbia – Belgrade (the White City). This also means that we’re back to Eastern Europe again, following what turned out to be a short detour to the West.
This year, we look specifically at the co-operation between standards setting organisations and the scientific and academic community. The relation between standards setting on the one hand and R(&D) on the other is indeed somewhat problematic. Why should researchers go to standards meetings? After all, it’s almost a contradiction in terms – the innovative researcher and the conservative (conserving?) world of standards (or so they think). What’s more, following the massive failure of the OSI initiative (which was partly attributed to it being too academic and thus too complex) academics became less than popular in standards circles. This has changed again and these days research for standardisation is hailed as crucially important, for instance in the European Horizon 2020 programme. Unfortunately, this still does not hold for research about standardisation (despite frequent claims to the contrary), which is what EURAS is all about. Perhaps the papers compiled in this book can help convince the powers that be that standardisation research is something absolutely worth supporting and (greedy me) – funding. Kai Jakobs (for the EURAS Board)