A non-profit corporation
The purpose of the Foundation is to improve knowledge and useful application of fundamental concepts and principles of information and information processes by encouraging and rewarding activities that, through publication of research, extend or improve scientific understanding of basic information concepts and qualities and of processes for storing, transforming, retrieving, or communicating information, and also by encouraging and rewarding activities that apply such improved or extended understanding to create an information resource or service with features demonstrating outstanding applicability, accuracy, or economy.
The general areas and ideas that the Board will seek to provide support and funding to include at this time: improvement of theory and practice for characterizing and indexing scientific papers and publications; improvement of theory and practice for characterizing works that are cited in scientific papers and publications; improvement of the theoretical understanding of currently ignored or vaguely recognized values and standards that affect perceived quality of search results in information services; encouragement of work to achieve better understanding of the nature and interplay of factors that affect the performance and utility of high-density storage of all kinds; encouragement of greater interaction and coherence among practitioners in different areas of information service; and encouragement of exploration of the feasibility of achieving long-range improvements in the accuracy and precision of human informational output.