An analysis of the collaboration network of the International Conference on Conceptual Modeling at the Age of 40

The International Conference on Conceptual Modeling celebrated 40 years of existence at its 38th edition held in Salvador, Brazil, on 4–7 November 2019. As one of the most traditional and well-known conferences in the database area, it has its origins on the Entity-Relationship Model proposed by Peter P. Chen in 1975. To celebrate such an accomplishment, this article goes over the ER history from distinct perspectives. Overall, we investigate the complete ER collaboration network built on bibliographic data collected from DBLP, comprising its 38 editions held from 1979 to 2019. We analyze several aspects regarding the evolution of its network metrics, such as degree, clustering coefficient and average shortest path, over the four decades. In particular, we analyze the role of the most engaged ER authors, the number of distinct authors, institutions and published papers, and the evolution of some of the most frequent terms presented in the titles of its papers, as well as the influence and impact of the prominent ER authors.