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Scholarly Communication | |
| Electronic Information News | ||
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Campus Events | |
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Library and Related News | |
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| Fall 2003 | |
| Spring 2003 | |
| Fall 2002 | |
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| Scholarly Communication |
The development of science is inextricably tied to the possibility that researchers continue to readily share discoveries. This is the basis on which the scientific community has founded its model of communication. Physicists and astronomers and most scientists communicate their work by journal articles. The medium of the scientific journal as a means of communicating science has worked well for a long time, centuries. The science journal dates back to the 17th century. In London Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and in Paris Le Journal des savants appeared in the year 1665. The growth of journals was rapid, remarkable. One count reports 10,000 by 1900 and 133,000 by 1991 (all subjects). However, today there are both obstacles and opportunities in the scientific communication cycle. The obstacles are mostly economic with the high journal costs, and the opportunities are mostly technical with the Internet. “Open access” journals and “open archives” exist, and new offerings were launched in 2003. The Public Library of Science became a publisher. It made a grand entrance with the launch of PLoS Biology. With a combination of exemplary research and great PR, the launch of PLoS was an event to which scientific organizations had to take note. In similar or related approaches, universities are starting “institutional archives”. Scientists themselves have promoted an increasing number of initiatives, largely with the view of confirming or reconfirming the principles of open access. The reader should have access to the scientific article.
Lund University Libraries (Sweden) maintains a Directory of Open-Access Journals. http://www.doaj.org/ Titles for physics and astronomy include: New Journal of Physics (Institute of Physics, UK and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft), Optics Express (Optical Society of America), Materials Physics and Mechanics (Advanced Study Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia), MPEJ/Mathematical Physics Electronic Journal, Apeiron: Studies in Infinite Nature, Information Bulletin on Variable Stars, Physics-Uspekhi Online, Pramana: Journal of Physics. Another early alternative physics journal (1997) begun by physicists is JHEP/Journal of High Energy Physics. JHEP is one of the most successful electronic journals, begun by SISSA (Italy) and now marketed cooperatively by IOP (UK). Each article submitted/uploaded to JHEP is managed by a robot, which through a keyword-based check, assigns it to an “editor”, a scientist in the field. Editors select one or more referees. Theoretical physicist and staff director of JHEP, Loriano Bonora reports that “JHEP is 10 to 15 times less expensive than its traditional competitors.” JHEP is not in the Lund University list of open-access journals, as it is not free to all readers. JHEP requires richer countries to pay a “modest” fee as subscribers and offers the journal free to developing countries. SISSA and IOP introduced a new electronic journal in 2003 based on the same model – JCAP/Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Both JCAP and JHEP are linkable from the Physics-Astronomy Library’s e-journals page. http://library.berkeley.edu/PHYS/ejournal.html For more information, see article by Bonora, translated in the Focus section of the December 2003 issue of Jekyll.comm :International Journal on Science Communication. http://jekyll.sissa.it/jekyll_comm/home_eng.htm |
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| Electronic Information News |
| American Physical Society announced in December a new free TOC/
table of contents notification service for each APS journal: Physical
Review, Physical Review Letters, Reviews of
Modern Physics. The service provides users (subscribers or
non-subscribers) with e-mail alerts of recently published issues.
Signing-up is easy at the Email Alerts Center http://ojps.aip.org/jhtml/APS/alert.jsp
or at the APS Journal homepage http://publish.aps.org/.
Readers may also sign-up from the individual journal homepages.
Enter your name and e-mail address, and select your choice of
alert format (HTML or ASCII). This useful research tool will help
keep you up-to-date with the latest physics discoveries. |
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 American
Institute of Physics has revamped and changed the name of its
OJPS/ Online Journal Publishing System. The platform re-launch
takes place this month (January 2004). Under its new snazzy name,
Scitation will display over 2 million tables of contents/abstracts
and deliver 1 million full-text documents monthly. Watch for Scitation
Alerts later this spring (April 2004). AIP and IEE (the Institution
of Electrical Engineers, UK) will partner to provide alerts powered
by the INSPEC system. Physicists may subscribe to weekly alerts
from 100 physics-related subject areas, or set-up custom alerts
based on their own search criteria. For additional information
see http://scitation.aip.org. |
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ADS/Astrophysics Data System announced two new services in
January, first the completion of a new full-text search system.
The service allows users to search the OCRd/Optical Character
Recognition text of all the scanned pages in ADS, some 2.5 million
pages. The second new service of ADS is “myADS”,
a personal notification service that allows a searcher to store
several queries and receive the results weekly from the latest
database updates. Both services may be linked from the main
ADS query page. ADS is accessible from our Article Indexes page
(linkable from our Physics – Astronomy Library homepage). |
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| AIP has added additional years of full-text backfiles for 6
of its journals: Applied Physics Letters, 12 (1968),
Journal of Chemical Physics, 48 (1968), Physics of
Fluids, 11 (1968), Journal of Mathematical Physics,
9 (1968), Review of Scientific Instruments, 39 (1968),
and Journal of Applied Physics, 39 (1968). One way to
link to electronic journals is from the library’s e-journals
list. http://library.berkeley.edu/PHYS/ejournal.html
Another way among several is incidental to an INSPEC database
search, through CDL/California Digital Library arrangements with
vendors and publishers and facilitated by technical agreements
and standards (particularly SFX). |
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The arXiv (Cornell; formerly LANL) has a new e-print (preprint) archive in Quantitative Biology http://arxiv.org/archive/q-bio established this fall 2003. http://arxiv.org/new/q-bio_announce.html Subject groupings include:
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| CDL/ California Digital Library has received a year-end offer
for one-time purchase of perpetual rights for the 1987-1996 electronic
backfiles of Nature, which is under consideration. |
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| IEEE/Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers will soon
join the Virtual Journals in Science and Technology, sponsored
by AIP and APS. Articles and abstracts from the IEEE’s journals
will appear in the VJs early this year. Virtual Journals are online-only
publications that collect relevant papers from a broad range of
science journals. The series currently includes five titles in
nanoscale science, biological physics, quantum information, superconductivity,
and ultrafast science. With IEEE, the VJs will include the most
significant articles from the latest issues of more than 170 participant
source journals, including Science and Nature.
Spokesperson for IEEE stated in a December 1, 2003 AIP press release,
“The Virtual Journals have become an essential cross-publisher
research tool, and we are delighted that our inclusion can contribute
to the advancement of science.” http://www.virtualjournals.org |
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| The American Astronomical Society announced plans for implementing
data linking in 2004 for its journals, starting with ApJ/Astrophysical
Journal or its Supplement. Just as reference linking allows
for moving back and forth from references to the referenced articles,
data linking will provide connection to the original data on which
an article is based. Plans are to provide “object”
information with hyperlinks to Simbad, NED, etc. These will appear
later in the paper publication, since entry into Simbad, etc.
is done manually at the data centers. The Simbad astronomical
database provides basic data, cross-identifications and bibliography
for astronomical objects outside the solar system. http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad
NED is the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database operated by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech. http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/
There will additionally be hyperlinks to the data set on which
the article is based. Since different data centers use different
identifiers and observatories do not have a standard way of identifying
a data set, the implementation will be slow. Details will be worked
out, but functionality is expected to appear in 2004. The University of Chicago Press publishes the AAS journals. The size of AAS journals continues to increase, both in number of articles and in length of articles. The delay time between submission and publication has dropped some 35%, since 1998-1999. Refereeing still consumes the longest time period. Page charges should drop again in 2004. Institutional subscription rates will rise by about 5%. Overall there has been a 4.7% drop in institutional subscriptions, one reason for the rate increase. The ApJ editorial office did sample studies and found that 72% of the papers published in July-December 2002 had also appeared on astro-ph, the arXiv e-print site. |
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| The 2003-2004 84th edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry
and Physics is searchable online. http://www.hbcpnetbase.com/
The Critical Constants table has been updated and expanded and
reflects new or more accurate measurements of critical temperature,
pressure, molar volume. It reports the normal boiling point
of over 850 fluids. The new edition offers improved table manipulation,
better speed and a lockable left-hand column for easier viewing.
The number of interactive tables has increased to 63. Once the
data is displayed, other options are facilitated (sort, display
structure, export table to Excel). Substance searching has 5
pre-selected search fields: name with left/right truncation,
MF in Hill system order, Chemical Abstracts Service Registry
Number, common formula (e.g., NaCl), and/or MW (value or range).
Each value has a pull-down menu and a “hints” file.
The Hill system is carbon first, hydrogen 2d, all else following
in alphabetical order. A compound containing 4 carbons, 2 nitrogens,
2 hydrogens, and 2 sulfurs would be written c4h2n2s2. New coverage:
Fermi Energy and Related Properties of Metals, Interstellar
Molecules, Ionization Potentials of Atoms and Neutron Cross
Sections, and Directory of Physical and Chemical Data Sources.
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| Campus Events |
| The J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture in Physics J. Robert Oppenheimer Centennial at Berkeley Lecture Exhibit Exhibit |
| Library and Related News |
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On December 22, 2003, Laura Ng announced her retirement effective
January 20, 2004. Laura has been an employee of the University
of California, Berkeley for almost 22 years. Laura began in the
office of campus development, but for most of the years she has
served the university in The Library in various positions including
Education - Psychology Library (Tolman Hall) and Government Publications
(Doe Library). But we will remember her most for her many productive
years of service as Operations Manger for Physics – Astronomy
Library. I hope all of you had an opportunity to thank Laura and
wish her well in her future endeavors. |
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I invite you to please welcome Kim Wu (kwu@library.berkeley.edu)
as the library’s new Operations Manager. Kim has been acting
as the technical services workleader, our PC expert, and Web guru.
Kim attended Berkeley as an undergraduate and was granted a degree
in Molecular and Cell Biology. During those years Kim worked part-time
in the Physics Library as a student employee (1994-1998). We have
been highly fortunate to have her continue as Library Assistant
since December 1998. Kim has consistently provided excellent public
service to the students, faculty and visitors in physics and astronomy.
Faculty and graduate instructors will be familiar with her responsive
and accurate work in Reserves processing. In the past two years
Kim has been taking courses in computer graphic design working
toward a “Graphic and Interactive Design” certificate
program through UC Extension. Kim’s products in this area,
including the redesigned Physics – Astronomy Library’s
Web homepage, evidence her interest and showcase her talent and
skills. |
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A constrained budget plus inflation in the cost of library
materials (averaging about 8% for serials/journals across all
disciplines) means we face another cancellation project this
spring. Faculty were sent a letter late in fall semester regarding
journal prices and scholarly communication from outgoing Chancellor
Berdahl and the Academic Senate Committee. http://library.berkeley.edu/Collections/
If you have questions or comments about the issues raised in
the letter, please feel free to contact us (phys@library.berkeley.edu
or astr@library.berkeley.edu).
You will find more information at 2 Websites: |
| Physics-Astronomy Library
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