PhysMath Central Blog
I can't remember how I came across this site, but it sure is entertaining if you can suspend credulity and credibility for a short while. My favourite? Physics carols from the last 4 decades. Sample from 'Phrosty the Photon':
Phrosty the Photon was quite a quantum sight,
with a zero mass and an endless life,
and a speed approaching light.
There must have been some magic in a physics lab one year,
for when they studied X-ray beams
ole Phrosty did appear, Ohhhhhh,
Phrosty the Photon says he knows he’s not that large,
but he said one day if he comes this way,
he’ll give us all a charge.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 15:46 Comments (0)
Michael Brunger on open access publishing in atomic physics
Posted by Chris Leonard at 18:11 Comments (0)
A wiki of formalized mathematics
Cameron Freer, an instructor in pure mathematics at MIT, is working on a fascinating new project called vdash.org (vdash being the mathematical symbol for logical provability)- a mathematical wiki which only allows 'true' statements to be added by the users. The goal of the project is simple: all mathematics in one place, in a common language, which anyone can edit (although edits are computer-verified for mathematical correctness). The results could be amazing. Putting all mathematics research into an inter-linked, formalized application could reveal connections not recognized before and could feasibly even advance some fields without additional work being necessary. This is in addition the educational benefits such a project could have.
It's early days, but worth watching the brief video above to see what could happen.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 09:04 Comments (1)
Open access at Elsevier: Is it really?
Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher, has recently recognized that all results from the Large Hadron Collider will be published exclusively in OA journals, and to that end has magnanimously "agreed to sponsor any articles accepted for publication that
report the initial experimental results from CERN’s LHC project".
However, a closer look at what has been reported as a no-fee, open access option shows that it is lacking several key OA characteristics. A closer look at what your $3000 (+VAT) buys for a typical, non-LHC 'sponsored article' is hard to come by. The official Elsevier page is lacking in any detail, but I would suggest that any author, or group of authors, willing to take up this offer should answer these questions to their own satisfaction first.
Is your copyright being signed over to the publisher, or are you encouraged to retain it?
Will the free access be permanent? Is this article to be archived in a third-party repository in case the publisher one day decides that the free period is over?
Is the full-text available not only as pdf, but also in machine-readable format for data-mining (e.g. XML & MathML)?
Can you and others reuse, host and modify the data and article, in whole or in part, freely?
Some others are questioning what sponsored article status means - certainly Elsevier make a point of not referring to it as open access, maybe we all should too?
Posted by Chris Leonard at 09:12 Comments (0)
Round-up of links we have recently loved
Things have been a little hectic, so we are simply listing here a collection of links which have stopped us getting on with work and caused us to open a new tab in Firefox. Hopefully they will do the same for you:
- BBC News: Tim Berners-Lee is increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation and wants a way to help people separate rumour from real science
- UK petition to get publically funded research published in OA journals
- The Economist on user-generated science
- Jon Udell on machine readability of data. If you ever wondered why we insist on fully-marked up xml when people currently tend to print off pdfs, this is a simple example why.
- The next 50 years of science: In the next 50 years, as the technologies of information and
knowledge accelerate, the nature of the scientific process will change
even more than it has in the last 400 years.
- Ever wondered what $700bn in science funding would look like?
- A proposed standard for the Scholarly Citation of Quantitative Data
- Perils of non-OA publishing: Dear Nature...
- BioMed Central's Matt Cockerill on the future of science
- Science in the 21st century - a fantastic-looking conference with all the presentations in mp3 and streaming video format for ipod enjoyment.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 14:14 Comments (0)
PhysMath Central at ESSCIRC/ESSDERC
A quick reminder that PhysMath Central will be exhibiting at the joint ESSDERC/ESSCIRC conference in Edinburgh next week. We will particularly be promoting the journal PMC Physics B as the ideal place to publish research in many areas of solid-state devices and technologies.
I hope to see you in Edinburgh.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 12:22 Comments (0)
Open Access books from Bloomsbury
An interesting experiment has arisen from Bloomsbury - the people behind the Harry Potter books. They are about to launch a venture offering full-text of research monographs online for free. This company, Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, has adopted some of the facets of open acccess journal publishing and applied them to the peculiarities of academic book publishing.
Authors of a weighty tome on some esoteric area of science are often horrified to find out that - due to sales figures and print runs likely to be in the low hundreds - costs need to be recouped by charging very high prices for their work. In a field such as mathematics, this can often be around $150 for a 300 page book. Unfortunately this prices it out of the reach of students and postgrads, and increasingly even libraries are questioning the value of the more highly-priced books.
However, Bloomsbury have decided to offer the full-text of these books online for free - and with no author charges payable either. They hope to make their money from print-on-demand versions available for libraries.
It is early days yet, and the website is still short on a few details - like how much the print-on-demand books will cost (costs still need to be recouped - but there are no upfront print costs at least), and it is notable that they are - for now at least - concentrating on easily marked-up text heavy subjects (humanities and social sciences, no mathematics or physics), but should it succeed it will open up the way for many more books to be published which are simply not economical to proceed with at the moment. What surprises hide in the long tail? We'll just have to wait and see. At least, due to their open access nature, we will be able to find them easily as they will all be indexable by Google and other search engines too.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 11:58 Comments (0)
We have just published an excellent editorial by PMC Physics A editor-in-chief, Ken Peach. In it, he outlines what we might discover with the LHC apart from the Higgs. In particular, given some of the more outlandish reporting of the LHC start-up, it explains why open access to the original reseach is important for all kinds of science:
The LHC machine has been built as a global collaboration, led by and from CERN. The four large experiments have also been built as global collaborations. We at PMC Physics A welcome the commitment by CERN and by the experiments to make the results freely available through publication in open access journals. The media coverage of the start-up of LHC demonstrates that there is interest in the general public in fundamental science, and in the structure and origins of our Universe. We should ensure that those who wish can see the results directly for themselves, and not only as viewed through the prism of the media.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:52 Comments (0)
We're with Brian Cox on this one. Although it should be taken with a pinch of salt. See Brian's explanation of his use of this entertaining and underused term in science.
Anyway, we're here to celebrate the most publically anticipated event in physics and probably science for quite some time. On Wednesday the LHC should be switched on and - should we not get swallowed up in a black hole - one of the biggest, most complex pieces of scientifice apparatus ever will hopefully, slowly start to reveal hitherto unknown secrets of the universe.
Everyone's talking about it and as a result, the radio and TV schedules are filled with programmes about the LHC (or maybe it's the other way round?). The BBC Radio 4 in particular is calling 10th September 'Big Bang Day'. A full ist of programmes is here, and will be availble to UK-based readers for 7 days afterwards on the BBC's iPlayer. Also see their interactive guide to the 4 main experiments and audio archive on particle physics.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:17 Comments (2)
We had a fun time reading through the entries to our PMC Biophysics T-shirt slogan competition entries. Many thanks to all of you who entered. There were some excellent puns on free-energy barriers, open conformations and a bizarre one suggesting 'denature yourself' (!) but we are happy to announce the winner is....[drumroll].... Paul Jackson with his entry of 'unconstrained'.
We liked this as - apart from it's obvious link to pendant groups being free to wiggle about - it also gets across the idea of unconstrained access to the article and data and also the fact that the author is not constrained by traditions of print journals as they are free to publish as much supporting data, video and applications as they wish. Thus, it was an easy decision in the end.
Sorry to the others, but Paul, your t-shirts will be winging their way to you soon.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 15:42 Comments (0)
I found this interesting blog post on Nature's dissection of BioMed Central's comments today:
It made me wonder why people are generally more likely to reply to a blog post than comment on a scholarly article. Certainly it is easier to comment on a blog post (often no registration or email verification needed), but maybe the fact that the comment is archived alongside the article makes people reluctant to comment unless they are 100% sure of their facts. After all, no one wants to be seen to be wrong in perpetuity! If you have never commented on a scientific article, what are your reasons. Did you agree 100% with all the articles you have read?While the normal forms of commenting occurred (criticism, requests for clarification, interpretive comments), to me the most interesting part of the commentary generated was the additional information users contributed, including links and downloads. This is new in richness and immediacy, factors that are unique to the online form.Kent Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen, Jul 2008
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:01 Comments (0)
Come and meet us in Edinburgh at ESSDERC & ESSCIRC
PhysMath
Central will be attending and exhibiting at the solid-state devices and ciruits
meeting ESSDERC & ESSCIRC 2008 in Edinburgh this year. If you are at the
conference, which runs from 15-18th September, come and meet us to grab some
freebies and discuss how open access can benefit research in your field. We
would be especially interested to receive papers on these subjects for consideration in PMC Physics B.
Edinburgh- city street by Angelrays
Posted by Chris Leonard at 15:13 Comments (0)
Why scholarly publishers should blog
Ginny Hendricks writes on the 'Marketing Publishers' blog:
Scholarly publishers should blog for the same community engagement and reputation management reasons as any corporation:
- Open and more frequent dialogue with customers.
- Release news and comment faster.
- Influence perceptions.
- Other influential blogs will link to you.
- You become an authority in your field.
All of which got me thinking, which other publishers blog? Nature, PLoS, BioMed Central. Any others? Is the ethos of open access more in keeping with the openess blogging?
I will also follow Ginny's advice and start blogging again. Sorry for the large gap in postings, but holidays don't take themselves you know.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 15:03 Comments (1)
PMC Biophysics extends free period
After a number of requests citing summer holidays and conference travelling, we have decided to extend the fee-waiver period for PMC Biophysics. As a result, there will be no article processing charge for all accepted articles which are submitted before 30 September 2008.
Now is an ideal opportunity to experience the benefits of publishing in an open access journal. Read about the scope of the journal and submit your paper here.
We are also pleased to announce that the journal will be archived in PubMed Central.
Posted by Morag Hickman at 14:16 Comments (0)
The above is a Wordle representation of a recent talk at Ted by Murray Gell Man on Beauty and Truth in Physics.
Below is a Wordle representation of the abstracts of published manuscripts in PMC Physics A to date [click image to reveal full awesomeness]. Why not play with it yourself to see what you can create?
Posted by Chris Leonard at 13:31 Comments (0)