Physics Library News

Journal Impact Factor in the news

On May 17, 2013, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) launched, with support from journals, publishers, individuals and scientific organisations. On the DORA site there are links to several editorials in Science, Journal of Cell Biology, eLife and others, as well as a growing number of blog posts. Please do look at the full declaration, but here is a highlight: "General Recommendation: Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions."

This is a much-needed initiative. Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factors (available to WU users in the Journal Citation Reports/JCRweb database) have long been criticized, particularly when they are mis-used as measures of article and researcher quality by tenure-review committees, funding agencies, etc. But the Impact Factor has been around a long time and is relatively easy to obtain and understand. There are many other research assessment possibilities but none as easy to implement institutionally. This Research Impact and Evaluation guide includes links to many related resources. I don't see this blog post on the DORA site so I'll share it also: Impact Factors: A Broken System; there will probably be a lot written in the coming weeks about this.

Although not specifically related to DORA, the June 2013 issue of Elsevier's newsletter Research Trends is devoted to Research Assessment. These two articles are interesting: The use of assessment reports to generate and measure societal impact of research and The Challenges of Measuring Social Impact Using Altmetrics.

NOVA's Physics Blog

NOVA's Physics Blog is billed as "the physics of nothing, everything, and all the things in between." This "Nature of Reality" blog promises "a space that welcomes big ideas about space, time, and the universe." The posts here include graphics, animations, and other visually compelling materials. Visitors can scroll down on the right side of the page to look over Recent Posts, Recent Comments, and the contributors to the blog. It's a diverse group, including mathematician James Stein and physicist Frank Wilczek. Recent posts include "Why is the Higgs So Light?" and "Scientific Approaches to the Fine-Tuning Problem." Each entry concludes with the Go Deeper area, which features the editor's picks for further reading.

The Cost of Astrophysics

The Cost of Astrophysics - An interesting blog post which tries to answer the question, "How much does a typical astronomy paper cost taxpayers?"

NIH Public Access Policy

NIH Public Access Policy Information from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research

Federal Open Access Policy

White House Delivers New Open-Access Policy That Has Activists Cheering - The Obama administration says federally financed research should be made freely available within 12 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal. From John P. Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy: "I have issued a memorandum today to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publicly available free of charge within 12 months after original publication."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf

Teaching Advanced Physics

Teaching Advanced Physics - Maintained by staff members at the Institute of Physics, the Teaching Advanced Physics (TAP) website provides a wealth of resources designed to help teach physics to advanced high school and college students. The materials here are divided into seven sections, including Electricity, Mechanics, Vibrations and waves, and Energy. Within each of these sections, visitors will find smaller "episodes" which represent a coherent section of teaching that can be covered in one or two lessons. Each episode includes illustrations accompanied by explanatory text that can be used to complement an existing lesson plan. The extensive site covers over 30 topics, including circular motion, Newton's law, drag forces, and kinematics.

Big Physics Prize

Stephen Hawking Is Among Scientists to Win Billionaire’s Big Physics Prize - The Milner Foundation announced on Tuesday that the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking and a team of seven scientists at CERN, the European research center for particle physics, had won a pair of $3-million prizes, just months after the foundation honored nine other scientists with a group of equally lucrative awards. The foundation, named for the Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, also introduced the list of nominees for its 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize, which is worth $3-million. In a news release, the foundation said the CERN scientists were being honored for their work on the discovery of a new particle that fits the description of the elusive Higgs boson. The foundation lauded Mr. Hawking for his “deep contributions to quantum gravity and quantum aspects of the early universe.”

Sing About Science & Math: Lesson Plans

Sing About Science & Math: Lesson Plans  - If you have ever wanted to sing out loud and proud about oceanography, physics, or the natural world, this site is for you. This site is part of the larger Sing About Science & Math website which encourages young people to make a joyous noise about the world of science. This particular section of the site brings together lesson plans designed to encourage participation in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Visitors can scan through twenty or so lesson plans here including explorations of an "Ode to the Gaseous State" and a song about DNA sung to the ditty "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". Visitors can scan the items here by grade level and learn about the people responsible for their creation. Also, one can elect to submit a musical exploration of science for possible inclusion on the site.

Physics: Lesson Plans on the Internet

Physics: Lesson Plans on the Internet - Professor Norman Herr has worked tirelessly to promote science education through this professional site, and it remains a fine resource for science educators. Here visitors will find a vast range of resources related to teaching physics with a bit of chemistry thrown in for good measure. The site begins with a brief introduction of how to successfully search for such resources using well-known search engines such as Google. The materials are divided into areas that include Books, Lesson Ideas for Science Teachers, and Lesson Ideas for All Disciplines. The Lesson Ideas for Science Teachers area is a great place to start; it contains links to the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Science Education, NASA Educators, and the Mathematics and Science Education Gateway at Cornell. Of course, visitors shouldn't miss the Lesson Ideas for All Disciplines area, which includes links to the award-winning TeachNet site and the PBS TeacherSource site, which brings together audio and video clips.

Science.gov's 10th anniversary

Science.gov was launched in December 2002 and has broken new ground in interagency collaboration. Senior information managers representing 13 Federal agencies forged a consensus on how national science organizations could improve public access to the nation's rich and diverse scientific research information and partnered to create the Science.gov Web portal.

There are now more than 200 million pages in Science.gov, and the annual page views top 34 million, a 45-fold increase from the earliest days. The founding idea was to provide a comprehensive gateway to federal science information for those who might not know exactly where to find it. The interagency effort would raise scientific and technical literacy, serve as a foundation for future discoveries, and foster greater understanding of the public's return on investment from the government's science and technology efforts.