PhysMath Central Blog
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)
PMC Biophysics - open access to the latest research in this interdisciplinary field
We are very pleased to announce the launch of the third fully-open access journal on PhysMath Central, PMC Biophysics.
The journal with its prestigious editorial board - headed by Huan-Xiang Zhou
- will publish research on all aspects of biological physics,
including theoretical and experimental aspects of; physical concepts
with potential applications to biological systems, physical models
inspired by biological systems, biological problems addressed by
physics-based methods and soft condensed matter & mesoscale systems.
Biophysics
is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field drawing on expertise in
physics, biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and even
engineering, and as such is one of the most vibrant areas of scientific
research. Examples of some of the primary areas if interest for the new
journal are:
- Thermodynamics and kinetics of biological processes
- Structural stability and confomational transition of biomolecules
- Correlation of macromolecular dynamics and biological function
- Macromolecular assembly
- Modeling of cellular environments
- Protein-membrane interactions and ion channels
- Signaling and interaction networks
- Energy transduction and motility
- Novel biophysical methods
Given
this interdisciplinary nature and the cross-over interest to people
working in bioinformatics, structural biology and associated fields, PMC Biophysics will be cross-listed on the BioMed Central site.
PMC Biophysics aims to provide
researchers in the field of biological physics with an open access venue where
they can communicate and discuss technological or theoretical
developments as well as novel applications of physics to biology. Along with other PhysMath Central journals, PMC Biophysics
will offer authors unparalleled dissemination of their work, no
restrictions on the length of their manuscript, or the number of
figures, and the ability to host multimedia elements, such as movies,
animations and audio descriptions alongside their text and figures.
Coupled to speedy referee processes and immediate publication upon
acceptance, we hope that this will make PMC Biophysics an outstanding venue for biophysicists to publish their research.
In
addition to the usual article types (editorials, research articles and
reviews) PMC Biophysics will also be soliciting work in the form of
Letters (short communications about a previously published article in
the journal), Mini-reviews (shorter reviews on an emerging field) and Problems (where readers are
invited to suggest biological problems which may merit further
investigation by physical methods).
Submissions to PMC Biophysics
are fully peer-reviewed. The peer-review process will be overseen by
the Editor-in-chief, working in association with expert Editorial Board
members to ensure that only the highest quality referees review
all submissions.
After peer-review, accepted papers will normally be subject to an Article Processing Charge.
However, to celebrate the journal's launch, there is no article processing charge for all accepted articles which are submitted before 30 September 2008.
This is the perfect opportunity to see for yourself how online-only
publishing offers many advantages over traditional journals, and to see
that open access means that your work is available to everyone, all
over the world, permanently and for free, leading to greater impact and
citations.
Submit your article now!
Posted by Chris Leonard at 19:08 Comments (2)
Open Access is not just a free pdf!
There is an exceptional editorial published recently in PLoS Computational Biology which goes into some detail about the benefits of making the full-text version of open access articles available to all as XML. The authors (Philip Bourne, Lynn Fink and Mark Gerstein) sometimes border on evangelism, but that is what is needed to inspire programmers & researchers to not only make use of this data (for thats what it is), but also to publish their results in open access journals which convert the full-text to XML. From the editorial:
Papers published as PDFs do not lend themselves to easy manipulation by computer. HTML is better, but the markup has more to do with presentation on a Web page than the semantic content of the paper, which is where the great opportunities lie. XML versions of the paper offer the most promise. When publishers make XML versions available, most conform to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Document Type Definition (DTD) (http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov). In addition, several markup languages have been developed, such as CellML (http://www.cellml.org) and MathML (http://www.w3.org/Math), which can be used in addition to the NLM DTD to further describe the semantic content of a paper. Semantically aware markup is further elaborated in a systematic fashion in the construction of the semantic Web, where the XML tags are related to each other in explicit ontologies. The analogy between an XML file of content offered by a publisher and XML content provided by a database provider should not be missed. As a community, we have been at the forefront of using the latter; will we be at the forefront of using the former? While the DTD and markup languages provide for extensions to meet the needs of each discipline, publishers and researchers have made little use of them to date. This is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg situation. When significant markup is available, it will be used; then again, why go to the trouble of adding significant markup if there are no applications demanding it? The best way out would seem to be to do something significant with the markup we have, which may then inspire authors, publishers, and others to see the research and commercial potential of the corpus.
The use of such markup is a hallmark of Web 2.0 and is manifest in the idea of a mashup. Simply put, a mashup is an integration of Web content from multiple sources to provide a new and more powerful service beyond what can be achieved by any of the individual sources of information it comprises. This type of integration is facilitated if the semantic content from each information source can be identified and thus allow meaningful integration to take place. Specifically in relation to publishing, the mashup manifests the blurring of the distinction between databases and journals, which will continue in future.
Here, here! That is why we ensure that all papers published by BioMed Central, Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central are all available as XML and we implore people to make use of this data in a way which could potentially allow for forward leaps, rather than steps, in scientific research.
Open Access: Taking Full Advantage of the Content
PLoS Comput Biol 4(3): e1000037 (March 28, 2008)
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:46 Comments (0)
Videos from Berkeley's SCOAP3 day
[hat tip to Peter Suber's Open Access News]
The videos from UC Berkeley's day on open access and, more specifically, SCOAP3 are now online. The video and sound quality are excellent and the presentations not too long. Worth watching.
1. Welcome & Opening Address
Tom Leonard, University Librarian, University of California, Berkeley
George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, University of California, Berkeley
2. What is Open Access, Anyhow?
Rick Luce, Emory University
3. The SCOAP3 Model
Salvatore Mele, CERN
4. Fund-raising in Europe
Jens Vigen, CERN
5. Expectations of a Large Research Institution
Ralf Schimmer, Max Planck Digital Library
6. US Consortia in SCOAP3
Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library
7. Individual US Libraries and SCOAP3 - Part 1
Miriam Blake, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LANL
8. Individual US Libraries and SCOAP3 - Part 2
Kimberly Douglas, Caltech
9. OA Synergies: Repositories for High Energy Physics
Travis Brooks, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC
Posted by Chris Leonard at 13:40 Comments (0)
Open Access is the answer for interdisciplinary research
A fascinating feature on interdisciplinary research in the lastest issue of Nature. Of particular interest is this quote (section marked in bold by me):
“Younger faculty tend to be concerned that if they get involved [in interdisciplinary work], their colleagues in the departments in charge of promotion and tenure will feel they haven't lived up to the standards of the discipline.” Other problems, he says, include finding places to publish — “it's much easier for people to get published in traditional disciplinary settings” — and finding an audience. A physicist could, say, publish a paper on stock-market patterns in Physical Review E, but how many economists will read it is another matter."
How many economists would subscribe, have access to or search a physics journal? Probably not many. However, research published in open access journals requires no subscription, is available to all and - due to the full-text being available online - is indexed by regular search engines, as well as the more specialist A&I databases. Serendipity is afoot.
Open access journals in interdisciplinary subjects makes sense. That is why we encourage researchers to get in touch and suggest areas where traditional journals are not working for their field.
Independent, open access journals on PhysMath Central.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:31 Comments (2)
Friday, March 7th: SCOAP3 day on PhysMath Central
Friday, March 7th is the date to mark in your calendar. This is the date we will be giving you a glimpse of the future in a SCOAP3 world.
As you may know, SCOAP3 is an initiative to get libraries to redirect subscription to pay for open access to all articles in high-energy physics. As such they will turn an entire field to open access and fund open access for all authors, all over the world, in high-energy physics journals.
On February 29th, there is a meeting at Berkeley to get US libraries informed and hopefully interested in making this vision a reality.
At PhysMath Central, we want to give authors a flavour of that future reality, so March 7th is a SCOAP3 day on the site. All articles submitted to PMC Physics A on March 7th will be peer-reviewed and accepted articles will be published without incurring an Article Processing Charge. Simply request a waiver with the words 'It's SCOAP3 day!'.
In the future, an article processing charge will be levied, but authors won't have to concern themselves about payment as SCOAP3 will cover expenses related to open access publication. As such, we hope this day will give authors a feel for the future where open access publication is the norm and publication costs are covered without them having to get involved.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 12:06 Comments (0)
Facebook fan page for PhysMath Central
We now have a fan page on Facebook! Yes, all you Facebookers out there can now declare your open access allegiances to PhysMath Central and get lots of associated information on where we are and what we are doing.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 15:38 Comments (0)
PMC Physics B publishes its first articles
We are proud to announce that PMC Physics B, specilaizing in condensed matter, atomic, molecular and optical physics and the interfaces between these areas, has today published it first articles:
Welcome to PMC Physics B
Stephen Buckman and Peter Hatton
PMC Physics B 2008, 1:1 (4 February 2008)
Metal-insulator transition and electroresistance in lanthanum/calcium manganites La1-xCaxMnO3 (x = 0-0.5) from voltage-current-temperature surfaces
J C Knott, D C Pond and R A Lewis
PMC Physics B 2008, 1:2 (4 February 2008)
Electron cooling by carbon monoxide in the atmospheres of Mars and Venus
Laurence Campbell and Michael J Brunger
PMC Physics B 2008, 1:3 (4 February 2008)
You can publish your article with PMC Physics B here.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:39 Comments (0)
Rolf Heuer goes APE for open access
There has been surprisingly little written on the web about Rolf Heuer's keynote speech at the Academic Publishing in Europe (APE 2008) conference in Berlin last week. Thankfully though, Peter Murray-Rust and the SCOAP3 initiative have come to our rescue. In fact, Peter reports that there was no wireless and no electricity at the meeting venue, so that explains the paucity of live blogging reports!
Heuer, who is an editorial board member of PMC Physics A and will takeover from Robert Aymar as Director General of CERN in January 2009, delivered his presentation entitled: "Innovation in Scholarly Communication: Vision and Projects from High Energy Physics" (pdf link, 7MB)
The presentation is particularly interesting as it looks not only at the SCOAP3 project and its plan to turn an entire field open access, but also it outlines what they plan to do with this new corpus of OA material. This includes commenting, tagging, text and data-mining, new bibliometrics to measure impact, aggregation of related material and the preservation and re-use of experimental data.
If anyone thinks that Open Acess is just reading a pdf for free on the web, then this presentation shows the world of possibilities that opens up when the entire dataset is interoperable, free of copyright and re-use retrictions and available to all.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 12:12 Comments (2)
UC Berkeley to cover fees for open access publishing
Researchers at UC Berkeley can now publish their articles with PhysMath Central (and other OA journals) and have their library cover 100% of any charge which may be payable.
From the press release:
The University strives both to maximize the benefits of Berkeley’s research for the scholarly community and to advance knowledge in ways that improve the quality of life in local and global communities. Today Berkeley joins other universities in the United States and Europe in offering its researchers access to funding to cover publication charges for open access (OA) journals and fees charged by non-OA publishers that are willing to provide immediate free access to articles.
This means, amongst others, PhysMath Central. From the FAQ:
What charges does this cover?
This initiative covers publication charges for open access journals such as PLoS, BioMedCentral, PhysMathCentral, and others (capped at $3000). It covers paid access charges for non-OA journals (capped at $1500 per article).
The program is an 18-month experiment funded by the discretionary
accounts of Thomas Leonard, University Librarian, and Beth Burnside,
Vice Chancellor for Research. Further information from the BRII homepage and here.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 12:07 Comments (0)
Scholarship for the Facebook generation
SPARC-ACRL Forum '08 from Matt Agnello on Vimeo.
A fascinating panel on "Working with the Facebook generation: Engaging students views on access to scholarship" at the recent SPARC-ACRL Forum, as captured on video by Matt Agnello. From the SPARC website:
Tech-savvy students, who live and breathe information sharing, are critical to changing the way scholarly communication is conducted. Not bound by traditional modes of research exchange, students are using all the technologies at their disposal to engage in scholarly discourse - including blogs, wikis and tagging tools. What will they do next? How do they view the future of scholarly exchange?
The third speaker is Andre Brown from one of our favourite blogs, Biocurious, who explains how blogs are simply another medium for comuunication - no more, no less. However, the potential of blogs and wikis for the dissemination of research is enormous and is roughly at the same stage the general web was 15 years ago i.e. it's about to explode and take us places we can't yet imagine, but we are going to like.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 11:06 Comments (1)
Confessions of an OA publisher
Just before Christmas I was approached by John Dupuis (of the excellent Confessions of A Science Librarian blog) who wanted to conduct an interview with me. Due to a rather hectic period of work, followed by a significantly less hectic period of holiday, I only managed to get the answers back to John yesterday - but they are already up on his blog. There are only 10 questions, but I did seem to give rather 'full' answers to most of them.
Read the interview in full here.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 10:22 Comments (0)
CERN & DESY become PhysMath Central members
We are very proud to announce PhysMath Central membership agreements with the CERN and DESY high-energy physics laboratories. Under these agreements the organizations will centrally cover article-processing charges for all research published by their investigators in the peer-reviewed, open access journal, PMC Physics A.
This reinforces CERN and DESY's commitment to supporting open access publication of the research from their laboratories. Central funding for article processing charges makes life much simpler for authors, and so accelerates the take up of open access.
Jens Vigen, CERN head librarian commented "This membership program is an important, intermediate, step towards the SCOAP3 publishing model, where high-energy physics literature will be open access and article processing costs borne centrally in a transparent way for authors". Salvatore Mele, SCOAP3 project leader, echoing Vigen's views, stated "The SCOAP3 consortium will be open to all high-quality peer-reviewed journals, including emerging publishing outlets as well as established titles".
>> Read the full press release here.
UPDATE: Rolf Dieter-Heuer of DESY & PMC Physics A editorial board (and quoted in the press release above) has today been officially announced as the new Director General of CERN. He takes over his new role from Robert Aymar in January 2009.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 14:58 Comments (0)
Open Access in Particle Physics
symmetry magazine has today published a new issue with a fascinating feature article (and not just because I am quoted in it!) on open access in the world of particle physics and how SCOAP3 is changing the way other disciplines are looking at funding open access. It is beautifully illustrated, as all their articles are, but the message in the text is clear - open access is the future for particle physics and other disciplines are watching to see if centrally-funded OA is the future for them too.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:31 Comments (0)
YouTube video channel launched
As you may have read on the BioMed Central blog recently, we recently launched an official BioMed Central video channel on YouTube. This includes many interviews with authors and editors of open access journals on BioMed Central.
But that's not all!
It also includes several videos of interest to physicists and librarians, from the likes of CERN's Jens Vigen & Robert Aymar and also PMC Physics A Editor-in-Chief, Ken Peach. [Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3]
You can subscribe to the channel to automatically receive alerts on new videos and also comment on the videos.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 16:00 Comments (0)