PhysMath Central Blog
Sign-up to fight the physics cutbacks
An email from Francisco Diego of the University College London Observatory is a call to action for UK-based scientists (or indeed anyone) to register their unhappiness with the current funding situation for physics & astronomy, which has lead to - amongst other things - the UK backing out of funding for the ILC.
There is now an approved (e)-petition online to collect signatures regarding the funding situation for physics and astronomy. Petitions with sufficient number of signees are forwarded to the government who then needs to come back with a response.
Its quick and easy;
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/
Please sign it and then forward this on so that it might reach critical
mass.
You must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition.
Also see this blog post from Imperial College for some more background to the story.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 13:58 Comments (2)
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)
UK Physics Funding under pressure
Bad news for physics funding in the UK yesterday as the Science and Technology Facilities Council had its budget slashed by the somewhat bizarre-sounding Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Due to higher than planned operating costs and a frozen budget, money is being redirected from other projects to cover this shortfall. As a result, the UK has backed out of funding the ILC, which was announced in 2 curt sentences, as follows:
"We will cease investment in the International Linear Collider. We do not see a practicable path towards the realisation of this facility as currently conceived on a reasonable timescale."
Much more on this story below:
UK Physics Investment Decimated
UK Physics on the chopping block
Ministers review physics funding - including a quote from PMC Physics A ed board memeber, Brian Cox.
Boffins slashed in big-science budget blunder bloodbath - comments are also worth reading.
Posted by Chris Leonard at 13:36 Comments (1)