Top 20 Websites Every Scientist (or Engineer) Ought to Know
From Mary Spiro of the Baltimore Science News Examiner: Top 20 websites every scientist (or engineer) ought to know.
From Mary Spiro of the Baltimore Science News Examiner: Top 20 websites every scientist (or engineer) ought to know.
Due to Website maintenance, Wiley resources will not be available on Saturday, June 13 beginning at 9 am EDT. The downtime may last up to one hour.
Stephen Wolfram demonstrates his creation Wolfram|Alpha at Harvard University on April 28, 2009. Wolfram|Alpha is a new knowledge search engine.
Due to scheduled maintenance, Scopus will be unavailable on Saturday, May 16, 2009 for about 9.5 hours starting at 8:00 AM EDT.
Hosted by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) of the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the E-print Network, Scientific Societies is a collection of worldwide scientific and technical associations and societies. Specialized lists of societies can be generated by checking off one or more subject discipline and one or more language. Once the list is displayed, links are provided to the societies' Websites.
The publisher Walter de Gruyter is offering a new hybrid open access model called de Gruyter Open Library. It is available for its journals and book series. Open access articles will be available in their own OA repository. Additional information is available here.
Informaworld will have scheduled downtime on:
Friday, April 10 and Saturday, April 18.
Informaworld is the online home of publications from Taylor & Francis and Routledge.
SHERPA RoMEO was developed by a consortium of United Kingdom research libraries. Its purpose is to provide publisher's policies on preprint and postprint archiving in repositories, which is a part of a copyright transfer agreement. SHERPA RoMEO can be searched by journal title or publisher name, and browsed by publisher name.
Beginning at 6:00 PM EDT on Saturday, April 4, 2009 and lasting about 9 hours, Scopus and ScienceDirect will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance.
Looking for a place to publish your article? The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) now lists 4,000 journals! More information is here. More information about open access is here.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty vote unanimously to make their scholarly articles freely available to anyone on the Web. This new policy, which takes immediate effect, will use DSpace, an open-source software platform. MIT faculty will give nonexclusive permission to disseminate their articles via open access, however, faculty may opt out. More information is here.
Please note that I am not endorsing file sharing Websites and copyright violations; I am simply reporting information that I recently came across and did not know. File sharing Websites contain more than music and movies, they contain scholarly books and journals. For more on this subject, please see this blog posting from The Ubiquitous Librarian.
Scopus and ScienceDirect will be unavailable from 6 PM EST, Saturday March 7 to 7:30 AM EDT, Sunday March 8.
Research Blogging identifies and aggregates blog posts about serious peer-reviewed research. The posts are about real developments in science; they are not press releases or news reports. Research Blogging includes science research in biology, chemistry, computer science, geosciences, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, and other subject areas. Bloggers who want their posts aggregated must register. RSS feeds are available for all topics or by individual subject.
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is now offering RSS feeds by major subject category. By subscribing to an RSS feed from NTIS, you will receive summaries of all newly cataloged reports for the subject category. Links to additional information are also furnished. The full list of NTIS RSS subject feeds is available here, and includes feeds for atmospherics, chemistry, computers, energy, environment, materials, mathematics, medicine & biology, natural resources & earth sciences, nuclear science & technology, and physics.
Academic Earth is an organization with the goal of giving a world-class education to everyone on Earth. To achieve this goal, Academic Earth identifies and provides access to lectures given by leading experts from the some of the top universities. Subject coverage from this growing collection includes biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and physics.
Wikibooks is a collection of open content textbooks. Open content means that these textbooks are freely available online. A textbook is defined by Wikibooks as "a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of educational institutions." Wikibooks is not... Wikibooks provides access to textbooks for these science/technology subjects: biology, computer science, engineering, mathematics, natural sciences, and physics.
Developed by Elsevier, CiteAlert is a free, "keep me posted-type" email service. Once an author is registered, the author will receive an email alert when the author's article is cited by another author in a newly published article. What the catch? 1. The newly published article must be an Elsevier journal. 2. The author's original article must be indexed in Elsevier's Scopus databae, and published since 2005. 3. No self citations.
Created by Springer using their Journal collection of 1,900 titles, AuthorMapper is an online tool that aids document discovery by subject. With a keyword search it is possible to:
AuthorMapper includes advanced search features which help refine a search. Results contain visualization tools like graphs, timelines, and keyword tag clouds.
Owned and operated by Elsevier publishers, SciTopics is a free, wiki-like platform that provides summaries of scientific topics by experts in the field. Using Scopus, it links to important journal articles for the topic (a subscription may be required to use Scopus and a subscription may be required to access the journal article). Using Scirus, it links to important Web pages. SciTopics is searchable, and RSS feeds are available.
Due to site maintenance, there may be an interruption in the online service for Wiley journals on Saturday, December 27, 2008. The service interruption is scheduled to begin at 9 AM and may last from 2 to 6 hours.
I've selected the following as the top 10 Science Resources for 2008. These are my favorites. There were so many great resources, that the list grew to 15; so you get a bonus of 5. They are in the chronological order that they appeared in Science Resources. Links are provided to the original blog post.
Programmers at Work
Bytesize Science
International Field Guides
Online Journals from the New York State Library
High-Energy Physics Labs Join to Build a New Scientific Information System
Fora.tv: Tech & Science
FreeBookCentre.net and Computer Programming Ebook Collection
National Science Foundation: Multimedia Gallery: Video
ScienceBlogs
Free Chemistry Drawing Programs
SciFinder Podcasts
Decoder for Biochimica et Biopysica Acta
ticTOCs: Journal Tables of Contents Service
The Periodic Table of Videos
As part of the University Energy Savings Initiative, the Science Library will be closed December 20, 2008 through January 4, 2009. When the Science Library reopens at 8 AM on January 5, 2009, it will be heated to 63 to 65 degrees F, hot water will be available, and interior lighting will be turned on as needed. The Science Library will return to normal conditions on January 20, 2009.
While it is closed, materials from the Science Library will be paged. Please use UA Delivery to request materials. Book requests will be paged and held at the University Library for you to pick up. Journal articles will be scanned, and made available electronically.
There will be no interruption to Interlibrary Loan and UA Delivery electronic article delivery services during this period. However, due to seasonal shutdowns in many research libraries, ILL article turnaround time may in some cases be slower than normal.
ticTOCs: Journal Tables of Contents Service is a table of contents service developed by a consortium of United Kingdom universities and information providers. ticTOCs is free and covers over 11,000 journals from over 400 publishers. Tables of contents can be accessed by searching by journal title; links are provided to the full text. Users can also register and use MyTOCs to create and permanently save a set of journals titles for future use. It is also possible to export TOC RSS feeds to feedreaders.
From Time magazine's The Top 10 Everything of 2008, the Top 10 Scientific Discoievers lists and describes some of the most important discoveries of 2008. Also, check out these science/technology lists: Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs and Top 10 Gadgets.
The November 2008 (vol. 41, no. 11) issue of Computer is a special issue featuring several articles on e-Science.
Science Dissemination Using Open Access: A Compendium of Selected Literature on Open Access , edited by E. Canessa and M. Zennaro, servies as guide to the scientific community on the requirements of open access, and contains numerous inexpensive solutions. The book encourages institutions to adopt open access policies.
On Saturday, November 15, Scopus and ScienceDirect will be unavailable for scheduled upgrades during the following periods:
Scopus: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
ScienceDirect: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Scopus trainers will be in the Science Library Atrium on Wednesday, September 17, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. They will be demonstrating the Scopus database, and will be available to answer you questions. Students and faculty are welcome to stop by. Refreshments will be served.
JSTOR has added the following journals:
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) will discontinue print subscriptions after 2010. This policy applies to all AGU journals, except Eos Transactions. For additional information, please see: The Demise of Print by Francis Albarède, Eos Transactions, 89 (28), 257.
80beats is a science news aggregator from Discover Magazine. It can be viewed as a single blog or via subject: health & medicine, mind & brain, technology, space, human origins, living world, environment, and physics & math. Each subject is further divided into subcategories. 80beats is searchable and RSS feeds are available.
The New York State Library has begun digitizing important resources in the sciences. The New York State Library Digital Collections currently has two important works:
These resources are also available in Special Collections of the UAlbany Libraries.
Citation Statistics is a report commissioned by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the International Council on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). It is "about the use and misuse of citation data in the assessment of scientific research," and "is based on practices as reported from mathematicians and other scientists from around the world."
From the U.S. National Science Foundation, this growing collection of videos from the Multimedia Gallery highlights some of the latest scientific research findings. Although the videos are produced for children, its content is informative for all. The multimedia collection is searchable and RSS feeds are available.
ScienceBlogs is a collection of blogs in science, health & medicine, brain & behavior, and technology, along with non-science blogs covering the humanities & social sciences, education & careers, and politics. The individual blogs can be browsed by channel (subject) or the entire collection can be searched. RSS feeds are available for the entire collection, the channels, selected best posts, or individual blogs.
A recent article on impact factors has been made open access by Chemical & Engineering News, the newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. The article, authored by Sophie L. Rovner, is entitled "The Import of Impact." It is available here.
Fora.tv contains video content on "ground breaking ideas from important thinkers." Fora.tv's Tech & Science section is divided into 8 subject sections: energy, engineering, environment, health & wellness, personal tech, science, technology, and the Internet. There is content overlap among the sections. The site is fully searchable, with basic and advanced search modes. Each video includes a written transcript of the program.
Using data from the Scopus database, Top Cited lists the top 20 cited articles for 26 subject areas. The default provides the top cited articles for all subject areas; users can select a subject as well as three time periods: 2004-2008, 2005-2008, or 2006-2008. RSS feeds are available and a Google map shows authors' locations.
An article in ComputerWorld describes an erasable high-tech paper. Scientists at Xerox PARC have developed a high-tech paper that can be printed on, the text "deletes itself" in 24 hours, and it can be re-used up to 100 times.
An Earth Day 2008 posting: It was revealed on the ABC-TV newsmagazine 20/20 that An Inconvenient Truth, the supposed "documentary" by Nobel Laureate and former vice president Al Gore, uses computer-generated scenes from the 2004 science fiction movie The Day After Tomorrow. The scene shows ice shelves collapsing. Clips of the scene can be seen here. Other convenient lies are documented here.
Due to scheduled maintenance, please be advised that ScienceDirect will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes from 10:00 to 11:00 pm EDT on Friday, April 11, 2008.
The New York State Library (NYSL) has a growing collection of online journals in science. I've discovered several journals that NYSL provides access to, that UAlbany does not. For example, they provide access to the following journals from the American Scientific Publishers:
Journal of Nanoelectronics and Optoelectronics
Journal of Biobased Materials and Bioenergy
Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology
Journal of Bionanoscience
Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
Also, Wind Energy from John Wiley & Sons.
You can find out what they have at this page http://ty7zv9nn5c.search.serialssolutions.com/, where you can search by title or browse alphabetically.
THE CATCH: In order to remotely access the online journals from the New York State Library (NYSL), you must be a registered borrower of the New York State Library, which provides you with a borrower's card, a borrower's number, and a PIN. UAlbany's NetID will NOT work. For more information on obtaining a NYSL borrower's card, please see http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/apply.htm. Anyone can access NYSL's online journals, if they are in the New York State Library.
Cornell University's Engineering Library has updated its online "sticker shock" exhibit: Sticker Shock 2. The exhibit includes updated prices and cost per use information for Cornell University. This and the original Sticker Shock exhibit highlight the rising cost of journal subscriptions. The University at Albany provides access to most of the titles in this exhibit.
Editorial in the Swarthmore College student newspaper The Daily Gazette says "It is Time for Open Access."
From the American Chemical Society (ACS), Bytesize Science is a series of podcasts created to be both educational and entertaining. Bytesize Science translates research from ACS peer-reviewed journals, along with content from the ACS newsmagazine, Chemical & Engineering News, into short podcasts about science, health, medicine, energy, food, and other scientific topics.
From Knowledgespeak:
"Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences has reportedly voted for a policy that allows the university to make their scholarly articles available online for free. Under the proposal, Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. The copyrights of the articles will be held under Harvard's license. However, faculty members can request a waiver of the licence for particular articles."
In honor of Black History Month, the staff of the Science Library have created 3 displays: on the bulletin board adjacent to the circulation desk is a display on African American scientists and engineers, in the exhibit case outside the current periodical reading room are several books about African American scientists and engineer, and there are a few books about African American scientists and engineers displayed on the low shelving in the reference area. The next time you are in the Science Library, please take a look.
International Field Guides contains a searchable database to field guides for plants, animals, and other objects in North America and around the world. It may also be browsed by by type of organism and region covered. This site was created by Diane Schmidt, Biology Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
From the LJ Academic Newswire:
In a landmark post, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published on its Website the first ever public access policy for a major government agency and a lengthy FAQ explaining the policy and how to comply. According to the site, the policy will take effect on April 7, when "all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication." In addition, the policy includes a citation component as well, as of May 25, 2008, that will require all NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports to include "the PubMed Central reference number when citing an article that falls under the policy and is authored or co-authored by the investigator, or arose from the investigator's NIH award." The policy was signed into law on December 26 after years of support by the library community.
SciLink is like MySpace, but it's for scientists. SciLink provides a networking environment with management tools. Using data mining techniques, it claims to have established a database of over 5,800,000 scientists with over 104 million relationships, and SciLInk knows who is connected to who. It has an article database, a tree of science, a job board, and a science news section; all are searchable. SciLink is free, but registration is required to get its full benefits.
President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764). This law includes a provision that directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research. For more information, please see http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/release07-1226.html.
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) maintains and disseminates a large collection of scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information produced for and by U.S. government agencies. The NTIS database contains the records of millions of publications along with audiovisual materials, computer data files, and software. Nearly 1,000 new items are added weekly, many only available through NTIS. Recently, the Web-based database was extended back to 1964, and its search capabilities have been enhanced. Over 3 million items are in the NTIS database.
All World Scientific and Imperial College Press journals to offer an open access option. Authors have the option to pay $2,500 for their articles to be open access. Please see http://www.worldscinet.com/authors/openaccess.shtml for more information.
Elsevier launches of 2collab, a free online platform for scientific collaboration. "2collab provides the platform and tools needed for researchers to connect with their peers, enhancing the way they work together and offering an open and accessible space that will foster collaboration." Users can add and share bookmarks, tag resources, comment, and create groups. For a quick demo of 2collab, see this video on YouTube.
The Library is providing trial access to Scopus through December 18, 2007. It is available on campus only. Scopus covers 15,000 peer-reviewed journals in science, technology, medicine, and social science. For an overview, please see http://www.info.scopus.com/about/; for more detailed information please see http://www.info.scopus.com/detail/what/; for reviews please check the Charleston Advisor here and here. It has been proposed that the Library cancel its subscriptions to print and CD-ROM citation indexes published by Thomson Scientific (formerly ISI), and replace them with Scopus. Please send me any comments or questions.
From Credo Reference, the Reader's Guide to the History of Science is an encyclopedia covering individuals, institutions, disciplines, and general themes and central concepts. Each entry includes a detailed bibliography to locate addition information. This resource may be searched or browsed.
Covering biology, medicine, chemistry, and earth sciences, Nature Precedings is an repository for scientists and researchers to deposit and share pre-publication research, unpublished manuscripts, presentations, posters, white papers, technical papers, supplementary findings, and other scientific documents. Submissions are screened, but are not peer reviewed. Nature Precedings may be browsed or searched, and RSS feeds and email alerts are available for several subjects. Developed by Nature Publishing Group.
Elsevier has announced that it is conducting an ebook trial on ScienceDirect with over 900 research libraries and corporations, and apparently the University at Albany Libraries has been included in the trial. A press release is available here.
The trial provides access to 500 Elsevier books with copyright dates from 1995 and forward. To access the ebooks on ScienceDirect click on a subject below Browse by subject and then check off full text available and All Books. This will bring you to a list of ebooks for the subject selected.
Do you have questions about copyright?
Lorre Smith, the Libraries' expert on copyright, will be presenting a class entitled "The Rights of Scholarly Authors: Our Copy Rights and How to Keep Them" on Friday, October 26, 11am - 12 noon (Room: Bio 248a) and repeated on Friday, November 30, 1 - 2pm (Room: Hum 354).
The class "will provide a discussion of author copyright, negotiation of copyright with publishers and the implications of publisher copyright agreements. Participants will discover resources to help clarify author rights and take away tools to negotiate rights with publishers."
No registration is necessary.
Due to scheduled maintenance, ScienceDirect will be unavailable Saturday, October 20, 2007 for approximately 2 hours starting at 8:00 AM EST.
From Harzing.com, Publish or Perish "is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these, and presents various metrics." The software must be downloaded, and is available for both Windows and Linux platforms. Let the user beware.
From ISI's Journal Citation Reports, via Sci-Bytes, The Ten Most-Cited Journals of 2006.
National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs are biographies of deceased members, written by those who knew them or their work. Currently, there are over 900 biographies, however, all 1,400 memoirs will be available online in the near future.
From the American Chemical Society (ACS), Science Elements offers brief webcasts on cutting-edge discoveries described in ACS journals. In addition to chemistry, ACS journals cover topics in fields like medicine, health, nutrition, energy, and the environment.
SciVee is operated as a partnership of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). It's similar to YouTube, but for science. The goal of SciVee is to enhance the "free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science." Researchers are encouraged to post video presentations that will serve as quicker, more approachable guides to their work. SciVee also offers guidance on video production, and it allows scientists to make their recordings available as podcasts.
Geological Atlas of Africa, by Thomas Schlüter contains essential geological information about the nations and territories of Africa. Each country's or territory's entry include a summary of the geology, stratigraphy and tectonics, economic geology, geohazards, geosites, and a list of references. A CD-ROM includes all of maps from the book. This book is available in the Science Library at Science REF QE 320 S35X 2006.
Instant Message reference service is being offered in the Science Library. The IM service is using Meebo messaging, which does not require users to have an account or log in. To ask a question via the IM reference service, simply go to the Libraries' Contact Us Web page and use the Meebo widget to enter a question. Summer hours of the IM reference service corresponds with the Science Library's summer reference desk schedule: Monday-Thursday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Friday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
This entry is based on an email message from Irina Holden.
Current Science, India's premiere science journal, enters partnership with Nature Publishing Group. At some point in the future Current Science with be available on the Nature Web site, however, it will remain open access. Presently, the entire backfile of Current Science is available open access. For additional information, please see the story in The Hindu.
On Wednesday, June 27, 2007 the new borrowing interface for ILLiad will be available. The interface will be more intuitive for users, and the interaction between Interlibrary Services and UA Delivery Services will be more seamless. There will be new forms to request formats like videos, CDs, and dissertations.
WorldWideScience is a search engine and gateway to global science and technology resources. It accesses national portals such as Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI), DEFF Research Database (Denmar), J-STAGE (Japan), Science.gov, and Scientific Electronic Library Online (Brazil). WorldWideScience features both basic and advanced search options as well as direct access to the portals. Since it searches online catalogs, the full text of some of the resources may not be accessible.
Launching with over 1,000 entries, SciTalks is a repository of science lectures and talks from all over the world. The lectures (talks) range in length from brief to lengthy, and from basic or humorous to complex and serious. SciTalks can be browsed by scientific fields, or the entire collection can be searched.
Ebooks on ScienceDirect is available via trial access. At the moment, there appears to be 524 books in this collection. Using the “browse box” on the left, it is possible to sort the collection by subject. There are some non-science books in the collection. The trial runs through July 31, 2007, and is available to the UAlbany community only.
To celebrate its 200th anniversary, the Geological Society (London) has opened of its Lyell Collection of published material to all. The Lyell Collection represents one of the largest integrated collections on Earth science, and includes the Journal of the Geological Society, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, Special Publications, Memoirs, and other key book series. The Lyell Collection is only available May 17 through June 18, 2007.
The OpenScience Project contains a directory of open source scientific software. It lists resources under several categories including: chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, forensics, life sciences, mathematics (including statistics), nanotechnology, and physics. A search engine is also provided.
If you are blogging or podcasting, or just thinking about it, you should check out Blogging & Podcasting magazine. It provides sound advice for both the beginner and advanced blogger or podcaster. Although the Web and podcast editions are free, registration is required.
An article entitled "Serial Wars" by Lee C. Van Orsdel & Kathleen Born appears in the April 15, 2007 Library Journal. The authors survey the market, and found "for the second year in a row, academic libraries saw overall journal price increases just under 8%, U.S. titles rose 9% on average; non-U.S. titles were up 7.3%. The authors expect overall price increases to be in the seven to nine percent range again next year." The article is full of revealing information, including average prices for STM subjecs. Chemistry wins with the highest average price per title - $3,429. Other subject's average price per title are physics - $2,865; biology - $1,676; geology - $1,424; mathematics and computer science - $1,313; general science - $1,139. My guess is that this will translate into another budget reduction next year. Faculty and students should give serious thought to publishing in open access journals and other alternatives.
Our subscription to a package of Institute of Physics (IoP) journals includes online access to the Journal of Instrumentation (JINST). JINST is new multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published through a collabration of the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) and the IoP. Coverage begins with volume 1, 2006.
The Science Library recently installed a new 46 inch LCD television monitor. The monitor is located on first floor, above the right side of the circulation desk. It will be used to alert library users about new services and resources in the Science Library as well as other information about the Libraries in general. The first slide show is up and running. This project is being coordinated by Irina Holden.
The Science Library will offer extended hours during the Spring final exam period. The hours will be extended Tuesday to Thursday, May 8-10 and Sunday to Wedneday, May 13-16. On these days the Science Library will be open until 1:00 AM.
ScienceDirect will not be available on Sunday, March 11, 2007, beginning 1:00 AM EST. The downtime will be used to make adjustments for Daylight Savings Time, and may last up to 7 hours.
ScienceDirect will be unavailable on Saturday, March 3rd for approximately 9 hours starting at 6:30 AM EST.
From the Library of Congress, Biographical Sources in the Sciences: General Works and National Sources is a revision of LC Science Tracer Bullet 88-3. It "offers a systematic approach to the wide variety of published biographical information on men and women of science and technology. Both historical and contemporary scientists are covered, with emphasis on Americans."
Now in its second edition, Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty is based on courses given at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It contains a "collection of practical advice and experiences from seasoned investigators. The new edition includes chapters on laboratory leadership, project management, and teaching and course design."
Micropaleontology, published by MicroPress, has formally suspended delivery of current content to BioOne, beginning with vol. 51, no. 2, 2005. Volumes 48-51 (2002-2005) of Micropaleontology will remain on BioOne.
ScienceDirect will be unavailable on Saturday, February 24th for approximately 9 hours starting at 6:00 AM EST.
The Information Commons on the first level of the Science Library now has a scanner. The scanner uses both Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop to create PDFs or images.
I was about to recommend the purchase of a new book on scientfic and technical writing when I checked the Minerva catalog and discovered that we already have several excellent books on this subject. A few titles that struck me are:
The Best of Technology Writing 2006, edited by Brendan I. Koerner; Science Library / T 11 B463 2006.
Writing for Engineers by Joan van Emden; Science Library / T 11 V365X 2005.
To find more like these, search the Minverva catalog using the subject heading: Technical Writing.
On Saturday, January 20, 2007 ScienceDirect will be unavailable from 2:30 PM to 8:30 PM. Elsevier will be upgrading the search functionality.
The journals published by the Indian Academy of Sciences are open access, and all issues are available from their Web site. The journals are Current Science, Journal of Chemical Sciences, Proceedings - Mathematical Sciences, Journal of Earth System Science, Sadhana (proceedings in engineering sciences), Pramana - Journal of Physics, Journal of Biosciences, Bulletin of Materials Science, Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy, Journal of Genetics, and Resonance - Journal of Science Education.
The University of Alberta Libraries offer an excellent set of Web pages on open access. These pages cover background information, funding agencies, news, publications, publishers, a reading list, and a page on "what you can do."
It is now possible to browse an alphabetical listing of our journals and magazines via the Minerva catalog. The list includes both print and online journals. To access the journal title list go to http://minerva.albany.edu/journals.
Our trial access to Scopus concludes at the end of 2006. It will not be available in 2007.
Science Resources has been "re-designed." It now uses the pale palettes "subtle" theme from Movable Type. Please let me know, via the comments feature, if you are having difficulty reading Science Resources.
Today marks the first anniversary of the Science Resources blog. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!
When I started out, I wasn't sure how it would go. Although I previously had a "what's new" Web page for new Web sites I added to my Internet resources pages, I wasn't sure if I would find enough to write about. This is blog entry numer 184; that's a blog entry every other day for the year, but who's counting. I think I found enough to write about. Hopefully, the readers have learned something, and I've provided a valuable service. I know I've learned a lot. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please use the "comments" feature.
What's in store for next year? Much of the same ... new or underutilized science resources. I also hope to do a site re-design or makeover to make the blog easy on the eyes.
What would help me as I head into year 2? A spell checker! Come on MoveableType, isn't that basic for a writing tool?
The NBII Digital Image Library contains a diverse collection of images related to nature and the environment, mainly focusing on plant and animal species, scenic landscapes, wildlife management, and biological study/fieldwork. The Digital Image Library may be browsed by broad subject categories or searched for specific images.
The University Libraries has purchased a site-wide subscription to Science magazine. This subscription provides online access from 1997 forward from any location on campus, and off campus by authentication. To access articles prior to 1997, check the Minerva record for Science.
The Popular Science Browsing Collection in the Science Library has moved from the Current Periodicals Room on the first level to the Barnes & Noble Room on the garden level. For more information on this collection, please see this post.
On Thursday, October 19, 2006, it was announced on this blog that our online access to Science magazine was curtailed. The University Libraries will be purchasing a site-wide subscription, which will provide online access to the campus. When it becomes available, an announcement will be made on this blog.
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online contains the major works of the English naturalist. It is the largest collection of his work ever assembled, and includes searchable text pages and images of both publications and handwritten manuscripts. Descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens are included along with first editions of Journal of Researches (1839), The Descent of Man (1871), The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1838-43), and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the Origin of Species. Additional materials will be forthcoming.
Online access to Science magazine via the journal's Web site has been curtailed because the publisher (AAAS) no longer allows subscription access to individual workstations. They now require a site-wide subscription, which is under consideration. Online access to the backfile of Science is still possible. JSTOR provides access to 1880-2000. (JSTOR has a 5 year moving wall, so in 2007, the 2001 issues of Science will be added.) Ebsco Academic Search Premier provides access to 1997-2004. Don't forget the print version; the Science Library has Science magazine from 1908 forward, including the current issues.
The Encyclopedia of Earth is a "new electronic resource about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. It is a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other's work. The articles are written in non-technical language and will be useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public." Althougt the Encyclopedia is a wiki, all content is reviewed and approved by editors prior to being published.
The Information Commons, located on the first floor, east side of the Science Library, offers a variety of research and technical resources in an environment that fosters collaboration and creativity. 60 new computers provide a full suite of software as well as Internet access. For more information, visit the Information Commons Web site at http://library.albany.edu/infocommons/.
JSTOR's General Science Collection has been renamed as the Health and General Sciences Collection. It will be expanded to include several well-respected health sciences titles. The first three journals to be added are: the American Journal of Nursing (began publication in 1900), Environmental Health Perspectives (began 1972), and the Journal of Community Health Nursing (began 1984). During the next 2 years at least ten more journals will be added, including Epidemiology, Epidemiology and Infection, and European Journal of Epidemiology.
For authors that want to make their articles available with full open access, Springer offers the "Open Choice" option. If an author selects this option and pays the article processing fee, the article will be free to anyone, any time, anywhere in the world. Springer will continue to offer the traditional publishing model. For more information on Springer Open Choice, please see http://www.springer.com/openchoice/.
During the next few weeks, the journal collections from the major publishers, which the UAlbany Libraries subscribe to, will be desribed in this blog. The American Physical Society journals will be the first.
Oxford University Press launches a hybrid open access system. Authors can now choose to make their papers available immediately after publication by selecting the open access option and paying a publication fee. For more information and a list of Oxford journals that offer the open access alternative, please see http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/.
Elsevier announces that ScienceDirect will receive an interface redesign over the next few leases beginning with the release that will take place this month (August 2006). The redesign is supposed improve navigation, contain a quick search feature, and enable customization and personalization. For more information, and user guides and tutorials, see http://www.info.sciencedirect.com/using/.
Beginning January 2007, Nature Publishing Group will provide open access to all online content published before January 2003 for its academic and society journals. See press release for additional information.
From the Chronicle of Higher Education's The Wired Campus: Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, discourages academic use of his creation. See: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1328/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation.
The Royal Society (UK) will be running an open access trial. During the trial authors will have the option to pay publication costs ($553 / £300 / €439 per page). The papers of those authors who select this option will be freely available. For additional information, please see the Royal Society's FAQ. From the Financial Times, June 20, 2006.
“Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles,” an article by Gunther Eysenbach published in the May 2006 issue of PLoS Biology, finds that articles published as an immediate open access (OA) article on a top journal site have higher impact than self-archived or otherwise openly accessible OA articles. The article finds strong evidence that, even in a journal that is widely available in research libraries, OA articles are more immediately recognized and cited by peers than non-OA articles published in the same journal. It concludes that OA is likely to benefit science by accelerating dissemination and uptake of research findings. From SPARC eNews.
The Sciences at the University at Albany, 1845-2006 is currently on exhibit in the lobby of the Science Library.
The exhibit contains items from the University Archives as well as contributions from current faculty members. A small number of items and information from the exhibit are made available online at http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/sciences/ as an introduction to the physical exhibit.
The exhibit examines the growth of and changes in science education and research at the University at Albany over its long history through publications, photographs, class notes, memorabilia, and other records documenting University students, faculty, departments, and research centers.
I would like to thank science faculty member who loaned us research covers for the exhibit.
Beginning in June 2006, reserve circulation services will be available in the Science Library. Faculty may select the Science, Dewey, or University Library as the location of reserve items.
Elsevier will be offering their authors the option to pay a sponsorship fee to ensure that their article, already accepted for publication, is made freely available to non-subscribers via ScienceDirect. The fee for article sponsorship is $3,000.
The following physics journals are the first to offer this option:
Nuclear Physics A
Nuclear Physics B
Nuclear Physics B Proceedings Supplements
Nuclear Instruments and Methods A
Physics Letters B
Astroparticle Physics
Thirty more journals also plan to offer this option in the next two months. From Carl Schwartz, Elsevier Physics and Astronomy Publisher.