Energy & Environmental Science is a new journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry. It covers "all aspects of the chemical sciences relating to energy conversion and storage, alternative fuel technologies, and environmental science." Although the University at Albany does not have a subscription to Energy & Environmental Science, our institutional subscription to other RSC journals allows free access during 2008 and 2009. The first issue is now available.
From the American Chemical Society, Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of society 's most challenging problems and how chemistry research is finding some of the solutions.
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.
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.
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.
Former U.S. vice president (1992-2000) and 2000 Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They were cited by the Nobel Committee "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Earlier this week (Wednesday, October 10, 2007) "a British judge ruled that Al Gore's award winning climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth should only be shown in schools with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination." The judge went on to say "some of the errors in Mr Gore's work had arisen in 'the context of alarmism and exaggeration' to support the former US vice-president's thesis on global warming." The judge set out nine alleged errors in the film in which statements were made that were not supported by the current mainstream scientific consensus.
Maybe the Nobel Prize Committee should reconsider!
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.
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 f