Applied Mechanics News

We are migrating to iMechanica.Org

2006-09-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

We are migrating AMN to iMechanica.Org.

In January 2006, with the encouragement of the Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division, several volunteers initialed Applied Mechanics News (AMN), a blog of news and views of interest to the international community of Applied Mechanics, accompanied by sister blogs covering research and researchers, conferences, and jobs. Within weeks, AMN topped the list on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the query of applied mechanics news. By late August 2006, the four sister blogs had a total of over 65,000 page loads, and on average over hundred unique visitors every day, from all over the world.

The Internet has enabled AMN to be international and inter-organizational. The news can be updated continuously by many volunteers. Some of the initial thoughts of AMN was collected in the entry Applied Mechanics in the Age of Web 2.0.

AMN is hosted by a free service, Blogger. The service is easy to get started, but does not serve our needs well. For example, people cannot become contributors by themselves, and Blogger offers no tagging. The contributors cannot upload files, and the resolution for images is low. The software is proprietary and allows limited customization. Also, Blogger is not accessible in China, a country that has perhaps more mechanicians than the US and Europe combined. The platform of Blogger has severely restricted the growth of AMN. The experience of AMN has taught us in our adolescent months, but we have grown.

We will migrate AMN to iMechanica.Org, a far more effective many-to-many communication platform, with the following initial features:

Without signing in, everyone can read every entry.
Everyone can sign in.
Upon signing in, each user has a blog.
Moderators may promote new entries to the front page of iMechanica.
A user can subscribe to the RSS feeds of the front page, individual blogs, individual tags, and more sophisticated combinations.

These and other features can be customized. We will experiment with various options of moderation. While iMechanica will never replace conferences, it will enable people who do not go to the same conferences to communicate with each other. In particular, we will make a special effort to bring industrial practitioners and students into this online community.

The initial features are adopted with particular emphasis on ease of use. If you know how to send an email, you know how to post a blog entry. So why not leran more about iMechanica, and join us today in this exploration of the brave new world of the Internet.

Plan activities of the Applied Mechanics Division at 2007 ASME Congress

2006-09-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

The ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) will be held in 11-16 November 2007, in Seattle, Washington. As the 2007 Program Chair of the Applied Mechanics Division (AMD), I hope to get you involved in planning activities at the Congress.

IMECE is a place where you can meet people and attend talks in Applied Mechanics, as well as in other fields, such as Materials, Electronic Packaging, Tribology, and Heat Transfer. For many mechanicians, a highlight of the Congress is the Applied Mechanics Annual Dinner, where old acquaintances are resumed, new friends made, awards announced, and the Timoshenko lectures delivered.

Also, as many of you have discovered, the Congress provides a venue for people to get involved in the profession by organizing activities.

What can you do to help planning the 2007 Congress? The year 2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Timoshenko medal. You may want to nominate an outstanding mechanician for this and several other awards. The deadline for nomination is 1 October 2006. The AMD Executive Committee, in conjunction with the Committees for the individual awards, will select the finalists at the 2006 ASME Congress on Thursday, 9 November 2006, in Chicago.

You may also help organizing technical sessions. Each session is 90 minute long, and has about four speakers. Related sessions may form a symposium. Before you go about organizing sessions for the 2007 Congress, you may want to look at the program of the 2006 Congress.

All technical sessions at the ASME Congress are organized by volunteers--educators, practitioners and researchers like you. If you are thinking of organizing a symposium for the 2007 Congress, ask yourself a few questions:

What is the title or theme of your symposium?
Does the theme open a new area of research, or fill a long-felt need?
Who will be potential speakers?
How many sessions would you like to request?

Once you have answered these questions, you should contact the chair of one of the 17 Technical Committees in AMD. At the Chicago Congress, most Technical Committees will hold open meetings. The Executive Committee will hold a general meeting on Friday, 10 November 2006, 10 am-12pm. These meetings are open to all. A major item at these open meetings will be the planning for the 2007 Congress. If you would like to organize a symposium for the 2007 Congress, please contact the chair of a technical committee before November 2006, and try to attend the open meetings.

What else can you do now? Mark the dates 11-16 November 2007 in your calendar, and plan to spend the days in Seattle. Of course, you are always welcome to contact me to talk about Applied Mechanics at the 2007 Congress. If you have any suggestions, please leave comments below. To help us advertise, please e-mail this message to your friends.

Thank you.

Zhigang Suo
suo@deas.harvard.edu

MS Office killers: productivity software in the age of collaboration

2006-08-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

Office contributed $11 billion in revenue in 2005, accounting for 30 percent of Microsoft revenues—and about 60 percent of profits.

But over the years stuff happened. The Internet, intranets, and email transformed workflows. Globalization and outsourcing dispersed people to satellite offices and partner companies. Collaboration tools became critical.

More on these changes in an article in Red Herring on web-based word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software, and a report in Information Week on the launch of Google Apps.

Update added on 2 September 2006.
Anil Dash argues that Google Apps do not compete with MS Office.
Donna Bogatin's rebuttle.

Get Wiki With It - Wired Magazine

2006-08-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

Getting published in the illustrious British scientific journal Nature is, frankly, a bitch. It's not just the years you spend designing the perfect experiment, or the hustling for grant money to collect the data. It's not even the long nights of trying to figure out how to express all that work elegantly in the cold language of scientific communication. No – the real trick is getting the editors at Nature to like it. Read more of this article in Wired.

Related websites:

What if all papers become openly accessible?
The new open-access scientific journal PLoS One.
Nature Peer Review Trial and Debate.
A conversation on open access between Jon Udell and Peter Suber.

Registration for the 2006 ASME Congress

2006-08-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

The deadline for early registration is 25 August 2006. Early registration will save you $50.

If you are a presenting author, ASME now requires that you register before 25 August 2006. Otherwise, the paper will not be included in the final program.

To register as a presenting author, you will need to find the paper number of your presentation in the technical program, and then register on this site.

Malcom Gladwell on The Case of Geothermal

2006-08-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Using an RSS reader, netvibes, I subscribe to blogs of a few writers. Whenever one of them posts an entry, its title appears in my RSS reader. I can read the entry when I have time.

Here is an entry by Malcom Gladwell on The Case of Geothermal. I’m no energy expert, and cannot evaluate various points that he made. Gladwell himself is no expert, either. But the comments of his readers give me a better appreciation of issues.

Wouldn’t it be nice if papers in Applied Mechanics be discussed this way?

GEM4 Summer School "Cell and Molecular Mechanics in BioMedicine"

2006-08-17T20:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the last day of GEM4 summer school on "Cell and Molecular Mechanics in BioMedicine", held at MIT. From what I have seen, it is a great success. There are approximately 50 students from all over the world attending the 2-week course. It is quite intense, starting everyday at 8:30AM and ending 5PM, including three afternoon lab sessions.

The course notes are posted at:
http://openwetware.org/wiki/GEM4labs

Next year the summer school will be held in Singapore.

NSF Dear Colleague Letter: Supplements to NSF Centers

2006-08-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

From Ken Chong, National Science Foundation:

The Dear Colleague Letter for NSF-SIA/NRI Graduate students and Postdoctoral Fellow Supplements to NSF Centers in Nanoelectronics (NSF06-051) has been released. Supplement requests are due November 17, 2006.

A symposium to celebrate the 60th birthday of Alan Needleman and Viggo Tvergaard

2006-08-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

16-18 August 2006, Providence, RI

Gordon Conference on Thin Films and Small Scale Mechanical Behavior

2006-08-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Gordon conference on “Thin Films and Small Scale Mechanical Behavior”, which started on July 30, concluded less than two weeks ago on the 4th of August. You can find the lists of talks and posters online. It was quite an event and since there may be many in our community who may not be familiar with the Gordon conferences, I though I should post a brief news item on it. I hope other attendees can add a few tid-bits of their own as well.

By design, Gordon conferences are by invitation only, consisting of a mixture of senior and junior researchers. This series of conferences started in 1931 and it seems that one is held on all conceivable scientific subjects (e.g. superconductivity, tribology, reproductive tract biology; see the complete list: http://www.grc.uri.edu/06sched.htm). The conference chair decides on the invitees. A few of the conference invitees are selected by the Chair to give lectures that are intended to be partly tutorial, partly reporting on cutting edge research and (hopefully) thought-provoking. Typically there are 2-3 lectures in the morning (each roughly an hour long along with substantial time devoted to discussions). The afternoons are kept free for networking and social activities such as hiking, canoeing among others. After dinner, there are additional 2-3 presentations. To keep the cost low and foster communication, the participants all live together in a dormitory where they also share their meals. The attendee cost of the GRC last week stood at $725 including lodging, registration, and meals---not to mention lots of beer served during the pre and postprandial poster sessions!

In the conference held last week more than 170 people attended including a sizable fraction being students. It is worth mentioning that about 40 students received travel fellowships provided by the National Science Foundation. The Conference also received financial support from the Gordon Research Foundation, Intel Corporation, Sandia National Laboratories, National University of Singapore, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation.

This was my first GRC and left quite pleased with my visit (notwithstanding the heat wave hitting the east coast at the time of the conference). In particular, I thought, the poster sessions and the informal technical discussions were the major highlights. The attending students formed a very dynamic crowd and, in my short career, I have yet to see such a spirited interaction among senior and junior researchers. Over 110 posters were presented at this conference and six student prices were announced for the best ones. In my opinion, the Gordon conference (and mechanics specific Thin Air Philosophical Society series organized by Demitris Kouris) much better provide (compared to some of the “canned” society conferences) the true spirit of a scientific gathering i.e. unhurried, detailed scientific debate and discussion.

The chair and vice-chair for the next GRC-Thin Films and Small Scale Mechanical Behavior are Richard Vinci (Lehigh University) and Oliver Kraft (Institute for Materials Research, Karlsruhe), respectively.

Active Nanostructures and Nanosystems

2006-08-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

From Ken Chong, National Science Foundation.

The FY 2007 solicitation "Active Nanostructures and Nanosystems" has been published (NSF 06-595, ANN) . The proposal submission deadline is November 15, 2006.

The Wealth of Networks

2006-08-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

For the past 10 days, I've been traveling in China. I brought with me a single book, The Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler. The book is a careful analysis of peer production, and is closely related to various discussions in Applied Mechanics News on the future of scholarly publishing. You can read a synopsis, look at a wiki, or download the full text of the book.

Mechanics of Biological and Biomimetic Materials at Small Length-Scales

2006-08-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

A special focus issue on small-scale biomechanics has just been published as the August, 2006 issue (Volume 21, No. 8) of the Journal of Materials Reseach. The issue contains three invited review papers:

"Mechanical response of human red blood cells in health and disease: Some structure-property-function relationships" by S. Suresh

"Fracture, aging, and disease in bone" by J.W. Ager, G. Balooch, R.O. Ritchie

"Nanoindentation: Application to dental hard tissue investigations" by L. Angker, M.V. Swain

The issue also contains a wide variety of contributed articles examing a wide range of materials and using a broad range of experimental and modeling techniques. Guest editors for the issue were Andy Bushby, Adrian Mann, Christine Ortiz and Michelle Oyen.

Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film and Small Scale Mechanical Behavior

2006-08-03T04:39:00.000-07:00

About 170 of us are meeting this week in Colby College, in Maine. Participants will describe the Conference in some detail. For now, let me report that we have elected the chairs for the next two Conferences:

2008 Conference Chair: Rick Vinci
2010 Conference Chair: Oliver Kraft (oliver.kraft@imf.fzk.de, Institute for Materials Research, Karlsruhe)

Time and place of the Conferences have not been set. Stay tuned.

Why should CEOs blog? - New York Times

2006-07-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

A previous entry in Applied Mechanics News, entitled Applied Mechanics in the Age of Web 2.0, talked about why we mechanicians should blog. A New York Times article today talks about why CEOs should blog also.

Wei Yang becomes the President of Zhejiang University

2006-07-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

I had a dinner with Wei Yang the other day. He told me that he would accept the offer to become the President of Zhejiang University, starting this week.

Wei Yang obtained his PhD degree in Solid Mechanics at Brown University, in 1980s, under the direction of Ben Freund. Ever since Wei has been on the faculty of Tsinghua University. He has collaborated with many mechanicians world wide, and produced a large number of students.

Both his father and his son are alumni of Zhejiang University, but Wei himself has no degree from the University.

e-mail alert of journals and bookmarklet

2006-07-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

I've just learned another good use of a bookmarklet described in a previous entry of Applied Mechanics News.

Some of us subscribe to tables of contents of journals, say IJSS and JMPS. When a new issue of a journal is online, Elsevier will send you an email. In this email, each paper is linked to the webpage of the paper. On the webpage is the familiar PDF button. Clicking this button, you will land on another webpage that asks you to pay for the paper, even though the library of your institution has already paid for the journal. To down load the paper, you will have to enter the journal through the gateway of the library.

This last step is annoying, but you can automate the step with a single click of a bookmarklet, as described in the previous entry in AMN.

Of course, there is an even better solution. Publishers can simply embed the proxy string of your library in every link. The cost for publishers to do so is zero, so far as I can tell. To avoid confusion, they can add a link "Find at Harvard" (or xyz) to each paper in the email, just as Google Scholar and Web of Science have already done.

These personalized links will significantly ease navigation, and might greatly increase the popularity of email alerts. It seems to be a win-win solution. What do you think?

Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?

2006-07-26T18:19:00.000-07:00

In an early entry in Applied Mechanics News, I speculated on Wikipedia and Applied Mechanics. Since then, many colleagues have talked to me about their own initial reactions and subsequent experiences with Wikipedia. The strength and some of the issues of Wikipedia are described in an article by Stacy Schiff in this week's New Yorker.

NINTH U.S. NATIONAL CONGRESS ON COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS, San Francisco, July 22- 26, 2007

2006-07-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

BACKGROUND AND SCOPE

From their inception in 1991, the biennial congresses of the United States Association for Computational Mechanics have become major scientific events, drawing computational engineers and scientists worldwide from government, academia, and industry. The Ninth U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM IX), hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, will feature the latest developments in all aspects of computational mechanics, and will broaden the definition of the discipline to include many other computation-oriented areas in engineering and sciences. From applications in nanotechnology and bioengineering, to recent advances in numerical methods and high-performance computing, the technical program will reflect the Congress theme of ``Interdisciplinary Computation''. In addition to plenary lectures and minisymposia that highlight the latest trends in computational mechanics, pre- and post-conference short courses addressing advances in multiscale and multiphysics methods, as well as other topics, will be held. Numerous vendor exhibits from Bay Area and national companies and organizations are also planned. Detailed information on USNCCM IX can be found at:

http://me.berkeley.edu/compmat/USACM/main.html

LOCATION
USNCCM IX will be held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, located in downtown San Francisco, with convenient access from San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose International Airports.

CONGRESS REGISTRATION FEES
Early (by June 1, 2007) Late
Participant: $595 $695
Student: $250 $300

The participant fee covers the conference abstracts, a conference program, the reception, banquet, all break refreshments, and a twoyear membership in USACM and IACM. The student fee does not include the membership dues.

ACCOMMODATION
Block room reservations with special room rates are available at the conference hotel: single occ. double occ. cutoff date
Hyatt San Francisco $195 $195 June 28, 2007
Reservations can be made starting July 1, 2006 (please mention ``USNCCM9'' to receive the conference rate). Government and student rates are also available on a first-come, first-served basis.

IMPORTANT DATES
Website open for minisymposia proposals August 1, 2006
Deadline for minisymposia proposals January 15, 2007
Final selection of minisymposia February 1, 2007
Website open for abstract submission February 1, 2007
Deadline for abstract submissions April 1, 2007
Final selection of abstracts April 15, 2007
Deadline for print-ready abstracts June 1, 2007
Deadline for early registration June 1, 2007
USNCCM IX technical program July 23-26, 2007
Pre- and post-conference short courses July 22 & 26, 2007

CALL FOR MINISYMPOSIUM PROPOSALS
A wide variety of minisymposia forms the backbone of the Congress' technical program. A minisymposium consists of one or more technical sessions that focus on a specific topic or research area associated with computational mechanics. The technical sessions provide a flexible format that accommodates keynote
lectures, invited, and contributed papers. Volunteer minisymposium organizers will develop each minisymposium individually. The organizers are responsible for the technical content of their minisymposium; they select invited participants,
and review abstracts of contributed papers. The Technical Program Chairs invite proposals for minisymposia from the Computational Mechanics community. All proposals
must be submitted electronically via the Congress web site. There should be at least two organizers for each minisymposium; it is desirable that they represent more than one institution. Teaming of U.S. and international co-organizers is encouraged. The
minisymposia proposals deadline is January 15, 2007. Notification of the final selection of minisymposia will be given no later than February 1, 2007.

MINISYMPOSIUM TOPICS
The Ninth U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics will feature symposia in several emerging and mature areas: Biophysics, Mesh Generation, Error Analysis, Meshfree Methods, Finite Element Technology, Failure Analysis, Applications in
Engineering Practice, Optimization and Sensitivity Analysis, Computational Dynamics, Stochastic Finite Element Methods, Inverse Problems, Coupled Problems, Computational Acoustics, Computational Electromagnetics, Granular Materials and Discrete
Element Methods, Automotive Problems, Advances in Commercial Finite Element Software, Multiscale Methods in Materials Modeling, Computational Advances in Modeling Heterogeneous Materials, Geotechnical Applications, Contact-
Impact Problems in Nonlinear Mechanics, Discontinuous Galerkin Methods, Computational Combustion, Methods and Applications in Coupled Engineering Simulation, and Computational Fluid Dynamics.

CALL FOR TECHNICAL PAPERS
All technical papers, including keynote, invited, and contributed presentations, will be presented within one of the Congress's minisymposia. One-page abstracts in PDF format are required for all papers. Abstracts must be submitted to one
of the accepted minisymposia organizers for review. All abstracts must be submitted electronically using the abstract submission system that will be available on the Congress website, beginning February 1, 2007. The deadline for abstract
submission is April 1, 2007. Authors submitting abstracts of contributed papers will be notified of a decision on acceptance no later that on April 15, 2007. Following the notice of acceptance, authors will have until June 1, 2007 to revise their
abstracts.

HONORARY CONGRESS CHAIR
Robert L. Taylor, University of California, Berkeley
CONGRESS CHAIRS
Panos Papadopoulos, University of California, Berkeley
Tarek I. Zohdi, University of California, Berkeley

LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
F. Armero (Berkeley), P.P. Collela (LBNL),
D.C. Chrzan (Berkeley), C. Farhat (Stanford),
R.M. Ferencz (LLNL), R.E. Jones (SNL),
A.J. Lew (Stanford), S. Li (Berkeley),
M.R.K. Mofrad (Berkeley), P.M. Pinsky (Stanford),
C.A. Taylor (Stanford)

Applied Mechanics Division call for normination: 2006-2007 Awards

2006-07-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

The AMD Executive Committee is now seeking nominations for the awards listed below. The deadline for nominations is October 1, 2006 by 5pm Eastern Time.

Daniel C. Drucker Medal
The Daniel C. Drucker medal was established in 1997 and is conferred in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of applied mechanics and mechanical engineering through research, teaching and service to the community over a substantial period of time.

Warner T. Koiter Medal
The Warner T. Koiter Medal, established in 1996, is bestowed in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of solid mechanics with special emphasis on the effective blending of theoretical and applied elements of the discipline, and on a high degree of leadership in the international solid mechanics community.

Timoshenko Medal
The Timoshenko Medal was established in 1957 and is conferred in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of applied mechanics. Instituted by the Applied Mechanics Division, it honors Stephen P. Timoshenko, world-renowned authority in the field, and it commemorates his contributions as author and teacher.

Applied Mechanics Award
To an outstanding individual for significant contributions in the practice of engineering mechanics; contributions may result from innovation, research, design, leadership or education.

Young Investigator Award
Special achievement for a young investigator in Applied Mechanics.

A brief description of the award appears in the ASME Website. In addition, be sure to adhere to the requirements as outlined in the appropriate nomination form.

Nominations should be sent following ASME website directions and should also be sent directly to Thomas N. Farris by October 1, 2006 at:

Thomas N. Farris, AMD Chair
School of Aeronautics & Astronautics
Purdue University
315 N. Grant Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2023
Tel: 765-494-5118
Fax: 765-494-0307
Email: farrist@purdue.edu

Related entry: 2005 AMD Awards.

The long tail of papers

2006-07-25T05:05:00.000-07:00

In an entry on pay per paper, I alluded to Chris Anderson's new book, The Long Tail. It should be straightforward to collect page views or down loads or citations of individual papers in a journal. You can plot the numbers of hits of individual papers against the rankings of the papers. Here is the curve for articles in Slate. (Not sure why data stopped at top 500 hits. Why not go further to see a really long tail?) Hope someone in Applied Mechanics will show the same data for JMPS, IJSS, MOM, etc. It will be fun.

Here is the gist of Anderson's observation: If you care about the total sale, as a publisher might, then what matters is the area under the curve; the contribution of the tail may rival that of the head. This much is objective, and should not be controversial.

Now allow me to play a variation of the theme, which is admittedly subjective and possibly controversial. Let's say the net contribution of a journal to new knowledge is proportional to the area under the curve (the subjective part). Then numerous less cited papers may make a significant contribution comparable to the contribution made by the best cited papers.

If you are interested in this argument, you might as well generalize the analysis from a single journal to all journals in a field, or to all journals in science, engineering and medicine. I'm not sure if such a curve has ever been plotted, but the job should not be too hard.

Now, if you are an individual author, surely you'd like to have a lot of hits for your own papers, just as Anderson is celebrating his book becoming a best seller. However, if your job is to increase the total knowledge, as the NSF is set up to do, then you might as well pay as much attention to the long tail as to the tall head.

Fracture and Failure Mechanics TC blog and activities

2006-07-25T04:59:00.000-07:00

The Fracture and Failure Mechanics Technical Committee (FFMTC) would like to call your attention to some of our recent activities. In addition to our involvement in organizing sessions for the IMECE and summer meetings, we are developing a dynamic website or blog that will enable the greater community to share teaching experiences and resources. Please take a look at our blog; it is located at http://amd-ffmtc.blogspot.com and can also be reached through the Applied Mechanics Blogroll on the Applied Mechanics News blog.

Below are edited excerpts from our committee report in the Summer 2006 AMD Newsletter. We welcome your comments and involvement.

Regards,

John Lambros, Chair
Mark Walter, Vice-Chair
Jean-Francois Molinari, Secretary

--------------------------------------------------------------

Blog-based web pages have several advantages over static web pages and in particular, the FFMTC’s site offers the following:

Streamlined content management (i.e., announcements, membership listing, meeting minutes,etc.),
Dynamic discussion of fracture mechanics teaching through on-line discussion of syllabi and relevant books/articles,
Posting/commenting about useful fracture and failure mechanics resources, and
Access to a community of peers for discussion of issues relating to fracture and failure mechanics.

The quality and relevance of our blog is directly proportional to member participation. Please consider becoming an active contributor. E-mail “walter.80_at_osu_dot_edu” to request to be a contributor. In addition, since the content is dynamic, you should consider using a news aggregator that will alert you when there are new postings.

he FFMTC continues to be very active in organizing IMECE sessions. Many of these sessions are co-sponsored with the Dynamic Response of Materials and the Experimental Mechanics Technical Committees. This cross-committee cooperation has allowed sessions of broad relevance to be organized, which consequently have been very well attended. IMECE 2005 symposia that were (co)sponsored by the Committee included three sessions on the “Failure phenomena of inhomogeneous materials” (organized by Toshio Nakamura and Raman Singh), and one session on “Dynamic Fragmentation of Brittle Materials” (organized by Jean-Francois Molinari and Philippe Geubelle). The Committee is currently (co)sponsoring seven sessions for the IMECE 2006

Last but not least, we would like to thank the many individuals who have volunteered their time and work to bring the Committee efforts to fruition. In particular, the entire committee wishes to express its greatest appreciation to the outgoing Chair, Jack Beuth, for all his efforts during the past six years that he has been involved in the committee administration. Membership in the Committee is open and we encourage anyone interested to participate in the IMECE 2006 FFMTC meeting or to contact Committee officials directly.

Professor Frank Nabarro died at the age of 90

2006-07-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

Pay per paper (P3)

2006-07-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve just stopped subscribing to Science. The magazine is great, but few papers in it interest me. The signal-to-noise ratio of Science, I guess, is just too low to most individuals. Instead, I’ve now subscribed to the RSS feed of Science. If any paper looks interesting, I can access to the full paper online through Harvard Libraries. Outside my office, a color printer is free to use for everyone. A library of an institution seems to be an ideal home for a journal like Science. Nearly every individual paper in Science is of high enough quality to appeal to someone in the institution.

Few journals can make that claim, however. Most journals are only relevant to several people in an institution. Furthermore, few researchers read any scholarly journal from cover to cover. Rather, we all read individual papers. However, libraries subscribe to journals, or even bundles of journals. As a result, the libraries pay for many papers that nobody reads, and miss other papers that someone would like to read.

This business model is bad for authors and readers, and possibly even bad for publishers. Technology now exists to distribute information far more efficiently, in a unit consistent with how people consume the information. For example, many people now prefer buying individual songs to albums. See a recent book, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, for a remarkably perceptive analysis of media industries.

The same business model may apply to scholarly papers. One may argue that journals, like albums, were invented as a packaging technology to suit the old economics of delivery. As scholarly papers are all online, the name of a journal becomes simply a tag to the papers published in that journal. Maybe a powerful tag, but a tag nonetheless. So far as how papers should be distributed, the name of a journal should serve the same function as all other tag-like entities: keywords, names of authors, etc: the tags help readers to sort papers and set priorities. It makes no sense for anyone to insist that papers with any particular tag be delivered as a bundle.

Many publishers already offer individual papers for sale online; for example, the cost is at $30 per paper for many Elsevier journals. Once a reader buys a paper, it seems reasonable to share this paper with his close colleagues, and it also seems reasonable to store the paper for future use. Perhaps we can formalize this practice.

How about we treat a paper just like a book? With one click, a reader will have the paper, and his library will automatically pay for it. Once bought, the paper is accessible to every user of the library. We can also collect statistics. If the users of a library buy many papers in a journal, the library should subscribe to the journal. Libraries will set up an algorithm to minimize the total cost. Publishers will set up their algorithms to maximize profits. However, libraries and publishers do have a common ground: they both want to help people to find papers.

To support such a business model, a third party may provide a web service. It seems to be too wasteful to make every individual library and every individual publisher maintain a separate web service. Something like Amazon.com or Last.fm for papers might do. The service can also be an extension of services like EZproxy or CiteULike.

Related blog entries:

Note added on 26 July 2006. I posted an entry on the long tail of papers.

Web tools for academics

2006-07-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

Many entries of Applied Mechanics News have talked about personal experience with web tools of value to academics. A list of links to these entries might be useful. I've just created a tag called webtoolsforacademics in del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website. I'm now placing a link to the tag called Web tools for academics in the sidebar of Applied Mechanics News. I'll bookmark more links as people post their experience. You can contribute to this tag, too, if you register for a free del.icio.us account. Of course, you can also bookmark any websites of interest to you using other tags.