Materials science and the future of publishing
Materials science
Sudden impact?
Jul 1st
Acta Crystallographica – Section A came out of nowhere to knock the New England Journal of Medicine out of the #2 overall spot in this year’s 2009 ISI Impact Factors. How in the heck? More >
2009 Impact Factors for materials science
Jun 17th
Despite the fact that we can calculate these ourselves ahead of time with 99.9% accuracy, it’s exciting for editors when the Institute for Scientific Information releases the Impact Factors every June. It might be a flawed way of measuring how important a journal is, but the Impact Factor is currently the most-used criteria (short of actually reading what is published, gasp!).
So, good news for our team this year: the Impact Factor of Advanced Materials increased to 8.379, and that of Advanced Functional Materials went up to 6.990. In other words, more people are citing, and hopefully reading, the articles, that our journals published in recent years.
If you’re interested in more details, you can read about our materials science and polymer science journals on MaterialsViews.com.
What I’m reading on my iPad
Jun 13th
Here’s what’s I’ve recently finished reading on my iPad’s Kindle app:
- The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug. Thanks to @solidstateux for the suggestion.
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A rare science book whose title doesn’t take the form “Noun prepositional phrase: The story of the noun.“ Rebecca Skloot is also on Twitter.
- The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery. Blending the history of prion diseases with the story of a scary, rare disease.
If you have suggestions for other popular science books that you’ve enjoyed, let me know.
Debating plasma kinetics in the scientific literature
Jun 10th
On his It’s the Rheo Thing blog, John Spevacek gives a good introduction to an experiment being conducted in Plasma Processes and Polymers, a debate published in the journal on the polymerization kinetics in plasma reactors.
There’s a few articles involved, all of which are currently free to access and listed on MaterialsViews.com.
I’m glad that the groups involved appear to be viewing this as an opportunity. As John says, “…pull up a chair and watch something that doesn’t come along very often at all.”
Detecting explosives and harvesting energy from muscles
Jun 8th
Both Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials were in the news this week for two very different stories—exciting stuff!
First, work by Graham Turnbull and Ifor Samuel on detecting explosives using lasers was featured on the BBC Science and Environment page. The original Advanced Functional Materials paper is now free to access on MaterialsViews.com as part of a story written by our intern Richard Walters.
Second, Gizmodo, MIT’s Technology Review, and other outlets picked up an Advanced Materials paper by ZL Wang at Georgia Tech on harvesting energy from living muscles using zinc oxide piezoelectronic nanogenerators. You can access that paper for free and see a video of the nanogenerator in action inside a rat, also on MaterialsViews.com.
Potable water from a polymer sponge
Jun 5th
Interesting article by new editor Rebekka Storz showing how the super absorbent poly(acrylic acid) hydrogel used in diapers can be used for seawater desalination. Ions are repelled by the polymer, and purified water can be squeezed out like a sponge.
How to publish in a top journal
Jun 2nd
I gave this talk last summer in China. It addresses some of the issues around getting your paper published, including what editors look for, how to prepare your submission and cover letter, how to respond to decisions, and when to appeal. It also goes into scientific publishing ethics, which affects authors, reviewers, and editors.
It’s been viewed more than 4000 times to date. If you’re preparing your first paper, or are looking for more information on the scientific publishing process, I hope you’ll find it useful too.
