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Scholarly Communication in Physics
New scientific information, however original and earthshaking, does not become scientific knowledge until it has been communicated, criticized, verified, and remains unfalsified, by other scientists in the same field. The scholarly communication system is the instrument by which the results of individual, private research projects are transformed into scientific knowledge.
Physics Societies
How Physicists Use the Library
The Literature of Physics
Most Frequently Cited Physics Journals
Research Databases for Physics (Indexes and Abstracts)
Related Databases for Physics
Searchable Online Journal Collections for Physics
Physics Societies
Societies play a significant role in scholarly communication. Each field or subfield in a discipline will organize into membership-based societies. These societies take it upon themselves to serve the scholarly needs of the field by developing standards, inculcating ethical conduct, publishing the scholarly output of the members, and upholding quality through the process of peer review. During peer review, papers considered for publication in scholarly journals are “refereed or reviewed” by at least two anonymous peers prior to acceptance for publication.
American Institute of Physics (AIP) was founded in 1931. “It is the mission of the Institute to serve the sciences of physics and astronomy by serving the Societies, by serving individual scientists, and by serving students and the general public.” It currently has ten member societies, including:
American Physical Society
Optical Society of America
Acoustical Society of America
The Society of Rheology
American Association of Physics Teachers
American Crystallographic Association
American Astronomical Society
American Association of Physicists in Medicine
AVS Science and Technology Society
American Geophysical Union
American Physical Society (APS) One of the ten member societies of AIP, APS is the world’s largest physics association. It serves the international physics community with journals, meetings, and public programs of the first rank. Their mission statement reads, “In the firm belief that an understanding of the nature of the physical universe will be a benefit to all humanity, the objective of the Society shall be the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics.” They publish Physical Review A – E, Physical Review Letters, and Reviews of Modern Physics.
Institute of Physics (IOP) IOP is an “international learned society and professional body for the advancement and dissemination of physics, pure and applied, and promotion of physics education.” It is based in England and has more than 30,000 members worldwide. It publishes 34 journals in physics and related areas.
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) is a world federation of official national representatives which can act and proclaim authoritatively for the profession. “It seeks to stimulate and facilitate international cooperation in physics and the worldwide development of science.” IUPAP aims to obtain agreement on symbols, notations, constants, terminology, and standards.
How Physicists Use the Library
1. To find a single definition, value or property
- Uses specialized dictionaries, handbooks, tables
2. To begin work on a new topic
- Reads authoritative and scholarly overviews of topics in encyclopedias or review articles.
- Develops list of keywords or subjects to search
3. To find more literature on a topic
- Follows cited references
- Searches in library catalogs and research databases (e.g. INSPEC)
4. To find the most recent literature on a topic
- Searches a Current Awareness Service like SPIN and Advance SPIN. These are bibliographic databases published by AIP. They include General Physics Advance Abstracts and Physical Review Abstracts and are searchable individually or collectively. Advance SPIN is a database of abstracts awaiting publication.
5. To follow up earlier published research
- To find out who has cited a particular piece of published research, scientists consult science citation indexes and librarians.
6. To find a particular work from a full reference
- Searches in library catalogs and union lists.
- Downloads full text from an online source or places a request with a librarian for an Interlibrary Loan.
7. To find a particular work from a partial or inaccurate reference
- Problems arise from journal abbreviations, incomplete author names, incorrect titles, and incomplete citations.
- Consults a reference librarian for assistance.
90% of the papers that get published do not prove to be of permanent value. Students and others unfamiliar with the field are guided to the truly significant works through review articles, monographs, or textbooks. They bring together the results of primary research papers and present a unified account of progress in the solution of some particular scientific problem.
The Literature of Physics includes:
Primary publications contain the work of contemporary scholars who are contributing to the advancement of their subject.
Secondary resources are not original in content yet provide a vital service. These are mainly indexes, abstracts, monographic series of reviews and advances, textbooks, and encyclopedias, dictionaries, or handbooks.
Monographs (Books or in series) are selective summaries that rarely contain the latest information in a field. They can be several years behind current practice at publication.
Serials (or Periodicals or Journals) are publications that appear in a continuing series of issues, usually at regular intervals, under the same distinctive title. Periodicals or Journals contain the latest work in a given field and cover topics too small to warrant book treatment.
Reviews or Review Articles synthesize important research into a connected account of scientific progress. They assist the physicist to assimilate current material relevant to her subject field. Specialized reviewing series often have the words “Advances”, “Progress”, or “Annual Review” leading their titles. Two important journals containing review articles are Reviews in Modern Physics and Reports on Progress in Physics. The American Journal of Physics features readable and informative review articles.
Letters Journals rapidly publish very brief reports of outstanding and essentially revolutionary new discoveries. They also serve as a medium for the publication of short communications, not necessarily of great significance, but sufficiently self-contained to be useful to specialists in that field. There is a pressure to get into print quickly and sometimes clarity and completeness of proof suffer in these articles.
Conference Papers/Proceedings are shortened, sometimes inferior, versions of work that is about to be or has been published elsewhere. They also may contain invited papers which typically give a review of the current situation but can be biased by the personal opinion of the speaker.
Dissertations/Theses are usually quite long works describing in great detail a research project carried out by the author as a requirement for the Ph.D. or Masters degree.
Popular Literature in physics includes journals like Scientific American or trade books written for the generally-educated public. These works are valuable to anyone who wants a general picture of the present state of some distant branch of their own subject, or who would like to know, in simple terms, about a new discovery.
Indexes and Abstracts are research databases that allow the physicist to find articles or books of interest that would otherwise remain unknown to him. Indexing and abstracting services provide access to the bibliographic information and abstracts of papers and other forms of literature through relational databases.
Reports, usually government documents, are sometimes called Ephemera or Grey literature. In the US alone, the NTIS, NASA, and DOE release 70,000 documents annually. Ephemera or Grey literature is any material not available through regular channels. Examples include report literature, technical notes and specifications, some conference proceedings and preprints, translations, official publications, supplementary publications and data, trade literature, etc. Grey literature may have poor print quality and layouts, have missing or incomplete bibliographic information, and are published in limited print runs.
Preprints are early copies of papers that report recent findings. They are published informally through online archives or personal distribution. These works may exist in several different forms as it is not unusual for authors to revise or update these papers. They have not undergone peer review though many may be put out as preprints by the author while undergoing peer review and subsequent publication in a journal.
Patents are legal documents filed with a government’s patent and trade office to protect the financial value of proprietary information. Full disclosure of materials, methods, and claims are made in patents. Patents may contain significant scientific information.
Most Frequently Cited Physics Journals:
1. Reviews of Modern Physics
2. Reports in Progress in Physics
3. Physical Review Letters
4. Physics Letters B
5. Physical Review A
Research Databases for Physics (Indexes and Abstracts)
INSPEC, 1969 –
This database provides comprehensive of the world’s scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing, and information technology. It also has significant coverage in areas such as materials science, oceanography, nuclear engineering, geophysics, biomedical engineering, and biophysics. More than 4,000 international scientific and technical journals, 2,000 conference proceedings, and numerous books, reports and dissertations are scanned each year by INSPEC for inclusion in the database. It currently contains over 7 million records and adds 350,000 records per year. Physics Abstracts, a comprehensive physics index is a part of INSPEC. All records include an English language title and abstract. Links to full text are provided when available. To search the physics literature published before 1969 use the print Physics Abstracts or its predecessor, Science Abstracts. Records date to 1898 in these print indexes.
SPIN, 1975 –
The SPIN (Searchable Physics Information Notices) databases indexes the major American and Russian physics and astronomy journals. It provides abstracts for the more than 80 journals published by the American Institute of Physics and it member societies. It contains nearly 1 million records. Links to full text articles is provided to subscribers of AIP journals (like OWU).
SciFinder Scholar, 1907 –
SciFinder Scholar is the online equivalent of the print Chemical Abstracts. It also includes the Medline database and gives access to both US and international patents. While chemical Abstracts is primarily known as tool for chemists, there is significant coverage in other disciplines. 23% of the 19 million references in SciFinder relate directly to physics. Links to the full text are provided when available. SciFinder is available in selected locations at OWU.
Related Databases for Physics
The following databases will contain overlap information for physics. Applied Science and Technology and Index to Journal Articles index more lower-level interdisciplinary journals than the specialized journals indexed by INSPEC. Biological Abstracts will contain information in biophysics and MathSciNet will contain information in computers and computer technology.
Applied Science and Technology, 1983 -
Biological Abstracts, 1980 -
Index to Journal Articles, 1984 -
MathSciNet, 1940 -
Searchable Online Journal Collections for Physics
OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center
This collection gives full text access to journals published by certain publishers. Notable for physics is the inclusion of the journals published by the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics. These holdings go back an average of five years and are searchable by keyword in any field and by browsing Tables of Contents.
This page prepared by
Deborah Carter Peoples
Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries
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