UCI Physicists Confirm Possible Discovery of Fifth Force of Nature - August 18, 2017

A UCI Physics and Astronomy team, led by professors Jonathan Feng and Tim Tait, have made a discovery that could profoundly change the future of physics. They have found evidence of a fifth force of nature and a new particle that could have implications for the unification of forces and efforts to understand the dark matter that pervades the universe. If their work is confirmed, I predict a Nobel Prize.

Professor Tait did an excellent job of explaining this work on NPR. You can hear the interview at http://goo.gl/dlv8lH.

You can also see a collection of news coverage at our Storify page. Of course, true physicists will want to look at their Physical Review Letter, 117, 071803 (2016).

I hope accomplishments like these make you proud to be associated with our School and with UCI. We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events and research presentations.


Kenneth C. Janda
Professor and Dean
UCI School of Physical Sciences  

Pay-It-Forward - blog post from Scholarly Kitchen - August 9, 2016

The Pay It Forward Project: Confirming What We Already Knew About Open Access

POSTED BY DAVID CROTTY ⋅ AUG 9, 2016 ⋅ 14 COMMENTS

FILED UNDER  APCS, GOLD OA, MELLON FOUNDATION, OPEN ACCESS, OPEN ACCESS FLIP, PAY IT FORWARD,UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Image via Tom Magliery.

The final report from the University of California, Davis and the California Digital Library’s ambitious “Pay It Forward” study of viable models for a “flip” from the subscription model to full open access (OA) for journal publishing has been released. At acost of $800,000, the study essentially confirms what we already knew from both previous studies and common sense: moving to Gold OA means increased costs for productive research institutions.

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Top Ten UC Irvine Articles Accessed in eScholarship for July 2016

Top Ten UC Irvine Articles Accessed in eScholarship for July 2016

Below is an overview of the number of views and downloads for this month, along with links to your usage numbers from previous months and additional data. We feel that the combination of views and downloads gives a more accurate picture of the interest in and usage of your publications than is reflected in download counts alone, particularly given the enhanced access readers have to your publications prior to download in the eScholarship interface.

UC Irvine Previously Published Works

For this month your total requests = 10764 (views=7419, downloads=3345).

Breakdown By Item

Top Ten Articles Viewed and Downloaded - July 2016

Item Year ---- Number of Requests ---- Total Added to Title Published Views Downloads Requests "My Items" Beyond Looking for My Penis: Reflections on Asian Gay Male Video Porn 1999 224 2 226 0 Perspective—Making Doubt Generative: Rethinking the Role of Doubt in the Research Process 2008 96 20 116 0 Primary production of the biosphere: integrating terrestrial and oceanic components 1998 36 36 72 0 Enterprise Risk Management: Review, Critique, and Research Directions 2014 37 29 66 0 Information privacy in institutional and end-user tracking and recording technologies 2010 51 10 61 0 Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change 2003 36 25 61 0 Systems integration for global sustainability 2015 36 24 60 0 Sinusoidal heart rate pattern: Reappraisal of its definition and clinical significance 2004 57 3 60 0 Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory: a meta-analysis 2014 31 27 58 0 Taking the waste out of wastewater for human water security and ecosystem sustainability 2012 23 31 54 0

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More information about the UC Open Access Policy is available on the Open Access Policy pages.

Visit the Implementation Plan to learn more about the timeline for systemwide roll-out of the publication management system.

Announcing engrXiv, the eprint server for engineering - July 27, 2016

engrXiv is conceived as a way to share both article preprints and write-ups of data, code, designs and models that might not otherwise be published. It’s currently in “open beta” – meaning submissions are being accepted and we’re still tweaking it, writing up answers to questions, etc. I would love to hear your collective feedback, and if you have any faculty, researchers or students who are open access champions in particular please share with them, as I’d love their feedback as well (particularly around what barriers engineers see to posting their preprints). I got involved with the project fairly recently but want to help it become a useful venue for all kinds of engineers.

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Atmire NV has entered into an agreement to acquire Open Repository, BioMed Central's repository service for academic institutions, charities, NGOs and research organisations.

August 1, 2016:

Under the agreement, Atmire will take over management and support of all Open Repository customers effective from July 28th. The acquisition adds to Atmire's client base of institutions using DSpace (an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories) and allows BioMed Central to focus on its core business concerns.

 

There will be no break in service for Open Repository customers, who will now have access to Atmire's support team.

 

Lieven Droogmans, CEO Atmire said:

“A full turnkey hosted DSpace solution like Open Repository perfectly complements our existing offering of DSpace services. It is an exciting opportunity to develop the future of hosted DSpace repository services based on the pioneering work of Open Repository in this area.”

 

Rachel Burley, Publishing Director BioMed Central said:

“Open Repository has gone from strength to strength, but as the volume of open access papers we publish increases we want to concentrate our efforts on our core business. We are certain that Atmire, as leading experts in DSpace services, are best placed to take Open Repository forward.”

While ensuring continuity in the support of existing Open Repository clients, Atmire is embarking on the largest technological upgrade of the Open Repository platform to date. With goals to improve the ease of use for end users and repository administrators, the company is committing to a substantial investment in the quality of the Open Repository product.

 

About BioMed Central

BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Nature.

 

About Atmire

Atmire provides DSpace services and add-on modules. As a leading DuraSpace registered service provider, more than 130 institutions from 25 countries already relied on Atmire’s services for the installation, customization, hosting or maintenance of their DSpace repository. Atmire also offers add-on modules to extend the functionality of DSpace. Atmire employs 20 full time staff from its Belgian and US offices. The company sits among the top contributors to the Open Source DSpace platform.

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HathiTrust at U-M, NFB to Make 14M+ Books Accessible to Blind and Print-Disabled Users - July 29, 2016

Ann Arbor, Michigan (June 29, 2016): More than fourteen million digital books will soon be made available to blind and print-disabled users, thanks to a new collaboration involving the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the HathiTrust Digital Library, a digital repository hosted at the University of Michigan.

When launched, the program will dramatically increase the availability of books for users who are blind or print-disabled. According to the NFB, currently less than five percent of all published works are estimated to be available to the blind, most of which are popular titles.

NFB President Mark Riccobono says the effort will be an important advancement that will specifically benefit print-disabled students and scholars within the academic community.

"While most barriers that blind people face are artificial ones created by low expectations, access to the printed word has historically been a great challenge," he said. "This collaboration will, for the first time, make millions of books available to blind readers across the nation, giving us access to more books in a single repository than we have ever had. The significance of this development cannot be overstated, and we are delighted to work with HathiTrust to transform this dream into reality."

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HathiTrust

National Federation of the Blind