This is a report about the use and misuse of citation data in the assessment of scientific research. The idea that research assessment must be done using "simple and objective" methods is increasingly prevalent today. The "simple and objective" methods are broadly interpreted as bibliometrics, that is, citation data and the statistics derived from them. There is a belief that citation statistics are inherently more accurate because they substitute simple numbers for complex judgments, and hence overcome the possible subjectivity of peer review. But this belief is unfounded.

For the full report, go to: http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Report/CitationStatistics.pdf

American Mathematical
Society

If this is news to you, please check it out.

-- first articles are now available.

Access is free during 2008.

In the meantime, you can check it out at: http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.hmj

Algebraic geometry [electronic resource] : a volume in memory of Paolo Francia / editors, M.C. Beltrametti ... [et al.]. QA564 .A19 2002eb

An introduction to abstract algebra [electronic resource] / Derek J.S. Robinson. QA162 .R63 2003eb

An introduction to the geometry of stochastic flows [electronic resource] / Fabrice Baudoin. QA274.2 .B38 2004eb

Automatic sequences [electronic resource] / by Friedrich von Haeseler. QA292 .H34 2003eb

Beyond beta [electronic resource] : other continuous families of distributions with bounded support and applications / Samuel Kotz, Johan Rene van Dorp. QA324 .K68 2004eb

Bifurcation theory and applications [electronic resource] / Tian Ma, Shouhong Wang. QA380 .M3 2005eb

Elliptic curves [electronic resource] : a computational approach / Susanne Schmitt, Horst G. Zimmer with an appendix by Attila Pethö. QA567.2.E44 S35 2003eb

Equivariant degree theory [electronic resource] / Jorge Ize, Alfonso Vignoli. QA612 .I94 2003eb

Trigonometric sums in number theory and analysis [electronic resource] / by G.I. Arkhipov, V.N. Chubarikov, A.A. Karatsuba. QA246.8.T75 A75 2004eb

Three courses on partial differential equations [electronic resource] / editor, Eric Sonnendrücker. QA377 .T526 2003eb

The Reidemeister torsion of 3-manifolds [electronic resource] / Liviu I. Nicolaescu. QA613.2 .N53 2003eb

The determinacy of long games [electronic resource] / Itay Neeman. QA269 .N44 2004eb

Test your numerical aptitude [electronic resource] : how to assess your numeracy skills and plan your career / Jim Barrett. QA141 .B34 2007eb

Osaka Mathematical Journal (1949-1963) which was superceded by Osaka Journal of Mathematics (1964-2000) are now available through Project Euclid. The archive covers nearly 33,000 pages and over 2,000 articles.

Well done!

The backfiles consist of full-text PDFs and usually go back to the journal’s first issue. All of these titles are now available via the catalog and electronic journals list. Please see the following pages for the individual journal titles included in each collection:

American Institute of Physics Digital Archive

Springer Link Historical Archives Chemistry and Materials Science

Springer Link Historical Archives Computer Sciences

Springer Link Historical Archives Earth and Environmental Sciences

Springer Link Historical Archives Engineering

Springer Link Historical Archives Mathematics

Springer Link Historical Archives Physics and Astronomy

The one that I liked the most was Moebius Transformations Revealed.

Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX3VmDgiFnY&mode=related&search=

I even like the music!

http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/writing/index.asp

The events centre on Anthony Bak, a mathematician at the University of Bielefeld in Germany and until recently managing editor of the Springer journal K-Theory. Bak left the monthly journal, due, he says, to production problems and a too-high subscription rate. He has arranged to launch a rival title with another publisher that has offered a lower subscription rate, in the process shedding some editors unhappy at how the shift has been managed.

The cover date of the last issue of the supposedly monthly K-Theory was April 2006. Bak has withheld all papers accepted by the journal since then — a situation that not all of the editors, or the papers' authors, seem to have been aware of until recently.

Journal costs and pricing are serious concerns to academics, mathematicians and librarians alike. It is unfortunate that editorial boards, publishers, librarians, and faculty find themselves embroiled in tough situations such as these. It is a very sad commentary on modern dissemination of scholarly research.

For the entire article, go to: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7156/full/448846b.html

Citation:
Nature 448, 846-847 (23 August 2007) | doi:10.1038/448846b; Published online 22 August 2007
Journal presents a mathematical conundrum
Jenny Hogan

Jim Pitman, IMS President, added, “The IMS is very pleased to be able to offer another high quality journal at a reasonable price. Subscribers can expect to see the price for AIHP fall significantly in 2008. In addition, authors will acquire new rights to post copies of their articles on their homepages and in open access digital repositories. We see this as an improvement for all involved with the AIHP: authors, libraries, IHP, and now the IMS.”

AIHP is currently distributed from the Elsevier conglomorate. We will monitor the affect to our subscription and access to back issues and keep you informed.

For more information: http://imstat.org/news/default.htm#aihp

Be sure to bookmark it and check in regularly. I intend to.

http://www.sunclipse.org/eigenpedia/index.php/Main_Page

Go to: http://jobs.siam.org/home/index.cfm?site_id=686

In his commentary on "Curvature and the growth of cells", he states that a math paper in Nature is relatively rare. That got me pondering. Could I identify "math" papers in publications not typically math? And is it so rare?

My first experiment in the Web of Science was to search on topic = mathematics and source = nature or science and year of publication = 2006. This search yielded 7 hits. 2 for Nature and 5 for Science.

My next experiment was to search on topic = mathematics and year of publication = 2006. This search yielded 1182, but of course included math journals. To try to eliminate the math journals, I selected Subject Categories under "Refine your results", where you have the option to deselect subject categories. I then deselected any subject category with the mathematics or computer science (I know it could be argued not necessarily math).

The top twenty subject categories are below with the number of papers in ():
EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH (155)
PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATIONAL (64)
PHILOSOPHY (43)
HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (38)
PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL (37)
EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES (31)
ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC (30)
PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY (30)
MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES (29)
PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL (29)
ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC (26)
EDUCATION, SPECIAL (23)
PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY (22)
REHABILITATION (22)
NEUROSCIENCES (15)
ENGINEERING, MULTIDISCIPLINARY (12)
ETHICS (12)
HISTORY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (12)
PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL (12)
ECONOMICS (11)

Which only goes to show that math papers can appear in virtually any journal of any discipline. Mathematicians have always known this. Perhaps not the most rigorous research, but it was fun to check it out.