Killer serials: Did electronic journals really destroy the university press?

Given the rapidly changing economics of scholarly communication in the digital age, the importance of accurate, specific data on the resource flows within this realm has become increasingly important. Both the producers and the collectors of scholarly information require accurate information in order to nimbly navigate their changing roles in advancing the progress of knowledge. Two key actors in this area are university presses and academic libraries, which both hold keystone roles in scholarly communications, as disseminators and conservators of scholarship, respectively. This paper describes an exploratory study examining one contentious aspect of the relationship between these two actors: trends in purchases of university press books by academic libraries. It does so in order to provide an empirical basis for evaluating frequent claims by publishers that declines in libraries' monographic purchasing over the past three decades can be held primarily responsible for the declining economic fortunes of university presses over the same period. The results of this analysis indicate that this relationship is not clear‐cut, for at least two reasons: first, to the extent that purchasing reductions have occurred, they have occurred much more recently than prior accounts have suggested, and second, purchasing trends vary significantly between different libraries and between different sizes of university press.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106969/1/14505001080_ftp.pd

On the seismic age and heavy-element abundance of the Sun

We estimate the main-sequence age and heavy-element abundance of the Sun by means of an asteroseismic calibration of theoretical solar models using only low-degree acoustic modes from the BiSON. The method can therefore be applied also to other solar-type stars, such as those observed by the NASA satellite Kepler and the planned ground-based Danish-led SONG network. The age, 4.60+/-0.04 Gy, obtained with this new seismic method, is similar to, although somewhat greater than, today's commonly adopted values, and the surface heavy-element abundance by mass, Zs=0.0142+/-0.0005, lies between the values quoted recently by Asplund et al. (2009) and by Caffau et al. (2009). We stress that our best-fitting model is not a seismic model, but a theoretically evolved model of the Sun constructed with `standard' physics and calibrated against helioseismic data.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

The fundamental constants and their variation: observational status and theoretical motivations

This article describes the various experimental bounds on the variation of the fundamental constants of nature. After a discussion on the role of fundamental constants, of their definition and link with metrology, the various constraints on the variation of the fine structure constant, the gravitational, weak and strong interactions couplings and the electron to proton mass ratio are reviewed. This review aims (1) to provide the basics of each measurement, (2) to show as clearly as possible why it constrains a given constant and (3) to point out the underlying hypotheses. Such an investigation is of importance to compare the different results, particularly in view of understanding the recent claims of the detections of a variation of the fine structure constant and of the electron to proton mass ratio in quasar absorption spectra. The theoretical models leading to the prediction of such variation are also reviewed, including Kaluza-Klein theories, string theories and other alternative theories and cosmological implications of these results are discussed. The links with the tests of general relativity are emphasized.Comment: 56 pages, l7 figures, submitted to Rev. Mod. Phy

Dynamic Publication Formats and Collaborative Authoring

While Online Publishing has replaced most traditional printed journals in less than twenty years, today’s Online Publication Formats are still closely bound to the medium of paper. Collaboration is mostly hidden from the readership, and ‘final’ versions of papers are stored in ‘publisher PDF’ files mimicking print. Meanwhile new media formats originating from the web itself bring us new modes of transparent collaboration, feedback, continued refinement, and reusability of (scholarly) works: Wikis, Blogs and Code Repositories, to name a few. This chapter characterizes the potentials of Dynamic Publication Formats and analyzes necessary prerequisites. Selected tools specific to the aims, stages, and functions of Scholarly Publishing are presented. Furthermore, this chapter points out early examples of usage and further development from the field. In doing so, Dynamic Publication Formats are described as (a) a ‘parallel universe’ based on the commodification of (scholarly) media, and (b) as a much needed complement, slowly recognized and incrementally integrated into more efficient and dynamic workflows of production, improvement, and dissemination of scholarly knowledge in general