Mathematics Roundtable
Nisa Bakkalbasi
nisa.bakkalbasi@yale.edu
Michael Golden
goldenm@umkc.edu
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Introductions and thanks to SIAM
Dana Roth: Cost/Page and Cost/Page Impact Factor
- ISI Journal Citation Report
- Tr. Am. Math Soc # of Cites
- Bull Am Math Soc Impact factor
- Historical impact factor data
- Mathematics literature slower to be cited
- Wiley & Springer only “commercial’ journals on list
- Cost per page comparison
- AMS 30cents/page
- Former Academic 60cents/page
- Other commercial $1.00/page overpriced?
- Cost/page/IF
- Need to normalize the numbers
- Need to give faculty more data to work with – in addition to just how much the journal costs
Question: Shouldn’t you compare like type of journals instead of just all math?
Terry Elling: Retro-digitization of math literature and impact on Project Euclid
- Brief Recap on Euclid: Library project began in 2000 with grant from Mellon.
- Revenue neutral by 2006 (goal) Can get aggregation or single titles.
- Publisher driven model. Mathematicians still value paper. Smaller publishers reluctant to give up paper. 67% is open access (anything older than 5 years is free.)
- Revenues: $7K 2 years ago and over $300K today. (UD)
- Subscribers fees and publishers. Older math lit along shelf life. Actively supporting retro conversion with publishers.
- JSTOR plan to have a reciprocal agreement – happen with Annals with in next month.
- World Digital Math Library: 75 million pages of older math lit to be digitized. Cost will be $75 million. Business plan being formulated. George Moore may help fund. Will involve all publishers.
- 50% of current reference to pre-1990 papers. 25% to pre-1980 articles.
- Other current digitization projects planned to be folded into World Digital Math Library. Open Access. Grant funded. MSRI Central Org. Agency.
Carol Hutchins: Relationship between computer science and modern applied mathematics
- “What is applied mathematics and what is its relation to computing?”
- Peter Lax, NYU, won the Abel Prize for 2005 “The Flowering of Applied Mathematics in America” SIAM Review 31(4)
- US National Academy of Science Interview Project: Ingrid Daubechies, Princeton Univ. She sees her work as a translation job. She believes there is no such field as applied mathematics. Mathematical thinking is the same whether pure or applied.
- Cohen JE (2004) Mathematics Is Biology's Next Microscope, Only Better; Biology Is Mathematics' Next Physics, Only Better. PLoS Biol 2(12): e439. A list of contributions of mathematics to biology.
Discussion Questions
- Cross cutting grants
- Information Commons: Aimed to serve undergrads, not that helpful for grads.
- What does it mean for disciplinary based collections?
- Applied Mathematicians don’t all publish in just mathematical journals.
- As mathematics librarians, we have to be prepared to help scientists from other disciplines to get access to mathematics.
- Can’t only look at JCR, it is just a tool.
- Have to know the difference between the different fields. Can’t compare different fields with impact factors. Such a fields as mathematics and computer science? Computational science and engineering?
- Should societies start new journals?
- better than commercial publishers currently doing it. If societies don’t, Elsevier will.
- Should they be print and electronic or electronic only?
- Who has money to add new journals?
- AMS decision not to distribute useage stats on their journals because it leads to bad decisions.
- Cost per use.
- Parker Ladwig, Mathematics Library at Notre Dame, has a forthcoming article on use stats and half life.
