LibrarianinsiderN E W S F O R L I B R A R I A N S I S S u E 3 1 J u L Y 2 0 1 2

Congratulations to the 2012 SLA travel stipend winners

Welcome to the 31st issue of Librarian Insider, our quarterly newsletter dedicated to you. If you or your colleagues would like to be notified about future issues,

please e-mail holly.purcell@iop.org.

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Following successful agreements with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the China National Science and Technology

Library (NSTL), we are pleased to inform you that another great content discovery resource is available for our Chinese subscribers through an arrangement with China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI).

All researchers based at Chinese institutions will now be able to search for IOP journal metadata through the CNKI database, meaning easier discoverability of articles published in IOP journals since1874.

CNKI is the largest electronic collection of academic literature in China and is used in over 20,000 institutions. It is the search engine of choice for Chinese researchers, making IOP’s content accessible to a wider audience – giving greater visibility to IOP authors around the world.

Nicola Gulley, Editorial Director at IOP Publishing, said, “We are delighted that we have been able to partner with CNKI on this initiative to offer Chinese researchers a new and better research experience. We are firmly committed to working with our many partners in China to look for new ways to strengthen dialogue within the international scientific community.”

Greater visibility of IOP content in China

You may remember our feature back in the March issue of Librarian Insider about the 2012 PAM travel stipend award, a program run by IOP Publishing to sponsor the attendance of four new librarians to the SLA annual conference. Librarian Insider is delighted to announce the winners of the travel stipends:

Rebeca Befus is the Mathematics Librarian and part of the Information Literacy unit at Michigan State university. Previously, she worked as a First-Year Experience and Science Librarian at Wayne State university. She has written and presented on topics including First-Year Experience, information literacy instruction, and design/development of online tutorials.

Elizabeth Cheney graduated from the uCLA MLIS program in 2011 and began working at the uCLA Science and Engineering Library in the same year. She acts as the library liaison to the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Laurie Hunter is the Physical Sciences Librarian at the university of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (uNC-CH) and previously served as Reference Librarian at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. She began her current position in December, 2011 after obtaining her MSLS from uNC-CH in May, 2011. Her undergraduate studies are in computer science and mathematics and she hopes to use that knowledge to assist patrons in the physical sciences at uNC-CH.

John Kromer is the Physical Sciences Librarian at Miami university in Oxford, Ohio, where he is the liaison to the Departments of Chemistry, Physics, and Statistics. Before beginning this position in February, he earned his MS in Chemistry (2010) and MA in Library and Information Studies (2011) from the university of Wisconsin-Madison.

Our winners will be presented with their awards and $1,000 checks during the SLA PAM Division Luncheon and Business Meeting on Monday July 16, 2012. If you are attending the conference, please come and join us in congratulating them. We wish Rebeca, Elizabeth, Laurie and John a fantastic first SLA and hope that they enjoy and learn a lot from the experience.

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New journal titles for 2013

EVENTSSLA 2012July 15–18, 2012Chicago, USAIOP will be sponsoring the Annual PAM Suite Daily Retreat at McCormick Place, the Publishers Liaison meeting, and four travel stipends.

PAM Suite hours:Monday, 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m., Tuesday, 9.30 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.,

Wednesday, 8.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m.Publishers Liaison meeting:Tuesday, 5.30–6.30 p.m. in the PAM Suite

IFLA 2012 Satellite MeetingAugust 8–9, 2012Turku, FinlandAttended by Yann Amouroux (Regional Representative)

ALPSP International Conference 2012September 11–13, 2012Birmingham, UKAttended by Jo Allen (Head of Marketing and B2B), Olaf Ernst (Commercial Director), Steven Hall (Managing Director) and Jackie King (Digital and e-Marketing Manager)

DEFF Online 2012September 25, 2012Copenhagen, DenmarkAttended by Frauke Ralf (Regional Representative)

Impact Factors reflect IOP journal quality for the eighth year runningThe 2011 Impact Factors once again show significant growth for many of the journals published by IOP, with 34 of our titles achieving an increase in citations over last year. Additionally, 17 titles have had an increase of over 10%, and 50% of IOP’s journals now have Impact Factors above 2.000.

There were high performances from individual journals: • Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics increased by

136% to 4.178.

• Journal of Neural Engineering increased by 46% to 3.837.• Nanotechnology increased by 9% to 3.979.• New Journal of Physics, our first open access title published in

partnership with Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, received its highest ever Impact Factor of 4.177.

We are very excited to be able to share this great news with the library community and thank you for your continued support.

We are pleased to announce that two new titles will be added to IOP’s journal portfolio for 2013.

Through a new partnership with Astro, a non-commercial organization that sponsors scientists involved in laser research, two established journals in the field of laser physics will soon become part of the IOP journal collection.

• Laser Physics will start from the 2013 volume, with content moving over to IOPscience towards the end of this year. All 22 years of archive content will be permanently free to read, but a subscription will be required for all content from 2006 to present.

• Laser Physics Letters will be hosted on IOPscience immediately, with all content freely available until the end of 2012. The title will be available for subscription as of January, 2013.

Further information will be available in our 2013 Journals Catalogue and Pricing Bulletin.

Laser Physics is a monthly journal offering a comprehensive view of theoretical and experimental laser research and applications. Articles cover every aspect of modern laser physics and quantum electronics, emphasizing physical effects in various media (solid, gaseous, liquid) leading to the generation of laser radiation; peculiarities of propagation of laser radiation; problems involving impact of laser radiation on various substances and the emerging physical effects, including coherent ones; the applied use of lasers and laser spectroscopy; the processing and storage of information; etc. Laser Physics publishes original articles, review articles and special issues.

Laser Physics Letters provides rapid dissemination of the results of novel and noteworthy research in all aspects of laser physics sciences including, inter alia, spectroscopy, quantum electronics, quantum optics, quantum electrodynamics, nonlinear optics, atom optics, quantum computation, quantum information processing and storage, fiber optics and their applications in chemistry, biology, engineering and medicine.

With the scholarly publishing landscape seeing some extraordinary changes, it has become even more important for publishers to work closely with the librarian community to ensure that the brightest future for scholarly communication is achieved.To help make this a reality, we have re-invigorated our Library Advisory Board initiative, and are in the middle of holding two Library Advisory Board (LAB) meetings in 2012. The European LAB just took place at the Institute of Physics in London, uK, and the uS LAB is happening in Chicago this month.

Members of the boards were selected for their experience and reputation in the industry. Their advice and guidance on key matters and industry issues will be treated with the utmost priority.

Olaf Ernst, Executive Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Business Development of IOP Publishing said, “This is a time of unprecedented change in the world of scholarly publishing and it is only by listening to and engaging with the research and information community that publishers will ensure that their offerings continue to add value and enhance the scholarly communications process.”

IOP Publishing staff and LAB members alike are very excited about this initiative, and further meetings will be arranged in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to reflect on the differences in the global STM market. More on the IOP LABs will follow in the next issue of Librarian Insider.

DID YOu KNOW?

IOP and the librarian community – working together for progress

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Physics World, the Institute of Physics’ membership magazine covering the latest developments in the global physics community, won back-to-back awards in May this year.

The magazine was named as “Best Magazine – Professional Association or Royal College” at the annual MemCom Awards held in London, uK, and the Physics World team also picked up “Best use of Social Media” at the SIPAwards announced at the annual SIPA conference in Washington DC. Physics World has also been shortlisted for two other awards: “Cross-Media Project 2012” at the AOP Digital Publishing Awards, and “Best Video Journalism” at the Online Media Awards.

Look out for more award news in future issues of Librarian Insider.

IOP Publishing has moved to a new subscription fulfillment company for customers in North, South and Central America, effective immediately.

Cambey & West (Congers, NY) has been selected as our new service provider, as part of a company-wide review and investment in customer service. As of June 25, all orders and fulfillment of IOP published journals, including the AAS titles, for the Americas will be handled by Cambey & West. Steve Moss, Chief Operating Officer of IOP Publishing, Inc. said of the move “After careful consideration, IOP Publishing selected Cambey & West as we believe they are fully able to realize our customer focused approach. They have over 25 years’ experience in supporting publishers like us and we feel confident that our customer orders will be handled with the utmost professionalism.”

Customer accounts in North, South and Central America will continue to be managed by IOP’s dedicated team of Regional Managers, and customer service questions will continue to be handled by IOP Publishing. You can email us info@ioppubusa.com or contact us in our Philadelphia office at (215) 627-0880.

The new address for any invoice, subscription or circulation activity is:IOP Publishing, P.O. Box 320, Congers, NY 10920-0320, uSA,e-mail ioppublishing@cambeywest.com, tel (800) 358-4677 toll free or (845) 267-3018, fax (845) 267-3478.

Please note that invoices, payments or inquiries that have already been sent to our previous provider – or are sent to them in error in the future – will be forwarded on to Cambey & West promptly. If you have any questions please contact Sharice Collins, Vice President, Marketing, IOP Publishing, Inc., by e-mail at collins@ioppubusa.com.

May 2012 – an award-winning month for Physics World

The European Library Advisory Board. Left to right: Panagiotis Georgiou (university of Patras, Greece), Annette Holtkamp (CERN, Switzerland), Karina Bradshaw (university of Bath, uK), Terry Bucknell (university of Liverpool, uK), Segal Scher (Inter-university Computation Center, Israel), Anna Tonakiewicz-Kolosowskiej (Warsaw university of Technology, Poland), Mari Aaltonen (Aalto university, Finland), Deborah Shorley (Imperial College London, uK), Ralf Schimmer (Max Planck Society, Germany), Brigitte Kromp (university of Vienna, Austria), Tiziana Morocutti (university of Milan, Italy), Gernot Deinzer (university of Regensburg, Germany).

Above: Jackie King, IOP Publishing’s Digital and e-Marketing Manager, receiving the Best Use of Social Media prize at the SIPAwards.

New subscription vendor

Xiao Tu the Talking Robot at Tsinghua University Library

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At Librarian Insider we love hearing about new initiatives happening at your library, and invite you to share your stories with us and the library community.

Some of you have already shared your creative and original ideas, allowing us to bring you stories

such as “The Personal Librarian Program”, an initiative at Yale university that matches every new student with a librarian. You may also remember the university of Massachusetts Amherst’s “Academic Liaison Program” set up to engage international students. And there was the story of one librarian’s personal account of the effects following an earthquake in Chile and its impact on the library at universidad de Concepción.

Even with all these great stories, we’ve never covered a story about a talking robot – until now.

Back in December, 2010, Tsinghua university introduced a new librarian assistant to their patrons. However, this new assistant was unlike any they had previously experienced. “Xiao Tu” (which translates to “little library” in English) is a virtual smart-chatting robot that can help researchers with their search requests, provide real-time virtual reference services, and facilitate self-learning within the library.

Xiao Tu was based on the open source software A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and uses artificial intelligence to answer library questions in natural, spoken language. Because it is an intelligent robot, it has the ability to learn during its conversations with people and improve its own answers through human interaction, making Xiao Tu quite a powerful resource for library users.

To give researchers the best experience, Xiao Tu was created to make users feel that they were talking to a real librarian on duty, not just to a robot. unexpectedly, the robot was forced to suspend services because

too many visitors wanted to talk to it about issues unrelated to library matters, which resulted in Xiao Tu’s vocabulary becoming a little more extended than planned. Xiao Tu picked up “unsuitable language” from website visitors, and had to undergo a data clean to get it back on track.

“I used to have to clean it up every week because users played tricks on Xiao Tu and taught it swear words, even obscene stuff,” said Yao Fei, the primary library staff member who conceived and implemented the robot. “We have improved its services and I hope users can teach it useful information now.”

Xiao Tu was put back into service for the spring semester this year and remains a big hit at the library. “Xiao Tu is one our most popular services, and users are still very enthusiastic about teaching it,” said Yao Fei. “Currently, we have about 2,000 users per month; 90% of them are playing with Xiao Tu. I am glad that they are using it. Although the number of serious users is very small, I think it will get better as we improve Xiao Tu’s accuracy in providing authoritative answers.”

We wish Yao Fei and her team at Tsinghua university all the best in improving Xiao Tu’s functionality, and hope that they achieve in making Xiao Tu the great librarian assistant they set out to create.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? E-mail us at librarian.insider@iop.org.

YOuR LIBRARY

The IOPscience platform has seen some significant changes in recent times with the addition of new functionality that offers researchers a more enjoyable, interactive, and enhanced reading experience of our online articles. Our latest development is the Citation Alert service, an exciting new feature that notifies researchers when a selected paper has been cited.

This new alert service helps the research community in two ways:• Published authors who set alerts to track their own articles can quickly and easily see who has been citing their work and where, allowing them to

measure the impact of their research in the community.• Researchers who set alerts to track selected articles will now have a new avenue for article discovery and be able to find articles in similar areas

to their own research specialties.

The Citation Alert service is available to all users for any articles that have been made free to read for an extended period. After that time, if content is behind the subscription pay wall, only users with full access will be able to create an alert.

New Citation Alert service now available for your researchers

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