Safari Books Online (O'Reilly and others)

We now have over 1,500 books from O'Reilly and other CS publishers available online. Go ahead and take a look. We have a relatively expensive "2 user at a time" account. So, please log out when you are done with your session. We have access to the most recent 2-3 years of their ebooks.

IEEE Xplore Toolbar

If you would like a quicker way to search the IEEE literature, give this toolbar a try.

DU presence in Second Life

DU has been ramping up its presence in second life. The Physics and Astronomy Department plans to take advantage of the educational posibilities starting in 2008. See the recent articles in the July/August 2007 issue of Technology Review, Inside Higher Ed , and the Rocky Mountain news on Monday, September the 17th. Science Friday on NPR invites virtual observers and questions via SL at the DU Science School. I was able to ask a question that was nationally broadcast on September the 14th. Thanks to one of the DU Researchers, we now have a way for Second Lifers to contact the Penrose library with research questions. Just touch the sign (in the Olin Building of SL) to be redirected to the "Ask a Research Question" form.

Elsevier gives away journal articles?

Elsevier has figured out a way to give away some of their journal articles -- by harvesting the email addresses of medical doctors and by selling advertising space to pharmaceutical companies. Read on in this NY Times article.

A Medical Publisher’s Unusual Prescription: Online Ads

By MILT FREUDENHEIM
Published: September 10, 2007
By some measures, the medical publishing world has met the advent of the Internet with a shrug, sticking to its time-honored revenue model of charging high subscription fees for specialized journals that often attract few, if any, advertisements.

Over the weekend, www.oncologySTAT.com went live. But now Reed Elsevier, which publishes more than 400 medical and scientific journals, is trying an experiment that stands this model on its head. Over the weekend it introduced a Web portal, www.OncologySTAT.com, that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content.

etc., etc., etc.

Plagiarism in Papers Posted on Physics Server

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "Turkish Professors Uncover Plagiarism in Papers Posted on Physics Server"

"Dozens of academic papers containing apparently plagiarized work have been removed by moderators from arXiv, the popular preprint server where many physicists post their work before publication, Nature is reporting (subscription required). According to the article, 67 papers by 15 physicists at four Turkish universities were pulled after an examination of their content revealed that they 'plagiarize the works of others or contain inappropriate levels of overlap with earlier articles.'"

One of the accused authors, Mustafa Salti, has written for many prominent journals, so some of these articles might be plagiarized, too.

New Science and Engineering books

Here are the new science and engineering books that we received in August.

Science books in the Q's
Engineering books are in the T's.

We keep a list of the most recent new books received over the last three to four months.

Nature Titles

I was considering starting institutional subscriptions to the print versions of Nature Physics, Nature Materials, and Nature Methods. (Trying to get sitewide electronic access is a pain.) But, at the total 2008 price per year of $7,400 for the three magazines, that is just too much buck for the bang. So, if you want an article from one of these three, you can get it pretty quickly through Interlibrary Loan or through Article Linker / Citation Linker.

SciFinder Scholar 2007

If you want the new verison of SciFinder Scholar, please go to https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port2?page=2&uid=61, you will need to log into Portfolio to download the Zip file.

Some new ebook resources

We have recently added Safari Books Online and the Morgan & Claypool set of online books. These vendors provide thousands of books in engineering and computer science.

Hello

I'd like to use this blog to send out announcement of stuff that might be of interest to science and engineering students and faculty at the University of Denver.