arXiv.org recently added Google Scholar search links to all preprints’ pages

The links in question can be found in the bottom right of the preprints’ arXiv pages in the References & Citations area.  IMHO this is an important feature with a great potential. It is surprising that it is has not yet made it to the arXiv what’s new page  — I found this information in a tweet from an account apparently not related to arXiv:

#Important #innovation @arxiv: at the right bottom corner of each preprint's page on #arxiv they added a link to #GoogleScholar #search for the #author, #title & #year of the #preprint @Google #citation #openaccess #openscience

Sample picture from my https://t.co/lThZaZZdvF : pic.twitter.com/YLU0wMwWpe

— Artur (@ArturTweeting) September 29, 2018

 

 

More on Peer Review 2.0

What follows is an extended comment on the proposal of pre-print peer review by Sabine Hossenfelder.

She suggests, inter alia, that the authors pay a submission fee for each paper and the referees get awards for their reports. But is the fees-related part of the proposal necessary at all? Perhaps the universities could donate some funds (as they already do for the arXiv) to get the thing going, and major professional societies (APS, AMS, etc.) could chime in too (and the authors can donate on a  purely voluntary basis). To replace the awards for refereeing and the author fees one could use some kind of “points” (pretty much like the reputation points on the stackexchange sites): submission of the first paper is free, and the next ones are “paid” by the points obtained from refereeing. There could be some points gained for any report and extra points if the author(s) like the report (and express this by marking it as “favorite”).

UPDATE: another interesting and very detailed proposal on an alternative peer review model is Open Peer Review by a Selected-Papers Network by Chris Lee.

Hunting Down the Old References

While writing the research papers one quite often needs to get back to the full texts of old (pre-Internet or at least pre-arXiv) references. Of course, having access to a good library and/or the interlibrary loan usually solves the problem but can be somewhat time- and cost-consuming.

It is not that well known, however, that there is a fair chance to find the old paper or preprint you need online for free. Of course, the first thing to try is Google or perhaps another search engine of your choosing. However, if this does not work, you still have a fighting chance, at least as far physics and mathematics are concerned. The places to try are:

• the KISS preprint server (you can also try the umbrella interface at SPIRES)  allows you to search in (and get to the full text of) a huge database of scanned preprints  going back to the 1970s at least. The database covers mostly high-energy physics and related areas, including a fair share of mathematical physics and mathematics. For instance, you can find there a number of preprints by Richard Feynman, including the unpublished ones.
• the Digital Mathematics Library
• NUMDAM and CEDRAM (French mathematical journals)
• The Project Euclid
• MathNet.Ru (Russian mathematical journals)

All items but KISS are purely mathematical databases (to be precise, MathNet.Ru includes several physics, mechanics and mathematical physics journals as well).

If you know of other similar databases (be it in physics, mathematics, life sciences,…), please feel free to drop a comment with the relevant link(s).

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Academic Networking: on the Network and beyond

Phil Agre‘s  Networking on the Network contains plenty of great advice on academic networking — building a net of colleagues and collaborators.  See also interesting related materials here, here, here and here. As for collaboration per se,  see the links in my post on writing. See also this post at SBS on the conference networking.

Update: An interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. See also this post on Academia 101.

Is there an academic counterpart for social networks like the Facebook? Yes. I have found  Academia.edu, and there is plenty of sites of this kind (the Nature Network is just another example, and the Researchgate is yet another)

Update 2: see my comment exchange (1 2 3 4 5 6) with Bee (her responses are right under my comments except for #6) at the Backreaction blog regarding the academic networking.

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How to Maximize Citations

I have just found some great advice on how to boost your citation count, i.e., get more citations for your publications (which may, as you well know, increase your visibility in the science world and your chances of getting tenure) . An interesting discussion of the so-called Matthew effect in science (to start, see the classical papers by Robert K. Merton here, here, and here) and its influence on the citation patterns can be found here.

Update: I also found some interesting tips on how to get your papers cited here and here.

As for the general advice on writing research papers, see excellent writing tips from the blog of Terence Tao.

Update 2: making your work available online (e.g. at the arXiv; see this post of Terence Tao for further details) can significantly increase its chances to be cited (but be careful with the copyright issues when making available the work you have already published).

Update 3: Also, quite obviously, publishing your paper in a high-impact journal may increase its chances of getting cited. But submitting your papers to the journals perceived as prestigious has plenty of caveats — see e.g. this post by Terence Tao and this post by Massimo.

Update 4: see this post about the citation trading at ectropy.info

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