Open access continues to gain momentum globally

openaccessroundGlobally, open access can help create a world where everyone from the student in Atlanta to a researcher in Haiti can freely read the scientific papers they need to make a discovery; where scientific breakthroughs in energy conversion, sensors, or nanotechnology are unimpeded by fees to access or publish research.

The global open access effort aims to break down barriers and make online scholarly information free to everyone, promote the global exchange of scientific discoveries, and open the door to the faster development of practical applications that could address some of the world’s most pressing issues.

(READ: “Robert Savinell on Preserving Scientific Research“)

Accelerating discovery in Africa

Recently, Senegal started building this framework for African countries that often lack access to scientific and education information. During April’s Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, representatives from the west-African country decided to begin the process to ensure the establishment of a national open access policy, making them the first African country to establish such a policy.

Leaders hope this new policy will encourage the creation of open platforms free and accessible for all researchers, innovators, teachers, students, media professionals, and the public and will encourage collaboration, production, dissemination, and knowledge economies.

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Research highlighting transformative scientific discoveries

Editors' ChoiceECS published its first Editors’ Choice article on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. The article, entitled “Communication—Comparison of Nanoscale Focused Ion Beam and Electrochemical Lithiation in β-Sn Microspheres,” details transformative findings in the dosage and spatial distribution of lithiation.

Editors’ Choice articles are a special designation of ECS’s newly established Communication articles, which are designed to highlight breakthrough preliminary research and bolster the scientific discovery process. ECS journal editors designate exemplary Communication articles as Editors’ Choice when the research presented is transformative, detailing either novel advancements in a field or completely new discoveries.

“This paper introduces the use of a focused Li-ion beam (Li-FIB) as a new tool that is designed to probe lithiation mechanism at the nanoscale,” says Nick Wu, Associate Editor of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. “This technique, which employs a focused Li-ion beam with spot size of a few tens of nanometers and kinetic energy of a few keV, enables precise dosage and spatial distribution of lithiation.”

Papers chosen as Editors’ Choice are regarded as having the highest quality, impact, significance, and scientific or technological interest to electrochemical and solid state science and technology. In order to disseminate these findings to the scientific community at large and open the door to faster developments of practical applications, all Editors’ Choice articles are published Open Access.

“Furthermore,” Wu says, “lithiation in this technique is carried out in the absence of electrolytes so that it allows the study of lithiation dynamics solely in the bulk or surface layers (coatings) of the electrode material without the confounding influences from the electrolyte interactions.”

Each paper undergoes the same rigorous peer-review process associated with ECS journals, with Editors’ Choice articles showing extraordinary direction, concept, interpretation, field, or way of doing something.

Read the full Open Access paper in the ECS Digital Library: http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/163/6/A1010.full.

25 Years of Interface

Interface Prototype

In December of 1992, the premier issue of Interface was published with a cover celebrating Rudolph Marcus’s winning of the Nobel Prize that year. But did you know that prior to that first issue of Interface, ECS published its members magazine prototype named the Quarterly? It was published in January 1992 and its cover showed a porous silicon sample luminescing in the visible when irradiated by an argon ion laser.

In that prototype issue, then ECS president Larry Faulkner said in his Letter from the President, “The periodic self-analysis of the Society’s agenda and structure is an extremely important part of our life. Without it, we will fail to adapt effectively to a changing environment, so the work is essential in the strictest sense.” Still good advice today.

Now, over 90 issues later, we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of Interface. Throughout the issues this year, readers will be treated to special excerpts looking back at some of the top moments in the magazine’s history.

We’re inviting readers to share their thoughts about Interface, in particular how the magazine may have impacted your research or career. Send your thoughts to Interface@electrochem.org.

An article by Shelley D. Minteer and Henry White as part of the JES Focus Issue Honoring Allen J. Bard.

Allen J. Bard AwardThe Electrochemical Society founded the Allen J. Bard Award in 2013 to honor Prof. Allen J. Bard’s extensive contributions in the field of electrochemistry, and the first award was given in May 2015 at the ECS meeting in Chicago. In recognition of the establishment of this endowed award, we are delighted to dedicate this special issue of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society to Professor Bard.

Allen was born in New York City in 1933 and obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry at City College of New York 1955. He continued his studies at Harvard University under the supervision of James J. Lingane, a renowned electroanalytical chemist, and received a Master’s degree in 1956 and a PhD in 1958. He then accepted an instructor position at the University of Texas and quickly moved up the ranks to Professor in 1967.

In the 58 years since arriving in Austin, Allen has mentored over 75 PhD students and 150 post-doctoral fellows. Their combined contributions to the field of electrochemistry are legendary, including electroanalytical techniques for evaluating electrode reaction mechanisms, simultaneous electrochemistry electron spin resonance (SEESR) techniques, nonaqueous solvents for investigating energetic species, electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL), polymer modified electrodes, semiconductor photoelectrochemistry, photocatalysis, scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM), and single-particle collision electrochemistry.

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ECS Publishes New Article Type

Communication article highlights scientific breakthroughs

JES/JSSIn an effort to more quickly disseminate breakthrough research and bolster the scientific discovery process, ECS has established Communication articles for researchers to quickly get the word out to a large scientific community on impressive preliminary research results.

ECS has been publishing Communication articles since October 2015. These articles define a special category of short reports for publication in either the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) or ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology (JSS).

“Although the research is preliminary,” says Dennis Hess, editor of JSS, “the content of these articles has the potential to change the direction of a field or supply the solution to a critical problem, thereby benefiting greatly science, technology, and society.”

With little time between acceptance and publication and concise reports of 2,000 words or less, Communication articles have the potential to open the door to the faster development of practical applications and overall advancement of the science.

All Communication articles undergo the same rigorous peer-review process associated with ECS publications. Each report is designed to demonstrate the high-impact of the research to the scientific community at large, providing a preliminary step for authors to highlight significant breakthroughs prior to publishing a full study/paper.

Learn more about Communication articles.

PS: Check out the Communication articles that have already been published in JES and JSS.

Open Access vs. Illegal Access

openaccessroundIt’s always questionable to blog about something that is gaining attention because it’s illegal, but that’s the case with the latest crop of articles about open access in popular media.  While the scientific community has been debating the merits of open access for a while now, the business behind scientific publishing is getting a lot more attention lately because of Alexandra Elbakyan, a graduate student from Kazakhstan who has hacked into hundreds of scholarly journals.

Elbakayn leaked millions of documents, opening a (albeit illegal) door for the public to freely access just about every scientific paper ever published.

To some, Elbakyan is a hero – taking a stand for the public’s right to know. To others, she is a criminal.

“Realistically only scientists at really big, well-funded universities in the developed world have full access to published research,” said Michael Eisen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a longtime champion of open access. “The current system slows science by slowing communication of work, slows it by limiting the number of people who can access information and quashes the ability to do the kind of data analysis” that is possible when articles aren’t “sitting on various siloed databases.”

This from The New York Times:

Journal publishers collectively earned $10 billion last year, much of it from research libraries, which pay annual subscription fees ranging from $2,000 to $35,000 per title if they don’t buy subscriptions of bundled titles, which cost millions. The largest companies, like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer and Wiley, typically have profit margins of over 30 percent.

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ecstA new issue of ECS Transactions has just been published: Fuel Cell Seminar & Energy Exposition 2015.

The papers in this issue of ECST were presented in Los Angeles, CA on Nov. 11-16, 2015. ECST Volume 71, Issue 1 can be found here.

This is the first ECST publication to be made available via download in the ECS Online Store. You may purchase this issue as a full text PDF download here.

Call for Papers: 2D Materials

Focus IssuesJSS Technical Editors: Fan Ren and Stefan De Gendt
and
Guest Editors: Lain-Jong (Lance) Li and Daniel S. P. Lau

invite you to submit to the:
JSS Focus Issue:
Properties, Devices, and Applications Based on 2D Layered Materials

Submission Deadline | May 18, 2016

This special issue of the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology focuses on properties, devices, and applications of two-dimensional (2D) based materials including boron nitrides, black phosphorous, transition metal dichalcogenides/oxides, and other layered materials beyond graphene.

Review and contributed papers are welcome in the following domains:

  • Materials preparation
  • Novel growth technology
  • Growth chemistry
  • Metal contacts
  • Surface cleaning and passivation
  • Wet and dry etching
  • Device design and processing integration
  • Device Physics
  • Device and growth simulation
  • Applications of 2D material based devices and systems
  • Heterostructures based on 2D materials

Submission Deadline | May 18, 2016

Please submit manuscripts at http://ecsjournals.msubmit.net

(Be sure to specify your submission is for the JSS Focus Issue on Properties, Devices, and Applications Based on 2D Layered Materials.)

Papers accepted into this focus issue are published online within 10 days of acceptance. The issue is created online an article at a time with the final article published in October 2016.

Battery technology for water desalination

Inspired by the principles of the sodium ion battery, Kyle Smith (right) is re-appropriating technology to make huge strides in water desalination.
Image: L. Brian Stauffer

Battery applications range from powering electronic devices to storing energy harvested from renewable sources, but batteries have a range of applications beyond the obvious. Now, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are taking existing battery technology and applying it to efforts in water desalination.

The researchers have published the open access article in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

“We are developing a device that will use the materials in batteries to take salt out of water with the smallest amount of energy that we can,” said Kyle Smith, ECS member and assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “One thing I’m excited about is that by publishing this paper, we’re introducing a new type of device to the battery community and to the desalination community.”

Water desalination technologies have flourished as water needs have grown globally. This could be linked to growing populations or drought. However, because of technical hurdles, wide-spread implementation of these technologies has been difficult. However, the new technologies developed could combat that issue by using electricity to draw charged salt ions out of the water.

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JES Seeks Technical Editor

ECS is seeking to fill the position of technical editor of the electrochemical engineering topical interest area for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

Wanted: JES EditorThe topical interest area includes industrial electrochemistry, the mathematical modeling of electrochemical reactors and devices, electrochemical machining, and the electrochemical synthesis of compounds. Specific topics include: kinetics, selectivity, and yields; mass, momentum, and heat transport; and electrode designs and evaluation.

Self-nominations and third-party nominations are due no later than February 5, 2016.

Full applications are due no later than February 12, 2016.

Learn more!

Please share with anyone you feel would be a good candidate.