With top academic publishers like Elsevier holding a 35-40% profit margin and for-profit academic publishers earning $25.2 billion a year, Jason Schmitt began to wonder about the consequences of paywalls on access to scientific research. His questions led to his October 2018 documentary film, Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, where he questioned publishing practices and the public’s limited access to information.

According to IMDb, while filming, Schmitt says he was struck by the global energy and enthusiasm toward open access and the strong resistance to the movement by many of the world’s top publishers. “Further, I found that the funds paid to academic publishers are heavily burdening the higher education market, contributing to the rising tuition fees at all universities, the closure of many institutions and, ultimately, limiting science and progress.” (more…)

Stuart Taylor Credit: OASPA

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association recently sat down with Stuart Taylor, publishing director of the Royal Society and their very own, newly appointed OASPA board member, for an interview. Taylor holds 30 years of experience in publishing and has witnessed many changes within the industry, such as the introduction of the open access model.

“I began in the commercial sector. Back then, open access wasn’t a topic I was aware of at all and the concept of open access publishing hadn’t even been invented,” says Taylor.

By the end of the 1990s, however, Taylor says the rumblings of an open access model began to make its presence within the publishing community, which at that time, “Was seen only as a threat to commercial companies. Something to be fought or at least contained.” (more…)

During International Open Access Week 2018 (October 22-28), an event organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Society took down the paywall to the ECS Digital Library for the fourth consecutive year, making over 141,000 scientific articles and abstracts free and accessible to everyone.

If you participated in the event, please take a moment to tell us more about your experience.

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ECS is currently accepting nominations for two Canada section awards:

Canada Section W. Lash Miller Award

The Canada Section W. Lash Miller Award was established in 1967 to recognize Canada residents with publications and/or excellence in the field of electrochemical science and technology and/or solid state science and technology. The award consists of a $1,000 CAD prize.

Application Deadline: December 31, 2018 (more…)

Credit: American Chemical Society

Pesticides, extremely effective at killing pests, can also unfortunately pass on the same harmful effects to the people who use them—most commonly farmers. To combat the problem, researchers have developed a way to detect the presence of such compounds in the field using a disposable “lab-on-a-glove,” according to Phys.

Because different types of pesticides consist of different levels of toxicity, the protective glove is of particular importance, as it can be used to determine which compounds are present more accurately and quickly.

The new wearable, flexible glove biosensor carries out the sampling and electrochemical biosensing steps on different fingers. Detection of the collected residues is performed when the thumb touches the printed enzyme-based organophosphate biosensor on the glove index finger. (more…)

By: Marca Doeff, ECS Battery Division Chair

Marca Doeff, a staff scientist in the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and chair of the ECS Battery Division, discusses the future of batteries. Doeff covers advancements and developments, notable contributors and leaders, corporate sponsors and supporters, upcoming meetings and awards, all within the battery field.

What are a few current areas of battery research the division is focusing on?
Anything having to do with lithium-ion batteries, since they are turning out to be the real workhorses of the battery world. While the chemistry is fairly mature at this point, there is still a lot of work going on in silicon anodes, trying to find better cathode materials, and improving electrolytes.

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Photo: UCL Interactive Architecture Lab

Few of us are lucky enough to have a green thumb. The perfect balance of sunlight, climate, and water requires a special, intuitive touch. A little too much water, a little too little, and turns into gunk or withers. A little too much sun, a little too little, and wastes away and shrivels. And, so it goes.

Well, gardening just got a little easier. According to Inhabitat, students at University College London’s Interactive Architecture Lab have designed a nomadic, self-driving, and self-cultivating garden named Hortum machina, B. Like an autonomous car, the mobile garden responds to the environment, in this case, moving towards or away from sunlight, shade, and unhealthy levels of air pollution, as needed. (more…)

New energy system prototype from Chalmers University that can store the sun’s energy for up to 18 years. Image by: Chalmers University of Technology

According to Science Alert, scientists have recently figured out a way to store solar power for up to 18 years.

It’s made possible with a specialised fluid, called a solar thermal fuel, that’s catching the attention of numerous investors, according to the research team at the Chalmers University of Technology working on the project. (more…)

Summer 2018 was a good one for Aashutosh Mistry and Haegyeom Kim. Both were awarded ECS Summer Fellowships to further explore their research within a lab and to advance within their fields.

Aashutosh Mistry, recipient of the Edward G. Weston Summer Fellowship.

“The ECS Summer Fellowship program offered me the time and money to explore questions and pursue research I couldn’t explore during my PhD. Without the fellowship, I couldn’t have done this,” says Aashutosh Mistry, a PhD student at Purdue University.

Mistry is one of five recipients of the 2018 ECS Summer Fellowship program designed to assist students during the summer months, June through August, in the pursuit of work in a field of interest to ECS. He is just one example of how the fellowship directly effects and encourages young researchers to explore and expand their studies.

Mistry explains that during his PhD study, he’d often discover problems he thought were worth pursuing. However, because these problems were not considered part of the main objective of the project, and also considering deadlines and time constraints, Mistry did not have the flexibility to explore these questions.

“You often cannot pursue these science questions, which, at end of the day, ties back into the project,” says Mistry, adding, “These things they take time.”

The Edward G. Weston Summer Fellowship offered him the opportunity to dive into these very questions. (more…)