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Elsevier Awards India's Young Scientists
by Mailing List Manager 21 Dec '06

21 Dec '06

Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 15:36:59 +0800 From: "Muralidharan, Padma (ELS-DEL)" <P.Muralidharan(a)elsevier.com> Dear Reader, New Delhi - At a glittering award ceremony, the "SCOPUS - Young India Scientist Awards" for 2006 were given away to nine young brilliant scientists. These awards were instituted by Elsevier - the world's largest publisher in STM - Science, Technology & Medicine to honour and propel India's young research minds towards furthering Indian Science. The selection process involved senior academicians, subject experts and scientometricians from the eight subject areas in which the awards were given away. The evaluation criteria were both qualitative and quantitative criteria. For the former, the recently popular bibliometric tool - the Hirsch Index, published papers and citation data and the impact factors - another measurement tool for the quality of a journal were considered. Qualitative analysis was used to see if the research paper was path breaking and if it helped develop new insights into the field. The winners were : Dr. Sunil Kumar Manna from Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad and Dr. Rajesh S Gokhale from National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi for Biological Sciences Dr. Kumar Biradha from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur for Chemistry Dr. Shankar Doraiswamy from National Institute of Oceanography, Goa in Earth Sciences Dr. Giridhar Madras from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in Engineering, Dr. Abhay Gopal Bhatt from Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi in Mathematics Dr. G Venkatasubramanian from National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences, Bangalore in Medicine Dr. C P Safvan from Inter University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi and Dr. Tarun Souradeep from Inter University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pune for their work in Physics. We would like to thank all the applicants for participating in this. We hope to continue with this endeavour in the future years too. Kind regards, Padma Muralidharan Account Development Manager, Elsevier India (Science & Technology) Phone : 011-42890202

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Failed experiment of online knowledge sharing
by Aman Jha 21 Dec '06

21 Dec '06

Dear Friends The quote below is self explanatory. Shows the future of online knowledge sharing culture. "Nature has given up on an effort to take peer review to the people. For several months beginning this past summer, Nature has invited scientists whose articles were short-listed for publication in the journal to first post their work online for public review. Normally, a handful of scientists review such submissions anonymously. But Nature, which is published by a unit of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., said in an editorial in today's issue that it was ending the experiment due to lack of participation. The journal found that in the competitive world of scientific publishing, the vast majority of authors were unwilling to post their papers and few scientists were willing to criticize their peers' work publicly by posting comments on Nature's Web site." Source: The Wall Street Journal, 21 December 2006 Regards, Aman Jha Librarian Confederation of Indian Industry Plot No 249-F, Udyog Vihar, Phase IV Sector 18, Gurgaon - 122015 (Haryana) Tel: 0124-4014060-67 aman.jha(a)ciionline.org http://www.ciionline.org DISCLAIMER:The information in this message may be privileged. If you have received it by mistake please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete the message from your system. Any unauthorised use or dissemination of this message in whole or in part is strictly prohibited. Any information in this message that does not relate to official business shall be understood to be neither given nor endorsed by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Reach us via our unique Membership Helpline: 00-91-11-435 46244 / 00-99104 46244 (Monday-Saturday: 0900-1700 hrs)

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On scientific research in India
by Subbiah Arunachalam 21 Dec '06

21 Dec '06

Friends: Here is an article from Central Chronicle, Bhopal, 16 December 2006. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] Promote scientific research Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has always been a votary of spreading scientific knowledge and pointed to the need for giving more attention to this sector. Not only have financial allocations for science teaching in India increased but he has also committed to boost up the annual expenditure on science and technology from less than one per cent of GDP to two per cent in the next five years. Over the years lot of concern has been expressed by various sections of academicians and also by our Prime Minister and President, all of whom have expressed the need to concentrate on research and translate the benefits to the field and factory. The PM regretted recently that research standards have declined in Indian universities and warned about a "disconnect between research and teaching in the sciences". Moreover the type of research being conducted was concentrated in specialized institutes and generally did not have a direct bearing on society. The universities also had difficulty in mobilizing adequate financial and intellectual resources which, in turn, hampered research. Delving into some bare facts, one finds that R&D expenditure has remained static at 0.8 per cent of the GDP during 1985 to 2005 though China increased it from 0.5 per cent to 1.3 per cent during the same period. Japan and South Korea spend 3 and 2 per cent respectively on R&D. Moreover China increased its number of scientific publications to 104 times during the two decades while India could do it only 2.3 times, according ta a study by R. N. Kostoff of the US Office of Naval Research. Eugene Garfield, the American pioneer in mapping scientific information, has corroborated the decline in Indian standards. According to him, in 1973 Indian scientists accounted for about half of the developing world's quality science papers. In the 70s, his benchmark Science Citation Index places India in the 8th place behind the US, UK, USSR, France, Japan and Canada. By 2000, India had slid to the 15th place. Though one may argue that citations need not be the only benchmark, India's agricultural research has also not been very successful to develop ground-breaking techniques for the rain-dependent farmers, as result of which production and productivity is very low in drought prone areas. Regarding defence research, the Defence Research & Development Organization's (DRDO's) ambitious plans to achieve 70 per cent weapons indigenisation by 2005 has been abysmal failure and may not be accomplished even by 2010. According to a 1999 CAG audit, the development of the Pinaka, a multi-barrel rocket launcher, was compromised by non-availability of qualified manpower. The DRDO's scientists are grossly outnumbered by up to four times the auxiliary staff than found in similar private sector establishments. As regards the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is concerned, India's success stories are far behind that of global competitors. For example, China has launched 24 foreign satellites so far, sent two manned missions into space, is believed to be planning a human mission to Mars in 2017 and a satellite navigation system akin to the European Galileo. India has only just begun to consider sending a man into space and would still take another 6-7 years to launch manned space aircraft. Moreover, the GSLV crash is indeed a big setback to the country's entry into the $ 2 billion commercial satellite launch market. In pharmaceuticals though, India is a leader in the Third World, it has done no better when it comes to discovering new molecules to treat diseases. "No new molecules are being discovered", observed Dr. C. M. Gulati, a drug expert, adding that what is happening is just "peripheral research where the industry is developing new formulations of existing drugs or new routes of drug delivery and getting patents for these". With this kind of research, experts believe that India cannot capture even 0.5 per cent of the drug R&D market. In fact, the country's medical research has no productive link with the rising pharma industry. Apart from these sectoral developments, interest in science education is also on the decline. Students opting for pure science for graduation in India dropped from 32 per cent in 1950 to 15 per cent in 2000. Scientists per million population in the country is a mere 157 compared to 545 in China and 2319 in South Korea. Obviously this is because on R&D expenditure per capita is a mere $ 5.5 compared to $11.7 of China and $ 241 of South Korea. It is true that India produces some finest scientists and has some very good laboratories but they are like proverbial islands of excellence surrounded by a vast ocean of mediocrity. Although our science and technology policy has advocated pubic-private partnership in research, industry's contribution remains just about 20 per cent as compared to around 70-80 per cent in advanced countries and 40 per cent in China. It is indeed intriguing why the Indian private sector has been unable to contribute to R&D compared to their counterparts in South Korea and Singapore not to speak of the Western nations. Except for the Tata group and another one or two in the pharmaceutical sector, the contribution of even the market leaders in industry towards research has been quite poor. Even industry-wise, R&D expenditure has not been encouraging except, of course, for the pharma and IT sectors. Realizing the imperative need to give a boost to science education and attract more students in this field, the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister decided to set up the National Science & Engineering Foundation and two new institutes of science. The proposals come with some hefty price tags: Rs 500 crores for each of the two institutes and Rs 1000 crores for the Foundation to fund basic research in the universities. The obvious goal is to inject more money into science and create more centres of excellence and basic research. The Government's concern at this juncture cannot be doubted and quite justifiably, so as the country aims at achieving international standards and become globally competitive in the coming years. The warning of 'acting now' has been rightly sounded by Prof. C. N. Rao, the PM's Scientific Advisor, and this has resulted in evolving an action plan at the highest level with the following objectives: Selected few to be handsomely funded so that they attain international standards; demand performance from individuals and institutions after providing necessary funds; create an autonomous research foundation to take care of all aspect of scientific research; initiate a massive programme of rejuvenation of state and central universities; encourage top talent from all corners of the country to enter the field of pure science and also encourage young scientists in research work in all possible ways; and provide freedom of operation to scientists, universities and scientific institutions. Scientific innovations in key areas such as power (atomic power), defence, biotechnology, pharma, IT and mining sectors are imperative for the country at this juncture. To emerge as a world leader in the true sense, there is need for sustained research in the above areas, responsibility for which has to be shared jointly by the government and the private sector. For a country to emerge big and strong R&D has to be given priority and more funds allocated for this purpose under different heads so that the benefits of research reach society, both rural and urban and industrial and agricultural. Dhurjati Mukherjee, INFA ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com

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Australian govt funds OA repositories
by Subbiah Arunachalam 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

Friends: The Australian Government has allocated a huge sum for Australian universities to build their own institutional open access archives (similar to the EPrints archive of IISc, B'lore). Please see the report appended below. When will we in India do such a thing and mandate setting up of OA archives at all major research-performing universities and laboratories? Four or five years ago Current Science carried a short (less than 2 pages) article that clearly showed that China was racing ahead of India in number of papers published as seen not only from the Web of Science but also from MatsciNet and Chemical Abstracts. Many Indian science managers either didn't take note of it or ignored it. A few months ago the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister made a big case on the very same point and the Indian press covered it for several days. I hope in the case of open access archiving such a thing will not happen. And the science managers will look at what is said and if it is valid rather than who keeps saying it! Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----------------------- >From Peter Suber's blog Australian govt funds OA repositories Julie Bishop, Australia's Minister for Education, Science and Training, has allocated $25.5 million to build OA repositories at Australian universities as part of the country's new Research Quality Framework (RQF). Here's the key part of today's press release: $25.5 million - Australian Scheme for Higher Education Repositories programme - to assist with the establishment of university digital data storage systems that will allow research outputs to be submitted for RQF assessment. This programme builds on the Australian Governments $35 million investment in the research and development of data repository technology, funded as part of Backing Australias Ability. ___________________________________________________________ Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html

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For admission in Mphil
by ab verma 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

Respected all I Abhishek Verma, wants to pursue Mphil in Library and Information Science from Alagappa University, as Distance Education Mode, but recently Tamil nadu government has suspended(Mphil & Phd.) the course from 2007-08 session and further.I am from Varanasi and there is Algappa University's study center in our city which is going to start Mphil from 15th,January 2007and the session as i informed by the study centre will be Jan-Dec,2007 session. Please Suggest me whether i can pursue this course and after completion of this course my degree would be recognized by the govt. or not. Also suggest universities from where i can take admission in Mphil (library Science) Truly Yours Abhishek Verma Deputy Librarian School of Management Science Varanasi, 221005 Uttar Pradesh Email: abhishekverma81(a)gmail.com and abhishekwrverma(a)yahoo.co.in Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Yahoo! Messenger. Download Now! http://messenger.yahoo.com/download.php Respected all I Abhishek Verma, wants to pursue Mphil in Library and Information Science from Alagappa University, as Distance Education Mode, but recently Tamil nadu government has suspended(Mphil & Phd.) the course from 2007-08 session and further.I am from Varanasi and there is Algappa University's study center in our city which is going to start Mphil from 15th,January 2007and the session as i informed by the study centre will be Jan-Dec,2007 session. Please Suggest me whether i can pursue this course and after completion of this course my degree would be recognized by the govt. or not. Also suggest universities from where i can take admission in Mphil (library Science) Truly Yours Abhishek Verma Deputy Librarian School of Management Science Varanasi, 221005 Uttar Pradesh Email: mailto:abhishekverma81@gmail.com abhishekverma81(a)gmail.com and mailto:abhishekwrverma@yahoo.co.in abhishekwrverma(a)yahoo.co.in Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Yahoo! Messenger. Download Now! http://messenger.yahoo.com/download.php

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ICSD-2007: Early Bird Registration
by Dr. A.R.D. Prasad 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

Apologies if you received multiple copies of this message. ============================================= ========== ICSD-2007 Call For Participation Early Bird Registration Deadline January 01, 2007 ========== ============================================= INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SEMANTIC WEB & DIGITAL LIBRARIES February 21-23, 2007 (http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/icsd) Bangalore, India Documentation Research & Training Centre invites international researchers, information professionals, Librarians, business leaders and academics to sign up for three days of stimulating discussions on the latest results in research and applications of Semantic Web Technologies and digital libraries. Sessions include keynote lectures, workshops and tutorials that focus on innovative research areas and applications such as Knowledge Organization and Ontologies, Semantic Web Services, Tools and Techniques for managing digital repositories, Digital Resource Management strategies, and many more. The conference is going to be held at Bangalore, the IT city of India. ==== | INVITED SPEAKERS and TUTORIAL RESOURCE PERSONS (Confirmed so far) ==== # Dr. Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead # Prof. Fausto Giunchiglia, Department of Information and Communication Technology, University of Trento, Italy # Prof. Peter Schirmbacher, Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft, University of Humboldt, Berlin, Germany # Dr. Anupriya Ankolekar, Research Associate, AIFB Institute, University of Karlsruhe, Germany # Prof. Frederick Friend, JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant, Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL, England ==== | REGISTRATION ==== Participants who register on or before January 01, 2007 can benefit from early bird special prices. * Early Bird registration: Till January 01, 2007. * Early Bird registration fees: Rs. 4000 (Indian & SAARC Delegates) $US 150 (Foreign Delegates other than SAARC) * Late Registration: January 02, 2007 onwards Rs. 5000 (Indian & SAARC Delegates); USD 175 (Foreign Delegates other than SAARC) * Tutorial: Rs.1000 (Indian & SAARC Delegates); USD 40 (Foreign Delegates other than SAARC) Note: Registration Fee includes conference kit, tea/coffee and working lunch +------------------------------------------------------------------+ Registration form is available for download at http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/icsd/icsd-files/icsd_registration_form.doc Kindly post the filled-in registration forms to the address below: Dr. A.R.D. Prasad Convenor, ICSD 2007 DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), 8th Mile, Mysore Road, R.V. College Post, Bangalore, Karnataka (India) Pin - 560059 Electronic copy of registration form duly filled and signed can be sent to icsd(a)drtc.isibang.ac.in, but official copy should also be sent by regular mail. Please note: The Demand Draft (DD) Should be made in favour of Indian Statisitcal Institute, payable at Bangalore. Outstation cheques should include additional transaction fee. +------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- Dr. A.R.D. Prasad Convenor ICSD-2007 DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore INDIA

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Difference between Library Classification & Yahoo's Classification
by Satish MV 19 Dec '06

19 Dec '06

Dear Professionals, Could anybody plz explain the difference between classification we do in the library and yahoo's classification (yahoo.com) apart from its directory based classification ? And I will be waiting for your precious reply. With Regards. Satish MV Project Assistant NCSI, IISc. Bangalore Email: satish.ncsi(a)gmail.com Dear Professionals, Could anybody plz explain the difference between classification we do in the library and yahoo's classification ( http://yahoo.com yahoo.com ) apart from its directory based classification ? And I will be waiting for your precious reply. With Regards. Satish MV Project Assistant NCSI, IISc. Bangalore Email: mailto:satish.ncsi@gmail.com satish.ncsi(a)gmail.com

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Google offers to digitise back issues (and volumes) of scientific and scholarly journals
by Mailing List Manager 19 Dec '06

19 Dec '06

Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:54:27 +0000 (GMT) From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah_a(a)yahoo.com> Friends: Here is an interesting development. Google offers to digitise back issues (and volumes) of scientific and scholarly journals at NO COST to journal publishers. [Many Indian societies publishing their own journals might wish to take advantage of this programme, as and when Google makes this programme public.] Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------------------------ >From Peter Suber's blog Google's offer to digitize journal back runs for OA Google is offering to digitize and provide OA to the back runs of scholarly journals. The terms of the offer are not online, as far as I can tell, but here's an excerpt from Google's Overview and FAQ, generously shared with me by the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ), which is passing the offer on to its members for their consideration. While many publishers and organizations are working on bringing journal collections online, a substantial fraction of scholarly journals are currently offline and may remain offline for the foreseeable future. Google is offering publishers an archival journal digitization program to bring these archival collections online and to make them more accessible. Highlights: * Publishers maintain copyright and ownership of their content. Publishers select the journal volumes to be digitized. * This service is free and will make articles from the selected issues fully [and freely] accessible to all users. * Hosted pages that display journal articles will include publisher co-branding/logo and a link back to the publishers website. * This program is non-exclusive. There is no restriction on redigitization of this material or on working with other partners. Additional Details: * The digitized journal articles will be included in Google search indices including Google Web Search and Google Scholar. * Publishers can create a table of contents on their website and link to their digitized articles in Google, allowing users to browse their archives from their website.... * Publishers have the option to include Google's ads on the hosted pages that display the journal articles. This is setup as a revenue share between the publisher and Google. Frequently Asked Questions Q. Does this mean all my journals have to be offered openly accessible? A. No, you can choose the journal volumes to be included. The goal of this program is to bring archival journal collections online. Q. Can you provide us with the digital files? A: We are unable to provide the digital files unless we terminate the service or the agreement. We would like to point out that this is a non-exclusive program.... Q: Will Google provide us with reporting tools so I know how many users are reading my digitized content? A: Yes, we will provide tools for publishers to view the usage of their content. Q: What will users see when they find my digitized articles? A: Users will see the full digitized article and will have an option to download PDFs for reading or printing. The pages that display the article will also include the publisher's logo and url.... Peter Suber's Comments. I've been hoping to see this development ever since Google started digitizing books two years ago. 1. The offer could be better, but it's definitely worth taking. I'd like to see open access to cut-and-pasteable text, not just to images. (I've said the same about Google-scanned books.) I'd also like to see journals get their own copies of the files so that Google wouldn't be the only host. But then, of course, the files would be indexed by Yahoo, Microsoft, and Scirus as well. While Google naturally wants some return on its investment, and a period of exclusivity, this provision of the contract shows the effect of a profit motive. If the OCA gets into journal digitization, and I hope it will, I suspect that it would be delighted if the resulting files were indexed by every search engine on the planet. Meantime, free online access through Google alone is much better, for authors, readers, and journals, than no free online access at all. 2. I don't see a downside for journal that doesn't already have a digitized back run. Google will charge nothing to do the job, the contract is non-exclusive, and it needn't include current issues. The only journals that might hesitate are those already selling online access to their back runs and happy with the revenue. 3. Because the offer targets non-OA issues, it could bring about OA to virtually the whole corpus of journal literature that isn't already OA. And it could do this without compelling non-OA journals to convert to OA for their newer issues. 4. The offer is new I don't yet know of any journals taking Google up on it. If you hear any, please let me know. Meantime, if an important journal in your field hasn't yet digitized its back run, tell it about this offer.

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'Digital black hole' threatens your documents
by Mailing List Manager 19 Dec '06

19 Dec '06

Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:49:24 +0530 From: praveen kumar veeramalla <praveenkumarveeramalla(a)gmail.com> *The European Union is funding a project involving national libraries and digital preservation groups aimed at fighting off a looming "digital black hole."* The black hole in question is the potential future loss of data as file formats become obsolete and inaccessible. The planets consortium will develop a "sustainable framework" to maintain access to digital content after its original storage format has disappeared. ("Planets" is short for "preservation and long-term access project through networked services.) It is estimated that 5 billion documents are produced every year within the EU, of which 2 percent--100 million--are seen as worth archiving. Two million of these documents are on formats at risk from disappearing into the digital black hole. The consortium includes national libraries, archives, research institutes and technology specialists across Europe. The organizations taking part include the British Library; Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England; IBM Netherlands; the Austrian National Library; the Swiss Federal Archives; and Freiburg and Cologne universities in Germany. The EU's Information Society Technologies R&D program is providing 8.6million euros ($11.3 million) of the 14 million euros ($18.5 million) required to fund the project. Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library, said that as computer hardware and software become obsolete,digital information reliant on this technology becomes increasingly hard to find, view, search and reuse. "There is a growing consensus on the need to act now to avoid a gaping hole in our cultural and scientific record," he said. LynneeBrindley ,chief executive of the British Library, said European libraries and archives are uniquely positioned to lead this digital-preservation initiative, as they have the legal responsibility and the legislative framework to safeguard digital information. *Source:* *Tim Ferguson of silicon.com reported from London* *CNet news* ** ************************************************** praveen kumar veeramalla

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Biomicrofluidics
by vimal kumar 19 Dec '06

19 Dec '06

Dear Professionals, Biomicrofluidics is an online open-access journal published by the American Institute of Physics to rapidly disseminate novel microfluidic techniques with diagnostic, medical, biological, pharmaceutical, environmental, and chemical applications. http://bmf.aip.org/ Vimal Kumar Asian School of Business Technopark Trivandrum-695 581 vimal0212(a)yahoo.com www.asb.edu.in __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Biomicrofluidics is an online open-access journal published by the American Institute of Physics to rapidly disseminate novel microfluidic techniques with diagnostic, medical, biological, pharmaceutical, environmental, and chemical applications. http://bmf.aip.org/ Vimal Kumar Asian School of Business Technopark Trivandrum-695 581 vimal0212(a)yahoo.com www.asb.edu.in __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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