iMechanica - Operating Notes for the iMechanica Journal Club - Comments

Updating the jClub Operating Notes: Editors and Council

Zhigang Suo — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 10:49:34 -0400

Guided by the recent discussions on the selection procedure of new Editors, I have just updated the Operating Notes of the jClub. The main modifications concern the jClub Council and Editors.

I have not modified the frequency of the Themes. The consensus in the discussion seems to be that it is up to Pradeep and Michelle, the Editors, to ascertain if they can recruit Discussion Leaders to sustain biweekly Themes. I suggest that we give them the flexibility to decide when or whether they would like to make this change. Although Michelle's "official" starting date is 1 January 2008, I see no harm for her to act immediately if she so chooses.

I have also added the new Editor and the Council to the archive of the Journal Club.

Location of the Theme of April

Zhigang Suo — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 10:32:26 -0400

Dear Xi: I have not found a way to relocate this issue from your blog to the Journal Club Forum. Through the link in the archive of the jClub, on the right side of iMechanica, a user can always locate this issue in the future.

how to associate the April issue with JClub Forum?

Xi Chen — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:17:00 -0400

I just realized that I created a new post when I was writing the April issue of jClub (instead of create a new forum topic), and thus it is not properly associated with the forum. For example, it does not show in "active forum topics" on the right. Is there a way to correct this? Thanks.

Serve the community

Henry Tan — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:25:57 -0400

I would like to nominate myself to be the next Editor of the jClub.

jclub editor

Pradeep Sharma — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:37:40 -0400

Zhigang, I agree with this proposal. I quite liked the Gordon conference scheme and in general lean towards procedures that are as democratic as possible. To avoid any "hereditary" influence, I don't believe that the outgoing editor should play any major role in the election process---other than make a post inviting nominations. I also think self-nomination should be allowed. If I recall correctly, we decided to have the election in July. I was thinking of starting this process in May.

To avoid cluttering up the main iMechanica page, we can organize the election on a separate page that is linked to the main one.

How will candidates for 2008 jClub Editor emerge?

Zhigang Suo — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:02:34 -0400

Pradeep: Now we seem to converge on how we elect the new Editor of the jClub, once we have several candidates. It is still not clear to me how the candidates will emerge. Will you, as the presiding Editor, send out a call for nomination? Or do you have some other procedures in mind?

My experience with Gordon Conferences suggest the following process.

Everyone can nominate a candidate. But before you nominate someone, you talk to the person and see if he or she is interested in running for election.
Each candidate is given an opportunity to explain to us why we should elect him or her. At a Gordon Conference, this is in the form of a 10 minute presentation. For iMechanica, this can be a post, I suppose.

Anyone has an opinion on this? If we want to hold a July-August election, we need to start to get candidates soon.

jClublet topics and forums

MichelleLOyen — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:25:12 -0500

Certainly biomechanics is one potential jClublet as well, and seems to be of interest but not yet well-represented on iMech.

Interesting point regarding the active existing discussion on the forums, especially the computational one which seems to be leading the way. In this regard, a jClublet presents an opportunity to steer the discussion on the forum and supplement it.

Selection of next year's editor

Pradeep Sharma — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:11:15 -0500

On a side note (thanks Zhigang for reminding me), I have updated the operating rules to reflect the new procedure to select next year's editor.

re: jClublets on comp mech

John E. Dolbow — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 13:06:03 -0500

We certainly could do this, but the comp mech forum seems to be a place where topics are already being actively discussed. So jClublets based on comp mech would be focusing on an area for which there is already good activity and discussion.

I think at least one point of jClub is to branch iMechanica out into new areas that are somewhat under-represented at present. I'm not sure this would be the best way to effect that?

jClublets of Computational Mechanics?

Zhigang Suo — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 09:10:36 -0500

This sounds like a great idea. For example, Computational Mechanics Forum is already gaining active participation. Will someone in Computational Mechanics initiate the organization, for example, by drafting Operating Notes for the jClublet of Computational Mechanics? Or should we simply talk more about this notion in this thread of discussion?

MRS Bulletin vs jClub

Zhigang Suo — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 08:52:23 -0500

I like MRS bulletin, too. Some basic facts, however, will require us to think more. Each issue of MRS Bulletin requires a large amount of effort on the part of the guest editors, and of the authors. Each issue is planned over a long time. While this mode of operation is essential for the success of MRS bulletin, it might be too constraining for iMechanica. MRS Bulletin is a print magazine, iMechanica is an online platform. Spontaneous participation by everyone is our strength.

This said, your idea of having 2 people with different backgrounds writing the same Theme is workable within the present set up. Each Discussion Leader can invite other people to co-write the Theme. All authors photos can be inserted into the post.

Should we require each Discussion Leader to invite other people to co-write a Theme? This question is open to discussion.

I believe that we should not. To do so would add much more work in coordination for the Editor (i.e., Pradeep) and Discussion Leaders. For each Theme, he would have to talk to at least two people. As we all know, 3-Way long distance communication is many-orders-of-magnitude more difficult than 2-Way communication. Coordination takes effort, and may not always yield better results.

I would further argue that a Theme written by a single person, with less entanglement but better focus, might be more natural for readers to digest new ideas. If a topic has several significant aspects, they will show up in the follow-up discussions.

I still believe that individual Discussion Leader should have complete freedom in writing his Theme, including making the decision if he wishes to invite someone to co-write the Theme, or simply invite people to discuss.

J clublets

MichelleLOyen — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 05:07:52 -0500

Another idea is to run the main jClub as is and continuing in the vein with broad and purposefully varying subjects within the broad scope of iMech, and then have a couple (to start) of jClublets on specific topics/fields (biomechanics, computational, etc.). Each sub-topic jClublet could have a sub-coordinator who could arrange the topics in a smaller field and it could be up to them to choose the frequency of the sub-theme postings.

Monthly for each might be too much, and there might be some good arguments for coordinating it with or in opposition to the academic term calendar (with if you include iMech activities as part of a course, like what Zhigang has been doing, or against if the term is too busy for student participation). But the details would be the domain of the Clublet coordinator, and it would be up to them to also flag topics of potentially broad interest to Pradeep for "promotion" to the main club. This would certainly be consistent with the high level of technical discussion taking place in some of the forums.

Yes

Konstantin Volokh — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 03:06:26 -0500

Agreed completely

re: jclub frequency

John E. Dolbow — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:20:19 -0500

I would suggest we look to pick up the frequency when Pradeep begins to receive a lot of requests for future issues. At the moment, there are no comments in the calls for future themes in the forum. Perhaps this is because Pradeep has been receiving most of the suggestions via email.

We might also put the call on the front page as a sticky post and see if we don't receive more requests. Perhaps people don't appreciate that this is an option at the moment.

inspiration from MRS bulletin

Xi Chen — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:03:40 -0500

Every month the MRS bulletin selects a broad topic, and then a couple of people in that area (theoretical, experimental, etc.) contribute a couple of articles. I wonder if the jClub can be organized in this way. For example, the jClub can still run monthly but every month, an experimentalist and an theroetian would contribute from different angles, on the same topic.

Operating Notes for the iMechanica Journal Club

Managers — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:55:36 -0500

Guided by a thread that proposed the Journal Club, we evolve these operating notes. These notes are a work in progress, and will evolve as the iMechanica community and the Web technology evolve. Every moderator and architect can edit these notes. Every user can see the editing history. As always, every registered user can make suggestions by leaving comments.

Mission. The mission of the Journal Club is to facilitate discussion at the frontier of mechanics and its applications.

Papers. To be eligible as an entry in the Journal Club, a paper should

be obtainable by many mechanicians,
have a trustworthy timestamp, and
be of interest to mechanicians.

The first two requirements are fulfilled, for example, by any paper published in a journal or in a repository, such as arXiv hosted at Cornell University and iMechanica hosted at Harvard University.

Theme. A Theme is posted on the 1st of each month, and stays as the top entry in the front page of iMechanica for the rest of the month. The Theme consists of an introduction and 3-5 papers.

Discussion. The Theme and the papers are a means to an end: facilitating discussions at the forefront of mechanics among mechanicians. To add coemments, you need to become a registered user of iMechanica. In commenting on a paper, a user may discuss the ideas in the paper and their relations to other papers, especially the papers that he knows the best: his own papers. He can also relate the paper to a broader context. Or he can simply say that he finds this paper is pointless, and the Theme a waste of time. Such negative comments, thoughtfully made, are just as valuable as positive ones.

Discussion Leader. The Discussion Leader is a registered user that has the full responsibility in articulating a Theme, selecting papers, and motivating discussion. Each Discussion Leader can serve no more than once in a year. The Discussion Leaders are selected by the Editors.

Editor. Each Editor serves a two-year term starting and end on January 1. A new Editor is selected every year, with two Editors serving at any given time. The Editors ensure smooth functioning of the jClub by selecting the Discussion Leaders. Once a new Discussion Leader is identified, an Editor will immediately update the Journal Club Archive. The Editors also remove the old Theme from the top of the front page, and place the new Theme. The Editors are selected by the Council of the jClub.

Council. In steady state, the Council of the jClub will be composed of the two current Editors and the three immediate past Editors. The current senior Editor chairs the Council. The Council makes all final decisions regarding the jClub.

Archive. On the right side of iMechanica is a tab named Journal Club, which links to past Themes, as well as Themes under development. This archive will be maintained by the Editors.

Journal Club Forum. This forum contains matters concerning the Journal Club. Every registered user can propose a paper (including his own), or suggest a Theme, for future inclusion in the Journal Club.

Relevant threads of discussion