大家好，

在您开始您的jClub时，这里有一些要点需要考虑，没有特定的顺序。< / p > < p > 1。今天访问期刊是相当容易的，如果有点笨拙的代理，重定向等。实际上，每个在jClub或iMechnica上阅读文章的人都可以通过他/她自己的图书馆订阅访问这些文章，并且可以从世界任何地方访问这些文章。所以，我建议你不要要求作者在他们自己的网站或arXiv或其他任何地方发布pdf。在短短几年内，也许更早，出版商将开始提供对所有文章的开放访问;美国国立卫生研究院支持的研究已经是这样了。我不明白为什么国家科学基金会和国防部机构不应该采取与国家卫生研究院相同的策略。< / p > < p > 2。为什么是jClub? What role could it play? At present there are two main filters in the intellectual marketplace. First, there is the peer-review process that selects papers suitable for publication. Rejection rates for many of the top journals is at or above 50%, but unfortunately many rejected articles still find a journal suitable to their level! Second, there is the readership that votes with citations. This is an imprecise measure of 'goodness' of a manuscript, but the best one we have right now. It also has a significant time delay - at least two years, and perhaps longer. Perhaps, the jClub can be an intermediate level filter that identifies the diamonds in the rough within the two year window.

3. Mechanics is a broad subject and therefore, the selection process is going to be quite difficult. Let me describe the magnitude of the problem. In the last few years about 6000+ papers have been published every year that deal with some aspect of mechanics; this is a crude lower-bound estimate and certainly does not inculde a large number of papers in materials science, geosciences, biology etc that also deal with the subject. Furthermore, published literature in mechanics is so fragmented (Eli Sternberg's comment about the Journal of Shear Stress comes to mind!) that it is difficult to cull through all of it. In this atmosphere, relevance, importance, impact etc will also depend on who does the selection, his/her domain of interest, etc. So, perhaps another major role for jClub is to sort through this and identify the good papers that would interest a broad range of mechanicians quickly - a difficult task, but worthy of attempt.

4. I gave up routine tracking of journal publications a long time ago; now I do an ISI/Engineering Village search on specific topics, authors as the need arises. These databases simply indicate existence of manuscripts and in the case of older ones some idea of its usefulness (citation history). If jClub is to be successful, it would have to augment the capabilities of such dBase searches by providing a qualitative assessment of uniqueness (quality) of the manuscript and be correct in this pronouncement consistently!

5. Pradeep's latest post laid out some good ground rules, but didn't really specify how the managers would sort through the literature to identify the ones to include in the jClub list (item #6 in his list). Here is my suggestion: Let readers - consumers - submit articles that they think are cutting edge, revolutionary, earthshaking, whatever in any area of mechanics. I think we should preculde authors from nominating their own articles. So, request nominations by the middle of the month and post the jClub selections by the end of the month. Then the task of the managers is a bit more managable! Still, the manager leaves his imprint in the selection process and has a significant role to play.

6. If fragmentation is inevitable in the era of specialization, then perhaps jClub will fragment in the future spawning jClublets devoted to specific topics.

7. There should be a polling option. After articles are listed in jClub customers should be able to express their impression simply by clicking a button; "Do you agree that this article makes a major impact on mechanics: YES or No or Maybe" I am sure someone has written an applet to do this.

8. Happy clubbing!

Ravi.

干得好，Pradeep!我很抱歉忘记将您添加到iMechLab开发人员列表中。现在您在列表中，您的全名作为您的用户名。如果你忘记了旧密码，你可以随时要求一个新密码。iMechLab是一个完全独立于iMechanica的网站，所以我们可以在iMechLab中随意摆弄而万博manbetx平台不用担心弄乱iMechanica。作为iMechLab的开发人员，您将拥有该站点的全部管理权限。

现在回顾一下Journal Club的基本机制，正如Eloy和Teng的评论所描述的那样。

• 为了方便讨论，每篇论文应该在iMechanica上有一个独特的URL，由论文的作者或管理员创建。万博manbetx平台
• 每个月，一位经理都会在她自己的博客中发布一个新问题作为条目，指向iMechanica中选定论文的url，可能还会简要介绍主题和论文。万博manbetx平台新一期将出现在iMechanica的头版。万博manbetx平台 If needed, we can make the entry stick to the top of the front page for the first week, as by this example created in iMechLab: December 2006 Advances in Shear Stress.
• On the sidebar of iMechanica, a link to the archive of the back issues will be created.

I'll next comment on Pradeep's excellent and detailed proposal, point by point.

(1) I like the idea of two people per team. Two-way communication is an oder of magnitude easier than 3-way communication. Let's keep it simple. However, how about we have one individual serve this third-person role per year? I'd like to suggest Pradeep for this role for the first year, since it is his enthusiasm that has kept this idea alive. We should keep the work of this third person to absolute minimum, hopefully no more than updating the archive and ensuring continuity. For the latter task, I'm sure many active iMechanicians will chip in.

(2) Term limits of 2 months per team sounds just fine. A person should not serve more than one term, say, in the same year.

(3) I like the idea that anyone can be a manager.

(4) Self-perpetuation of the managing team. This point is particularly good. It gives a natural way to sustain the effort.

(5) Rules to select paper. I believe we should select papers from any source. This includes papers in traditional journals, as well as papers posted in places like arXive and iMechanica. The managers may even go out their ways to ask for drafts from individuals who have exiting papers in progress. The only requirements are (i) that the paper be accessible to a lot of people and (ii) the paper be deposited in a place with a trustworthy timestamp. I also agree with Pradeep's requirement of papers being relevant to mechanics. But the 12-month rule may be relaxed, I think. If an older paper is particularly relevant to a theme, and is not widely read, why not? The managers should avoid conflict of interest. Avoid selecting their own papers, or papers of their students and advisers, or papers by people working in the same institutions.

(6) I'd like to reiterate Teng's suggestion of having a theme each month. To focus discussion, perhaps we should further restrict the number of papers per issue. How about 5 or even 3?

About names.

• Should we have a name for this journal club? I'm fine with the name Journal Club as a tab on the side bar. But any bright suggestions?
• Should we call the managers each month the Hosts of the journal club? Their role will naturally go beyond selecting papers, and they will likely be active participating in the discussion. After all, they have read these papers and related papers, and should have a lot to offer.
• Should we call the third-person that serves one-year term the Captain of the journal club?

I'd like to hear more from all of you. In particular I'd like to hear comments on

• What are the incentives for the Hosts and the Captain to do a good job?
• How may such a journal club benefit fellow mechanicians?

亲爱的Eloy和Zhigang，

我想看看你们创建的iMech Journal，但是无法访问它。由于某种原因，它不接受我的常规iMech密码。你能告诉我如何访问它吗?我试着在iMech实验室创建一个单独的帐户，但这也不起作用。无论如何，我确实理解您关于期刊俱乐部形式的建议，而且它肯定比我想象的要简单得多(因此可能更健壮)。

大家:

我同意Michelle的建议，让j俱乐部保持一个独立的实体，但与iMechanica紧密相连。万博manbetx平台就全文预印本而言，一个避免另一个“文件管理”头痛的简单方法是，我们可以鼓励被选中的作者将他们发表在arXiv上(这本身就取得了惊人的成功)。

大家都同意邓的帖子吗?如果是，那么，闲话少说，让我们在1月1日成立俱乐部吧!我们确实需要建立一套基本规则，这样俱乐部才能自我维持。我冒昧地在这里提出一些基本规则，供j俱乐部的轮值经理使用。 Please feel free to comment/change.

(1) How many J-club managers should be there? Ans: I suggest two managers per term, ideally with some diversity in their technical background. These two will do all the work and are rotated out when their term is complete. There has to be a third "permanent" J-club manager who is simply there for continuity and will step in if there is a real need. I suggest Zhigang for this purpose.

(2) What are the "term limits" for the J-club managers? Ans: I suggest 2 issues i.e. 2 months.

(3) Who is eligible to be a J-club manager? Ans: Everyone who claims he/she is a mechanician! Students should be especially welcomed.

(4) How are the J-club managers selected? Ans: I propose that the first two be from the few of us who have been discussing this subject at length. Once our group of 5-6 people is exhausted, the departing journal managers should be responsible to select their replacement and to advise them of the J-club rules. I nominate that Michelle and John be the first two. Teng and I can be the second two and then so on....

(5) Are there any rules on which papers can be selected? Ans: (i) We are all mechanicians with a loose mandate to promote mechanics. Keeping this in mind, I think we should insist that the selected papers MUST have mechanics content. Exceptions may be made for papers that although don't have much mechanics content, are nevertheless ripe for application of mechanics. In the latter case, the J-club manager should make this transparent.(ii) The papers must have been published within the last 12 months. There is no barrier to anyone from commenting on any paper published at any time on the iMech blog. However the purpose of the J-club is to promote discussion of contemporary literature hence the suggested restriction of 12 months.

(6) How should the J-club manager select the papers? Ans: Thats up to him/her! The implicit responsibility that comes with this job is that the manager sample the literature extensively.To promote discussion among iMechanica members who are not on this email list, I will post this on the blog also.

Best wishes,

Pradeep

我喜欢上面Teng提出的方案;它创建了一个很好的文件档案，我们认为这些文件很有趣，以供将来使用，从而为新到这个领域的人提供了一种机制，让他们可以回到j俱乐部的活动中。它还允许让当代作者参与讨论，而不会将历史“关键作品”排除在期刊俱乐部之外。如果作者的预印本可用，则可以将其包含在存档中，但这不一定是包含的必要条件。