The Scholarly Publishing Scene: Materials Properties Data
The S cholarly Publishing Scene: Materials Properties Data
Myer Kutz
Myer Kutz Associates
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The Scholarly Publishing Scene — Materials
Properties Data
Column Editor: Myer Kutz (President, Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.) <>
I spent the early portion of my professional career working as a mechanical engineer. (I hold mechanical engineering degrees from
MIT and RPI.) Specifically, I was involved
in thermal design. Among other pursuits, I
worked on temperature control of the inertial
guidance system used in the Apollo program.
(If the components of such a system become
too hot or too cold, it steers a vehicle off
course.) Like most young men, I thought I
knew everything. So, for example, when I
needed values of materials properties, such as
the thermal conductivity of high-performance
metals to use in calculations to determine
operating temperatures of key components of
the Apollo inertial guidance system, I believed
that tables of materials properties published
in something called Materials Selector
were sufficient for my purposes.
Materials Selector was
an annual publication of
Machine Design, an
advertising supported magazine
that arrived on my desk
free of charge, as I recall,
and Materials Selector
was replete with tables of materials
properties data. I don’t remember caring too much
about whether there was any documentation
testifying to the validity of the numbers in the
tables. Whatever was in the tables was good
enough for me, and I had faith in the results
of my calculations. It was the equivalent of
using Wikipedia today, I suppose. In any case,
the projects I worked on didn’t suffer any
catastrophes because I used materials properties
values that might not have been fully vetted.
They were good enough for engineering work, as a variation of the old joke would have it.
Besides, I knew that my calculations weren’t the
last word. The groups I worked in ran tests to
determine how things would be under operating
conditions.
I used tables from
Materials Selector
(with permission, of
course) in my first
book, Temperature
Control, back in 1968.
Years later, when I started
putting together
engineering handbooks, I keenly felt
a responsibility not to lead young practitioners
astray. For the materials chapters in my
Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook, for example,
I made sure to enlist expert contributors who
would provide detailed references about the
origins of materials properties tables in their
chapters. As time when on, industry groups
such as the Aluminum Association and the
Copper Development Association became
involved with and even sponsored the compiling
of data in chapters covering materials. Those
are the chapters that tend to have the most
exhaustive materials properties data, although
I should say that a handbook cannot strive for
completeness in this area. There are just too
many variables affecting the precise value of
a material’s property — the ingredients in it,
how it was manufactured and the conditions
under which the property was measured, to
name just a few.
In the Internet age, I’m not sure how
much of this vetting process matters to young
engineers, who have been thought to be a
principle market for engineering handbooks.
The Internet is filled with materials properties
continued on page 89
Fictional researcher Hannah Chen, the main character in each
scenario, is a representation of future patrons and the types of environments
in which the business of acquisitions might be conducted. In scenario
one, where individual researchers are akin to rock stars or action heroes,
Hannah expresses how it feels “strange’ to be on a university campus
because she usually works remotely. Hannah achieves success as a
researcher in scenario two because of her networking skills and talent
in “following the money.” In scenario three, Hannah, who had never
planned to work for a university, is employed by a private research
coop where she excels in project management and logistics support. In
scenario four, Hannah thrives because she is mobile and able to shift
from a research culture formerly based in North America to one that is
based in China, India, and the Middle East.
The metamorphic change of the acquisitions department between
2015 and 2030 will be remarkable in a variety of ways. First, current
dependence on cost-per-use (CPU) as a primary assessment tool will
give way to an emphasis on a rate on investment approach (ROI). In
other words, purchases and renewals will be measured more by what a
researcher gets out of the product than by how much a product is used
— quality over quantity. Second, the big deal will be replaced by big
data. Digital repositories, shrinking grant funding, and open access
will put a premium on data that requires laser-beam-type acquisition
practices. Third, a new philosophy of service from one of isolation,
control, and limited flexibility to one of cooperation, fluidity, and
mobility will emerge as the cornerstone of acquisitions service. Fourth,
all acquisitions professionals will need to think globally to address the
transfer of information knowledge from West to East as Pacific Rim
countries develop their knowledge bases and Web services like Baidu
Scholar, the Chinese search engine for Websites, audio files, and images.
In short, by 2030 acquisitions librarians will be living in a professional
world that operates vastly differently than their 2015 environment.
Conclusion
Recent July 2014 headlines in the Chronicle of Higher Education3
including “Around Retail Giant Amazon, University Presses Tiptoe
and Whisper” and “Did Amazon Just Change the World? Unlimited
Kindle Books is a Game Changer” seem to forecast the 2030 scenarios.
2015
Purchaser
Selecting
Library Pays
Static
Catalogs/Discovery Services
Record Keepers
Approval Plan CPU
Retire
Isolation
Control
Big Deal 2030
Provider
Sharing
End-User Pays
Mobile
Search Engines
IT Specialists ROI
Retool
Cooperation
Conduit
Big Data
Purchase on Demand
Regardless of where we conduct business, on a corporate complex or
an academic campus, the business of acquisitions will still exist. The
acquisitions librarian will bring to the table a network that might include
memberships to collections that support a research team. Memberships
and access to research collections, in any format, for any period of
time, are part of the acquisitions librarian’s contribution to the research
team. Procurement skills, negotiation skills, project management, and
flexibility will contribute to the acquisitions librarian’s success in this
highly entrepreneurial and mobile environment.
Endnotes
1. Be Prepared, The Lion King Soundtrack, 1994.
2. ARL 2030 Scenarios, 2010, http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/
publications/arl-2030-scenarios-users-guide.pdf.
3. Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Scholarly Publishing Scene
from page 87
information, some of it reliable, some not, of
course. I’m not writing with the benefit of
market research into the matter, but it wouldn’t
surprise me if it were the case that practicing
engineers use whatever properties data they
find on a site that looks legitimate and don’t
bother much with investigating the data’s
provenance. That said, there’s plenty of reliable
data available and current computer-based
calculations using good data look and feel a
whole lot more reliable than the pencil and
paper scratches that I and my masters had to
make do with back in the day. Let’s check out
a couple of examples.
To start with, there’s ASM International’s
Website, which has a ton of information about
materials and the processes used in
manufacturing. (In days of yore, ASM used to deal
only with metals, but for some time it has
provided information on plastics, composites
and ceramics, as well.) Whatever information
ASM provides, it becomes the gold standard.
Or engineers can go to MatWeb for materials
properties data. How reliable are such data?
Let’s hear from MatWeb: “Most of the data in
MatWeb has been supplied to us directly by
companies in the supply chain — the
manufacturers, or, less commonly, distributors or
fabricators. Other data has been taken from
standards organizations or from similar
materials/known relationships by the MatWeb
staff.” I found this statement when I looked
at the properties of silver, MatWeb also listed
three books as data sources, all from the 1990s.
But never mind that, I’d guess that the data are
good enough for many design purposes.
Over the last several years, publishers have
told me that they’re interested in materials and
chemical properties data. I tell them that my
handbook contributors sometimes provide
such data, but by no means can I promise that I
could provide a handbook with comprehensive
data. I’ve seen my handbooks open on desks
where engineers were making calculations
or designing something. I try to make my
handbooks very useful for such purposes. But
I would expect my handbook users to have to
consult additional sources for materials
properties data in some instances. I simply can’t
include all of it.
I tell publishers that if they want to provide
comprehensive data, then relying on outside
handbook editors and chapter contributors
won’t achieve that end. To get there, a
publisher would have to employ a team of experts
to put together such databases. They would
have to compensate the experts, not an enticing
prospect these days, when publishers tend to
rely more on outside contractors than in-house
employees. In addition, merely applying a
publisher’s logo to data won’t guarantee that the
engineering public would blithely accept such
data as the equivalent of ASM’s gold standard
data. But handbook editors and contributors
can provide accurate and useful information
about how materials are mined and made, how
their properties can be improved, how materials
can be used and in what situations — and how
they degrade in certain conditions. In other
words, how materials properties change over
time as a result of how the materials are used.
But it does take a village to produce compre
hensive materials properties data and it doesn’t
come cheap, nor does it fit a typical publisher’s
current business model.
Biz of Acq from page 88