Tag Archives: journal

The concept of polymer physics is blurred

Vicki Cleave arranged a virtual issue of the Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics on Materials View website. All articles in this issue are selected from other journals on Wiley InterScience, in order to demonstrate how wide and interesting the content of modern polymer physics research can be.

The increase of impact factor of J. Polym. Sci., Part B has been lagging behind its sister Part A. 10 years ago, the two journals have close IFs, 1.7 for Part A and 1.2 for Part B. Their 2008 records become 3.8 and 1.5, respectively. Somewhat coincidently, RSC launched a new journal Polymer Chemistry this year, wherears there has been no new journal for polymer physics. These are some loose evidence of the declining of polymer physics research I have long felt about.

SCImago Journal & Country RankSCImago Journal & Country Rank

However, the virtual issue of Part B tried to tell us there were still high impact polymer physic research that happened to appear on other journals. It now suggests what are also research of polymer physics welcomes future submission from these fields. These areas of research, as indicated by the virtual issue, are:

  • Biopolymers
  • Photo-, electro- and/or magneto-active polymers and their devices
  • Block copolymers (new only if they contain metals or are present on interfaces)

However, what physics is being extracted from these research areas? What problems of physics are still unanswered? And what models are proposed? Is there something similar to mean-field theory by P. Flory or the scaling theory by de Gennes going on? Or at least something similar to what Rouse & Zimm and Doi & Edward did?

The research on biopolymers can now follow a physic aspect only because the research of physics itself is penetrating biology. Little or no that was originally old polymer physics is applicable to biopolymers.

Photo-, electro- and/or magneto-active polymers are interesting because they are promising of soft devices. But ironically the design of them suffers much from their softness, which involves structural and dynamic heterogeniety at multiple timescale as well as nonequilibrium nature.

Block copolymer once attracted physicists after the control of polymer archetacture became easy thanks to controlled polymerization techniques such as ATRP and RAFT. However, now the research is largely simulations rather than theories.

So if Part B considers accepting papers of these research, it can boost its IF to some extent, but the cost is further blurring the concept of “polymer physics”.

综述文章要“副”的到底是什么“盛名”？

科学网记者谢文兵编译The Scientist杂志网站一篇文章，为其拟一中文标题为：综述文章高引用率：盛名之下 其实难副。文章下面目前只有3条评论，大家可以去看。有意思的事，The Scientist网站本身就为自己的文章开通了评论区，评论者还常常很活跃。这样的网站还包括NewScientist。可惜的是科学网每次编译这些网站的文章，都只介绍正文内容，没有向中文读者介绍这些外文文章发表后外国读者的评论情况。这也显示出了中国读者重正文轻评论、重接收轻反思的阅读特点。中文读者的评论多数会是“沙发”、“顶”、“学习了”、“楼主是傻逼，鉴定完毕”等内容，这也是我关闭科学网和网易博客评论原因。

这个问题倒是跟“综述文章”的问题非常相关。外国人写文章也好，写教科书也好，个人色彩是非常强烈的。他们往往不求面面俱到，不求“辩证地”、“一分为二”地讨论问题，而重点在于抛出一个观点，只要是supported的，哪怕是unbalanced的。而外国的读者也不会因为看到“不够辩证”、“偏激”的特点，就全面否定一篇文章甚至对作者进行人身攻击，因为他们本来就不抱着仅从一个作者身上就找到一个平衡、客观、全局性的、终极的、标准答案式的、“安全”的结论，只要有新的引人思考的点，只要能把讨论向前推进，一篇文章就会受到尊重。相反，老生常谈，和事佬式的“两点论”，不会受到外国读者的青睐。

所以，外文教科书，往往不同作者写的区别会很大。每个作者都非常“任性”地根据自己个人对这个学科的理解取舍和组织内容，并且会在前言（Preface）部分充份解释自己写书的意图，以方便读者选择合适他们自己的教科书。其根本原因是，外国式的学习是一个非常个性化的事情，他们当初学习的时候，就是自己学的，学到什么、学不到什么，往往允许不同人不一样——反正他们没有什么应试教育。所以你叫这些人写书，他们也只能根据自己对学科的理解来写。在中国不一样，我们有“教学大纲”这种东西，就算研究生课程，也喜欢成立“编委会”。虽然一个成熟的学科，总会形成比较固定的逻辑结构，但在中国，好像是把这种自然而然的结果当作一开始的目的。你要先写偏的书，然后大量偏的书才能比较出一个“正”的结果，而不是一开始就想把书写“正”。中国的学生看书，往往会记得哪个知识在第几章第几节第几段第几句话里有，这是为了方便他们考试。中国学生选教科书，主要标准也是看他们要应付什么考试。书里讲没讲某些内容，并不被看作是作者对学科的观点，而是看作考官对出题的观点。

教科书如此，综述也如此。例如，最近使用所谓click chemistry合成特殊结构的聚合物方面研究比较热，光这方面的综述就一大箩，长review、mini-review、research highlights、perspectives、journal clubs五花八门，A型B型O型什么都有。有必要么？纯粹就是大家为了拼影响因子，拼职称么？我为何还有兴趣去看每一篇这方面的综述？是因为我想了解不同的作者要综述此领域，是如何组织其内容，如何描述其研究的历史，如何定性其研究现状，如何提出将来需要做的事情；同时，作者为了支持自己的观点，会引用什么代表性工作，如何组织参考文献的。这些方面，才是这些看起来重复建设的综述文章之间的宝贵的不同之处。如果综述的作用好像The Scientist那篇文章所说的那样——仅仅是为了代替阅读原始文献的沉重劳动的话，那就根本没必要这么多作者发表这么多综述了。同时对综述的要求也就是“全能”，要美好地满足所有目的——包括教学的目的，就好像中国人写教科书那样。事实证明，这种刚性的做法只会伤害学生和研究者的独创能力和独立思考的能力。没有能引人思考的阅读材料，也就不会培养出能引人思考的人。

关于这个问题我在我的英文博客里也写了一篇文章，以上是我想向中文读者多说的话。

ScienceDirect的Top 25网页

偶然发现ScienceDirect有个网页，可以显示其旗下期刊的Top 25热文（估计是算下载次数）。

流变学方面ScienceDirect有个Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics，它上一季度的Top 25见此。近来，屈服应力流体（yield stress fluid）以及与其相关的悬浮体系流变学突然热门起来，也可以体现在与2008年情况的比较上，尤其是Barnes的那篇思考屈服应力本质的老文章，突然又重新热起来，排到第二位。我之前曾经评论过那篇文章。