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Welcome to the Beta Version of this Journal
About the Beta | Scope | Available Content | Navigating the Beta | New and/or Experimental Features | Current Limitations, Caveats, & General Notes
Bug List | Feedback | Looking Ahead | Terms of Use
Last Updated: 2-Oct-09
About the Beta
This AIP Journal beta release represents the beginning of a major series of upgrades to the core functionality of the Scitation hosting platform and to the online presentation of content in AIP’s highly respected, highly cited family of journals.
The beta editions are largely separate from the current online editions, but share some components, and are accessible directly from within each journal.
In addition to new features and a new rendering of publications content, the beta publications are also running atop Scitation’s new C3 infrastructure (more information about C3 can be found here). This infrastructure facilitates faster development and incremental deployment of new features, which end-users will be able to test and provide feedback on throughout the beta period. Additional new features will be rolled out in Fall/Winter 2009-10, so users are encouraged to visit the beta sites often.
This page will be updated regularly as upgrades are scheduled.
Scope
Eleven (11) AIP journals are included in this beta release:
- Applied Physics Letters
- Biomicrofluidics
- Chaos
- Journal of Applied Physics
- Journal of Chemical Physics
- Journal of Mathematical Physics
- Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data
- Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (no beta site per se, but all beta features are available in the production version)
- Physics of Fluids
- Physics of Plasmas
- Review of Scientific Instruments
Low-Temperature Physics and AIP’s spotlight publications (APL: Organic Electronics & Photonics, Applied Physics Reviews, and JCP: BioChemical Physics) will go into beta later in 2009.
Available Content
The beta site has been seeded with a subset of content (several volumes of each title). Content loading will continue throughout October, so the beta content will eventually match that available in production. As new articles are published after back-filling is completed, they will be available from both sites.
Navigating the Beta
Each journal's "Browse" dropdown now features a link to a companion beta site, i.e., APL Beta, Chaos Beta, etc. Clicking the beta link brings you directly to the latest issue. Once in the beta site, you'll notice a prominent "Beta" on the journal nameplate atop every page, JRSE excepted. JRSE is AIP’s fast-track pilot publication for new and experimental functionality, and is available through the end of 2010 without a subscription. All beta features are available in the current web edition.
The initial wave of beta functionality (described in more detail in the next section) is primarily on display in the HTML tables of contents, abstract views, and search-related pages. All other aspects of each beta site is fully synchronized with the parent site, so that the same news, features, and other exclusive content are available on both sites.
Certain links will take you out of the beta environment, such as guided searches built on keywords, author names, and PACS terminology, which are run against the current Scitation article database. Use your back button to return to the beta, or open a new browser window or tab for exploring such links.
Access control for the beta sites is identical to the production sites. Registered subscribers can access all protected content. Note that some new features require a subscription. For more information on becoming a subscriber, visit the AIP Journals Center.
New and/or Experimental Features (as of October 2009)
The following features have been deployed with this initial release:
- Articles now feature a "Related Articles" browser (note that in this iteration, the articles link back to the current production system). Currently, up to 50 articles are displayed; in the next iteration, all articles will be displayed, with a count.
- An "Article Objects" browser will appear on articles; in this iteration, figures, multimedia, and supplemental files will be available from this view. Figure browsing (of captions, thumbnails, and online enlargements) requires a subscription.
- A streamlined advanced search query interface with more flexible controls for composing queries and refining results.
- Improved search results rendering, with more intuitive faceting controls.
- All journal site content is fully searchable, not just peer-reviewed papers. This includes news, information pages, interviews, research highlights, etc.
- A new QuickFind widget appears atop every journal page, with multiple options to look up and find articles, as well as run searches across other collections and databases, including Scitopia.
- Clicking an author name in any display will open a search widget to find additional articles from that author in other collections.
- The traditional abstract presentation has been extended to include several full-text components: the article’s acknowledgements section and an article outline based on the article’s section structure. We are especially interested in feedback about the value of these additions to the abstract page.
- A new one-click option has been added to the "Share" menu - to "tweet" the article to your Twitter page; an option to post an article to Facebook will be available soon.
Current Limitations, Caveats, & General Notes
Since the beta represents an iterative work in progress that will become increasingly feature-rich and production-ready as time goes on, a few differences between the beta and production sites are worth noting:
- Journal content is subject to loading and reloading from time to time; availabilty or any volume, issue, or article is subject to change.
- The user database for the beta sites is running on a new version of Scitation's access-control subsystem, which is undergoing performance tuning and testing. While every effort is made to synchronize the beta user database with the production database, newly registered users may discover they cannot access protected content on the beta sites. If you are denied access and have an active subscription to any beta journal, please contact the Scitation Help Desk for assistance. As this system is tuned, users may notice problems with displays of login status, OpenURL, and library branding.
- Article lookups using dois, citations, and volume-page input will resolve to the article’s landing page on the production sites.
- Document purchases can be made from the beta sites, via the DocumentStore.
- AIP Article Pack downloads cannot be fulfilled from the beta sites; please use the production sites to download articles using your pack.
- Since the beta and production sites share some resources, you may be asked to login twice from time to time.
Known Bug List
- After logging in using the latest version of Firefox, the screen does not display that you are logged in; reload the page to refresh the display (1-Oct-09).
- Owing to ongoing loading of content, COins exports may not be available for certain articles in the early stage of the beta (1-Oct-09).
- Some articles may exhibit "artifacts" (extra characters, missing characters) due to machine-processing. These errors will be corrected going forward (1-Oct-09).
- In certain journals, major and minor headings may be run together. These errors will be corrected going forward (1-Oct-09).
Feedback
Please feel free to send feedback or bug reports to the AIP Journal Development Team.
Looking Ahead
Please consult this page frequently for information about future upgrades and announcements about beta availability.
Terms of Use
By using this "Beta", you effectively understand and acknowledge that the "Beta" is provided as a provisional service, and is made available on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis for the purpose of providing AIP with feedback on its quality and usability. Each "Beta" may contain errors, inaccuracies, or functional bugs from time to time. AIP is not obligated to provide any maintenance, technical, or other support for use of any "Beta" site.
