[time-nuts] WWV/CHU

Dr. David Kirkby drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk
Sat Mar 31 11:25:34 UTC 2018


On 30 March 2018 at 06:49, Tom Van Baak <tvb at leapsecond.com> wrote:

>
> FYI: for the original spam-free version, please use:
>
> https://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/469.pdf
>
> In general, if the author or paper is related to NIST, the original
> copyright-free PDF will be available in the NIST Time and Frequency
> Publication Database. That easily searchable database, and the thousands of
> papers it contains, is probably the greatest asset we time nuts have. For
> those of you that don't know it yet, check it out:
>
> https://tf.nist.gov/general/publications.htm


That's useful to know.

I have been in contact with someone at NPL, who provided papers by either

1) Attaching a copy.
2) Mentioning it was on Research Gate - a site I personally find annoying.
3) A link to IEEE (or similar), which will has a paywall.

This suggests to me NPL don't have all their papers available online,
although at least some can be found at

http://www.npl.co.uk/publications/

For anyone interested in metrology, and I assume that includes everyone on
this list, this NPL publication,

"A beginner's guide to uncertainty of measurement." by Stephanie Bell

http://www.npl.co.uk/publications/a-beginners-guide-to-uncertainty-in-measurement

is well worth a read. This is far more readable than "Guide to the
expression of uncertainty in measurement (GUM)", which is heavy going.


>
> As a non-academic working from home one of the greatest frustrations is
> getting copies of old and new scientific articles.
>

You obviously share the same frustrations as Alexandra Elbakyan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan

Because of her inability to get some papers, she set up sci-hub.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

Alexandra Elbakyan makes the very valid point that authors do not get paid
for submitting papers, reviewers do not get paid for reviewing them, yet
the publishers charge significant amounts of money for distribution of
electronic copies of papers. This is VERY different to books or music,
where authors get royalties from copies sold.

You can debate the ethics of sci-hub, with many scientists having strong
and opposing views on sci-hub. The site does allow one to get virtually any
academic paper for free. There are no ads, but donations are accepted by
bitcoin - which reminds me, I must set up a bitcoin wallet so I can donate
to sci-hub.

Dave



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