Sunday, November 20, 2022

More on Science in the age of Ukraine

 I wanted to give you an update on how international science (CERN, in particular) has been reacting to the continued Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The invasion is now in its 8th month, and the four large LHC experiments still have not decided how to publish papers with author lists, affiliations and acknowledgements of funding agencies that reflect that fact.  Papers from the LHC experiments are being sent to the Cornell arXiv with the authors listed as "The ALICE Collaboration," without lists of individual authors, institutional affiliations, or acknowledgements to the funding agencies. 

The papers are also being submitted to diverse scientific journals for review, with the understanding that versions with author lists, affiliations and acknowledgements will be forthcoming, hopefully allowing for timely publication.  Unfortunately, after 8 months, it is clear that the 'timely' part of this is not happening, and it is likely that some journals are becoming less happy about the situation.   They do best on a steady diet of publications.  It will not be easy for them to deal with a brief flood of manuscripts that are ready for publication once the author lists, etc. arrive.  

This will also not make things easier for some of our younger colleages who may be in the job market.  Everybody involved in CERN is well aware of the situation.  However, although the collaborations are making every effort to document their contributions, not having actual published papers may not make things easier farther afield, either in smaller institutions where one interviews with people in other subfields of physics, or in industry.

CERN, for its part, has not taken further visible action, with the last pronouncement being their March 8th announcement. 

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