Director's Matters

By H. Frederick Dylla, Executive Director & CEO

London crossroads

At the heart of AIP is our publishing business—which sustains our outreach activities and services to the community, and disseminates knowledge so that science may advance. AIP journals and partner journals are distributed worldwide, with an increasing proportion through consortia subscriptions, which can encompass hundreds of institutions across an entire province, state, or even country. Consortia arrangements lower the cost of doing business for both the publisher and the individual subscribing institution.

Despite this trend, AIP still manages more than 2,500 international subscription contracts. And more than two-thirds of the institutions accessing AIP’s journals are based outside the US. Managing and expanding this business would be far more difficult without AIP’s participation in two major annual international trade shows: the Frankfurt Book Fair in October and Online Information, which played out last week in London. Although the latter, commonly referred to as “London Online,” has only a 30-year history—compared with the 400-year legacy of the Frankfurt Book Fair—we have found it valuable for our international trade.

Robert Wheeler, Manager of Scitation Operations, greets visitors at the AIP's London Online booth while sales and marketing staff members meet with stakeholders.

During those two shows, AIP sales and marketing staff members spend virtually every hour meeting with existing or potential new international customers to negotiate contracts. Because AIP prearranges meetings with stakeholders from around the globe, all parties save a lot of money on international travel. This benefit held true in London despite the region's worst winter weather in three decades, a transit strike, and a student strike over impending tuition hikes. This was not the week to be a London traveler or tourist.

Despite those handicaps, we were very pleased with the week's work. Our marketing team met with AIP's sales agents from France, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Romania, India, China, and several South American countries and the Middle East, and with library or consortium representatives from Germany, Russia, Sweden, and Turkey.

Representatives from several of our Member and Affiliated Societies also attended this year's London Online. We were pleased to offer our exhibit booth as a home base for our colleagues from APS, AAS, OSA, AGU, SPIE, and ASME, who were actively working the trade show floor. I need to acknowledge the superb efforts of Lori Carlin, Director of Fulfillment and Marketing, for organizing and managing our presence at both the Frankfurt and London Online events, and Doug LaFrenier, Director of Publication Sales and Market Development, for his skills in negotiating institutional and consortia contracts.

Darrell W. Gunter

Of final note, AIP used the venue of London Online to announce to our customers, partners, and service providers the successful conclusion of a major recruiting effort. Darrell Gunter will be joining AIP on December 15 as our new Chief Commercial Officer; he will oversee all sales and marketing efforts in the Publishing Center. Darrell comes to AIP with significant sales and marketing experience, having previously worked for Collexis (our UniPHY partner), Elsevier, Dow Jones, and Xerox. We welcome Darrell to AIP and to our community of Member Societies and partners.

2011 "Physicists at Work and Play calendar from ESVA

The Emilio Segrè Visual Archives staff has produced a beautiful 2011 calendar in two sizes, featuring some of the most interesting photos from its collection, right on schedule for the holidays! The calendar shows physicists as you've never seen them before and makes for a unique holiday gift for the physicist in your life. All proceeds benefit the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. Please pass the word along to your colleagues in the community.

	Hendrik Kramers, a Dutch physicist, with daughter Susan sitting on his shoulders. Credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. Click here to order.

Sound off in Cancùn

The latest advances in acoustics (the "science of sound") were presented last month at the 2nd Pan-American / Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, held November 15–19 in Cancùn, Mexico. The conference—which was jointly sponsored by the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Mexican Institute of Acoustics (IMA) and the Iberoamerican Federation of Acoustics (FIA),—brought together researchers and students from across the Americas.

Meeting co-chairs, from the left: Samir Gerges (FIA), James West (ASA), and Sergio Beristain (IMA).

Professor Christy Holland of the University of Cincinnati receives the ASA Student Council Mentor Award from Student Council Chair Lauren Ronsse.

AIP staff attended the meeting (which included 900 talks and posters) and worked with ASA to send out press releases on a variety of fascinating topics—from the limitations of forensic voice analysis to the invention of cheaper, cleaner cook stoves for developing countries. Reporters from the BBC, MSNBC, Science, Scientific American, USA Today, and a dozen other news outlets across the globe wrote stories about the meeting, as did local reporters from the Cancùn newspaper Novedades, who showed up with a camera crew.

Here are a few interesting articles that capture the spirit of the meeting:

• USA Today – “Maya Pyramids Pose Acoustic Riddle” by Dan Vergano
• ScienceNOW – “Listening for Oil Spills” by Kim Krieger
• Scientific American – “Some Nonverbal Vocal Communication Is Learned” by Christopher Intagliata
• LiveScience – “Focused Blast of Noise Could Stun Scuba-Diving Terrorists” by Stephanie Pappas

For additional reading, visit the meeting's press room or check out some of the 30-plus lay language papers written by the acoustic scientists themselves.

Tuesday, December 7

• Brown bag lunch, “Two Million Minutes," 12:00 pm (ACP)

This documentary film by Robert A. Compton takes an in-depth look at how students in the United States allocate their high school years compared with India and China. The film forms a picture of the various levels of global education and addresses the implications of these differences on the 21st century global economy.

Thursday, December 9

• Committee on Publishing meeting (Pub Center)

We invite your feedback to this newsletter via email to aipmatters@aip.org.

For past issues of this newsletter, visit the AIP Matters archives.