PhysicsOverflow
 | |
Type of site |
Question and answer Open peer review |
|---|---|
| Owner | Roger Cattin[1] |
| Created by | Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir, Rahel Knoepfel and Roger Cattin |
| Website |
physicsoverflow |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | April 2014[2] |
Content license | User contributions under CC BY-SA 3.0[2] |
PhysicsOverflow is a physics website that serves as a post-publication open peer review[2] platform for research papers in physics, as well as a collaborative blog and online community of physicists. It allows users to ask, answer and comment on graduate-level physics questions, post and review manuscripts from ArXiv (which lists PhysicsOverflow discussion pages among its trackbacks[3]) and other sources, and vote on both forms of content.
In addition to the two primary forms of content, the PhysicsOverflow community also welcomes discussions on unsolved problems, and hosts a chat section for discussions on topics generally of interest to physicists and students of physics, such as those related to recent events in physics, physics academia, and the publishing process.[2]
History
PhysicsOverflow was started in April 2014 as a physics-equivalent of MathOverflow by Rahel Knöpfel, a physics PhD at the University of Rostock, high-school student Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir, and Roger Cattin, a retired professor of computer science at the University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland.[2] The site was initially a mere question-and-answer forum, as it was started by users dissatisfied by the policies of the Physics Stack Exchange, but it was eventually expanded to include a Reviews section in October 2014.[4]
Moderation practices
PhysicsOverflow is well-known for its liberal moderation policy and hesitation to block contributors except for spam, as reflected in the website's bill of "user rights".[5][6] The content is largely community-moderated, much like MathOverflow, although exceptions have been recorded.[7][8]
Although the site's moderation policy is publicly available as part of the moderator manual, the site has been criticised for the excessive dispersion of policy-related material, such as the FAQ, the Bill of Rights, the moderator list and the Community Moderation threads, leading to reduced transparency.[9][10] In response, the site's administrators posted a bulletin of all moderation-related content on the site on the homepage.
Technical details
PhysicsOverflow runs Question2Answer, an open-source Q&A software, with a custom theme and several plugins and patches.[2] Some of its plugins have been used by other Question2Answer websites, such as the Open Science Q&A and the Physics Problems Q&A.[11][12]
Usage
Quantcast records around 3000 monthly visitors and between 20,000 and 50,000 global page views to PhysicsOverflow every month, over half of whom are located in four countries: the United States (26.8%), India (9.2%), the United Kingdom (8.5%), and Germany (6.4%).[13] However, according to PhysicsOverflow's own data, only around 1500 users actually contribute content to the site, and 440 are active at a given point in time.[14]
Recognition
The creation of PhysicsOverflow was well-received by the MathOverflow community.[15] PhysicsOverflow was also featured at the 5th Offtopicarium[16] and World Scientific's Asia-Pacific Physics News Letter.[17]
- John Baez suggested the website as a platform for discussing research-level physics questions.[18]
- Greg Bernhardt, the founder of PhysicsForums, acknowledged the site as a "very interesting development for the physics discussion communities".[19]
- Arnold Neumaier, a professor at the University of Vienna, employs PhysicsOverflow as the platform for discussion about his Theoretical Physics FAQ.[20]
- String theorist Lubos Motl referred to the website as a "very promising competition [to Physics Stack Exchange]".[21]
- The University of Stavenger's cosmology department commented that PhysicsOverflow "seems to implement some interesting ideas", and that "it makes some sense the [sic] review the reviewing process".[22]
- Urs Schreiber publicised the site, claiming it could act as a catalyst to make physics academia more open like mathematics.[23][24]
See also
References
- ↑ "Legal". PhysicsOverflow. Roger Cattin. 2014-01-28. Retrieved 2017-03-22.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 https://physicsoverflow.org/faq
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/30425/we-have-arxiv-trackbacks?show=30425#q30425
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/24235/the-reviews-section-is-out-of-beta
- ↑ https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6196/what-is-physics-overflow-and-how-is-it-linked-to-physics-se
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/user-rights
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/31863/violation-of-policy-to-close-questions
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/review
- ↑ https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6196/what-is-physics-overflow-and-how-is-it-linked-to-physics-se#comment25091_6213
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/22268/physics-overflow-moderators-what-their-exact-role-and-powers
- ↑ https://openscience.uni-bielefeld.de/768/how-do-i-regain-access-to-my-imported-account
- ↑ https://blog.wikimedia.de/author/christopher_schwarzkopf/
- ↑ https://www.quantcast.com/physicsoverflow.org?country=CN
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/statistics
- ↑ http://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/1608/physicsoverflow-just-went-live
- ↑ https://physicsoverflow.org/22788/we-have-a-talk-at-the-offtopicarium?show=22788#q22788
- ↑ http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2251158X15000193
- ↑ http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html
- ↑ http://motls.blogspot.in/2013/08/discussion-on-old-and-new-theoretical.html?m=1
- ↑ http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/physics-faq.html
- ↑ http://motls.blogspot.in/2014/05/physics-overflow-is-live.html
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/uiscosmology/posts/1228470267242602
- ↑ https://plus.google.com/+UrsSchreiber/posts/SoWhSAqmUJ1
- ↑ https://www.quora.com/Whats-your-impression-of-PhysicsOverflow/answer/Sebastian-Schacher