Speaker
Dr
Maria Grazia Pia
(INFN GENOVA)
Description
Journal publication plays a fundamental role in scientific research, and has
practical effects on researchers’ academic career and towards funding agencies.
An analysis is presented, also based on the author’s experience as a member of the
Editorial Board of a major journal in Nuclear Technology, of publications about high
energy physics computing in refereed journals.
The statistical distribution of papers associated to various fields of HEP computing
(simulation, data reconstruction and analysis, online computing, grid computing etc.)
published in representative journals is critically analyzed.
The relative contribution of HEP computing is evaluated with respect to published
papers in other domains: articles on computing in other closely related physics
disciplines, like nuclear physics, space science and medical physics, and on hardware
developments for high energy physics experiments.
The statistical results hint to the fact that, in spite of the significant effort
invested in high energy physics computing and its fundamental role in the
experiments, this research area is underrepresented in scientific literature.
HEP computing seems also to be largely absent from the current debate on Open Access
publishing in scientific research.
The implications of the picture emerging from this analysis as a perception of
computing in high energy physics as a technical service rather than a scientific
research domain are discussed, and recommendations for a more effective presence of
HEP computing in scientific literature are proposed.
Author
Dr
Maria Grazia Pia
(INFN GENOVA)
