Professor Subra SureshFollowing the announcement of the Elsevier Materials Science Council, Professor Subra Suresh shares a few brief comments about his thoughts on the Council and its potential within the materials science research community.
Interview with Subra Suresh
What do you see as the major challenges facing materials science?
Materials science is a multidisciplinary area that contributes to and derives information from a broad spectrum of intellectual disciplines. As the scope and breadth of knowledge encompassed by materials science expand, one of the key challenges is to ensure that students, faculty and researchers alike have access to digital information of content, knowledge, data, and research developments in a searchable, economical, and rapidly accessible manner. Furthermore, the increasingly global nature of education and research necessitates that students and scholars from countries without a well-developed scientific infrastructure are not at a disadvantage when it comes to such access.
How will the Council address those challenges?
These challenges are too grand for just one council to address even in one field of publication. However, by collaborating with the research community, publishers and editors, the Council hopes to take on a few key issues that will help expand sharing of scientific data in materials and disseminating some key research advances to a broad audience in a timely manner.
What do you see as the Council's major role? What sort of activities do you envisage it initiating?
Over the next three years, the Council will undertake a raft of activities with Elsevier to help support the research community in three ways: supporting the sharing and communication of scientific information and data through new technology platforms and pathways; helping researchers communicate the importance of materials science to the general public; and rewarding researchers, particularly those working in difficult conditions or in countries with limited infrastructure.
How will the materials science research community benefit from the Council's activities? What do you hope will be the lasting legacy of the Council?
Rapid changes in technology and the increasingly widespread global access to knowledge and information generated by such technology are creating new opportunities and challenges for research funders, performers, publishers and the general public. We hope that the Council will help facilitate, in collaboration with the journals and the community, new modes of disseminating scientific data and information that will benefit materials research on a global scale.
If you have any queries/ideas to be put forward to the council, please get in touch.
Find out more about the Elsevier Materials Science Council: