PhysicsOverflow
 | |
Type of site | Question and answer Open peer review |
|---|---|
| Owner | Roger Cattin[1] |
| Created by | Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir, Rahel Knoepfel and Roger Cattin |
| URL | 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]
See also
References
- ^ "Legal". PhysicsOverflow. Roger Cattin. 2014-01-28. Retrieved 2017-03-22.
- ^ a b c d e f "FAQ - PhysicsOverflow". physicsoverflow.org.
- ^ dimension10 (23 April 2015). "We have ArXiV trackbacks!". PhysicsOverflow.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ dimension10; Maimon, Ron (5 October 2014). "The reviews section is out of beta!". PhysicsOverflow.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "What is Physics Overflow and how is it linked to Physics.SE?". Physics Meta Stack Exchange.
- ^ "User Rights - PhysicsOverflow". physicsoverflow.org.
- ^ drake; Dilaton; dimension10 (10 June 2015). "Violation of policy to close questions?". PhysicsOverflow.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Moderate | PhysicsOverflow".
- ^ "What is Physics Overflow and how is it linked to Physics.SE?". Physics Meta Stack Exchange.
- ^ SaddlePoint; Dilaton; Maimon, Ron (14 August 2014). "Who are the Physics Overflow moderators, and what is their exact role and powers?". PhysicsOverflow.
- ^ "How do I regain access to my imported account? - Ask Open Science". openscience.uni-bielefeld.de.
- ^ "Christopher Schwarzkopf – Wikimedia Deutschland Blog".
- ^ "Login". www.quantcast.com.
- ^ "PhysicsOverflow". physicsoverflow.org.