Monday, December 17, 2012

Publication List of Bruce Slutsky


Osorio, N. L., Slutsky, Bruce. (2012). A Tribute and BioBibliometric Study of Ellis Mount, the First Editor-in-Chief of Science & Technology Libraries. Science and Technology Libraries, 31(4), 394-411. doi: 10.1080/0194262x.2012.730385

Slutsky, B. (1993). Communicating Science to the Public: An Address to Non-Science Librarians. The Reference Librarian(No. 40), 73-87

Slutsky, B. (1991). The American Chemical Society Career Consultants Program. The Indicator, 72(8), 24
.
Slutsky, B. (1991). A Careers in Chemical Information Workshop. Journal of Chemical Education, 68(1), 43-45.

Slutsky, B. (1991). How to Avoid Science Anxiety Among Sience Librarians. Science and Technology Libraries, 12(1), 11-19.

Slutsky, B. (1990). Asksam in the New York Public Libary. In M. Fox (Ed.), Exploring Asksam (pp. 43-58). New York: Future Communications Systems.

Slutsky, B. (1990). Informed Career Choices. Chemical and Engineering News, 68(2), 3.

Slutsky, B. (1990). Other Chemical Information Careers. Chapter One, 4(3), 32.

Slutsky, B. (1989). A Chemical Abstracts Training Seminar for Science Librarians. Science and Technology Libraries, 10(1), 55-76.

Lamb, F. A., Cote, Philip N., Slutsky, Bruce, Vitimberga, Bruno M. (1974). Reduction of 9 - (p-methoxyphenyl)-9-fluorenylacetaldhyde on activated alumina. Journal of Organic Chemistry, 39(18). doi: 10.1021/jo00932a026

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Starting to Plan the 2013 New Jersey Chemistry Olympics

It seems like yesterday when NJIT hosted the last chemistry olympics, but it is already time to start planning the next one.  There was a meeting last night with Natalie Macke and others to discuss the competitions for the May 16. 2013 event.

I will be running the information search as I have done for many years.  The students will bring in a molecular model which will be judged for accuracy.  The second part of the competation will be the information search where the students will use the internet to answer questions.

The theme for 2013 will be drug substances from Hoffmann-LaRoche who are now closing their facility in Nutley.  Students can pick one of these four molecules:

  • Tretinoin
  • Ticlid
  • Cellcept (Mycopenolate Mofetil)
  • Diazepam (Valium)

Monday, December 10, 2012

Next METRO Science Librarians SIG Meeting Will be Thursday January 10 1:30 PM


The METRO Science Librarians SIG is alive and well.  Since there was a large meeting of science librarians at Brooklyn College on November 9 and 10, I decided not to have a meeting during the Fall semester.  The SIG will reconvene on Thursday January 10, 2013 at 1:30 PM at METRO Headquarters:

57 East 11th Street – 4th Floor
New York, NY

We will have a roundtable discussion with the theme: Journal Pricing – Can we devise a pricing model that is fair to both the publisher and the customer?
Please see the following article from the Chemical and Engineering News:


You may register for the meeting at  http://metro.org/events/284/

Please see the SIG’s Libguide at http://libguides.metro.org/Science_Librarians
You may contact me if there are any questions

Bruce Slutsky
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Robert Van Houten Library
323 Martin Luther King Blvd
Newark, NJ 07102
(voice) 973-642-4950 (fax) 973-642-7862
Twitter NJITREF

Friday, December 7, 2012

ACS on Campus Event at NJIT on December 5


An event is planned for several months and in the blink of an eye, it is over.  For several months I worked on this event with Jennifer Taylor Howell of the American Chemical Society to plan the ACS on Campus event that was held on Wednesday December 5.  From 10 AM until 12 noon we worked on preparing the room the meeting.

Reg Tomkins of the NJIT chemical engineering department spoke about the benefits of being a member of the Society.  He has been active in the ACS for many years and is certainly the most qualified to talk on this effort.  Reg described the mission, values and strategic goals of ACS.  The brief talk concluded with a statement of the goals and objectives of the ACS on Campus event.

Donald Sebastian, the Senior Vice President for Research and Development welcomed everyone on behalf of NJIT.  He spoke on how important chemistry and chemical engineering is in solving global problems.

The first module of the day considered scientific publishing.  Jaan Pesti, the editor of Organic Process Research and Development (OPRD), discussed how to get started in publishing.  Scientists conduct experiments, maintain laboratory notebooks, and then want to publish to making their findings accessible to all.  Some of the points he made were:

  • Scientific publications must create new knowledge
  • There are several steps involved in writing a manuscript
  • A cover letter should be sent when submitting a manuscript
  • The Peer review process
  • Common mistakes that authors make when responding to editors

The next talk on publishing ethics was given by Jitesh Soares who is the Managing Editor of ACS Chemical Biology and  ACS Chemical Neuroscience.  Some of the areas of discussion were:

  • Most copyright violations are unintentional.
  • Plagiarizing
  • Self-plagiarizing
  • Re-publishing an article
  • Cutting and pasting from one document to another
  • Hedging – submitting a manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously
  • Ghost authorship – including as an author an individual who did not contribute to the research.
  • The retraction rate of articles in ACS journals is less than 0.05%


There are two web sites of interest:

  1. Ethics http://pubs.acs.org/ethics
  2. Resource Center for authors http://pubs.acs.org/4authors


The second module in the program was given by Daniel Reasoner who talked about 45 minutes on the basics of searching Scifinder Scholar.  In such a short time frame it was impossible to describe the many facets of the database in any detail.  He described the many commands and capabilities of this very powerful tool in finding chemical information.  He offered to return to NJIT to give more in depth training.

The final module was given by Joe Martino who is a career consultant to the American Chemical Society.  In my opinion this was the most important part of the program since most of the participants were graduate students who will soon seek their first professional position.  There are 5 areas where a new graduate can seek employment:

  1. Research and Development
  2. Product Development
  3. Manufacturing and Supply Chain
  4. Quality Control and Regulatory
  5. Sales and Marketing
  6. Of course different jobs within these areas have different specifications.


Most of his talk was devoted to resume writing.  He discussed the difference between a resume and curriculum vitae.  He strongly emphasized that every resume be written with great care since even a very small error can result in a candidate being eliminated.  A hiring manager will often decide within 30 seconds to accept or reject an application for further consideration.  He presentation was very interactive as he succeeding in creating a dialog with the students.

There were 63 attendees that included students, library staff and faculty.  It certainly was a very successful event.



Tuesday, December 4, 2012

My New Publication in Science & Technology Libraries


Osorio, N. L., & Slutsky, B. (2012). A Tribute and BioBibliometric Study of Ellis Mount, the First Editor-in-Chief of Science & Technology Libraries. Science & Technology Libraries, 31(4), 394-411. doi:10.1080/0194262X.2012.730385

This is the first time I have published in an academic journal in all too many years.  I thank my collaborator Nestor Osorio who researched the bibliometric information about Ellis Mount.  I also thank Tony Stankus, the editor of the journal, who connected me to Nestor since we both indicated to him an interest in writing an article about the late Professor Mount.  I am grateful to the referees who accepted the manuscript for publication.

Ellis was the editor of Science & Technology Libraries who accepted my first paper as a librarian for publication:

Slutsky, B. (1989). A Chemical Abstracts Training Seminar for Science Librarians. Science & Technology Libraries, 10(1), 55-76