Saturday 25 April 2020

Farewell to european-ald.net? Future of vph-ald.com?


Related to COST network "MP1402 - Hooking together European research in atomic layer deposition (HERALD)", https://www.cost.eu/actions/MP1402/#tabs|Name:overview, the european-ald.net website appears to no longer exist. When exactly did the website disappear, is not clear to the blog author, but it was not accessible on April 21, 2020 (see Twitter). The Internet archive contains some snapshots from the site, see e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20190116224057/https://www.european-ald.net/.

The european-ald.net website had lots of useful contents. At the time of writing this blog post, it was unclear to the author if the vanishing is of permanent nature. Websites come with a cost and need maintenance, and it is understandable that they are not forever. If the european-ald.net is permanently gone, it is not the first useful ALD-related site to disappear: an earlier blog post discussed the ending of aldpulse.com (http://aldhistory.blogspot.com/2016/11/aldpulsecom-stops-and-moves-into-history.html). The Final Achievement Report of the HERALD COST action remains accessible on the COST site, https://www.cost.eu/actions/MP1402/#tabs|Name:overview. Thank you once more to Dr. Simon Elliott for setting up and skilfully coordinating the HERALD COST network, and to all who participated. To this blog's author, the HERALD COST network was certainly useful.

Related to the vph-ald.com website that collects together the materials of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), the same principles appear as for any other website.
There is no certainty that the website exists after a few years. A plan should be made, to make sure that the valuable materials created within VPHA will be available in the years to come, too. (Zenodo?) Especially conference presentations are currently available only via the vph-ald.com website. -- To be returned to.

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Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) - in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust

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