Snapshot of VPHA reading progress (46% completed)

It is roughly two weeks ago that we started actively distributing papers to read in VPHA. The good reported earlier continues. As seen from the images below, the total number of comments increases with a high "growth rate". The fraction of publications with 0 comments decreases and the fraction of publications with the desired 3 comments increases. Of course, there is still a lot to do---46% of the work is now completed. We have now 54 co-authors in VPHA and more are still welcome to join the effort and join the ALD 2016 Ireland poster as an author.  

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

ALD History Blog is half a year - statistics shared

ALD History Blog was initiated on October 25, 2016---exactly six months ago. To celebrate ALD History Blog's half-a-year journey, I want to share some statistics blog's reading. Similar posts were written also when the blog was three months and one month old.

When I started the blog, I had no experience on blogging, only Jonas Sundqvist's invaluable BALD Engineering ALD News blog as an example. I am very happy that I eventually dared to take the step and start the blog. Before entering the statistics, I would like to briefly review some of the learnings.
(i) For the progress of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA, vph-ald.com), the blog has of course been instrumental. We would not have the same good progress without it.
(ii) The blog has given me the opportunity to learn of what it is to have a science project blog, and how one can attract attention to it. I have learnt how important it is to share information of new posts in professional social media. For new posts, which have not been shared this way, half a day can pass without one single person viewing the post. For new posts shared in Twitter and LinkedIn, in turn, readers appear instantaneously. Sharing in Twitter, systematically with a relevant hashtag (#VPHA #ALDep), has certainly further increased the audience of the posts.
(iii) Somewhat after creating this blog, I created a separate Twitter account (@aldhistoryblog) for sharing the posts, thus no more having a need to share them directly through my personal account (@rlpuu). I think that was a good step, helping to keep things organized. Would I in the future again be in charge of some larger scientific project/unit, I would certainly again consider setting up a separate Twitter account as a communications channel.

Then, to the ALD History Blog numbers during the first 6 months of the blog (numbers as of as of April 24, 2016).

VPHA correspondence: Organizational poster in Helsinki, pls check thanks by 27.4.

The email below was sent to 53 VPHA co-authors and 34 prospective co-authors.

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Dear VPHA authors and prospective co-authors,

A combined HERALD Working group 2 workshop and 4th annual seminar of ALDCoE "ALD precursors and processes" will be organized May 23-24 in Helsinki, see http://www.aldcoe.fi/herald/index.html.

As one of the organizers, I will naturally participate this event. There will be many posters by local ALD scientist. It should be good to present an overview the progress of VPHA at this event, so we plan to send in an organizational VPHA poster, similarly as we did at Baltic ALD in Tartu. A draft of the related abstract is attached to this email. <attachment not included in this ALD History Blog post>

In the Acknowledgements section, we would like to extend thanks to all VPHA participants. Please have a look at this section and let me know if you see your name missing or incorrectly spelled, or if you see other needs for revision. Please send me your requests for change latest on Wednesday, April 27.

The VPHA reading progresses nicely again, this you see e.g. from the graph included in a recent ALD History Blog post: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/04/vpha-reading-proceeds-now-44percent-completed.html If there are new people who give their first comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file by April 27, we will update the acknowledgements with their names.

Best regards,

Riikka, VPHA coordinator

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Riikka Puurunen (Dr.), Senior Scientist, Microsystems and Nanoelectronics; Project Manager (IPMA C)

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Tietotie 3, Espoo (P.O. Box 1000), FI-02044 Espoo (VTT), Finland

< >, www.vttresearch.com, www.aldcoe.fi

fi.linkedin.com/in/riikkapuurunen, vph-ald.com, aldhistory.blogspot.fi, twitter.com/rlpuu

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

VPHA reading proceeds - now 44% completed

From the numbers, it is evident that the VPHA reading has started to progress again. This is, of course, thanks to the active spreading of papers to read. Around the time of publishing the post entitled "Many hands make light work", eight people contacted us to volunteer for the VPHA reading. 

At the moment, the ALD-history-evolving-file has 53 co-authors from 15 countries. The data in the VPHA-reading-overview-file shows that reading is now 44% completed. More co-authors are still needed and welcome to join the reading.

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

Update on the VPHA reading distribution - DL May 14

Information sent by email on April 14 to current (52) and prospective (32) VPHA co-authors. 

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Dear VPHA current and prospective co-authors,

In VPHA, we have now paired authors and publications and are actively spreading publications for co-authors to read. Everyone should receive by email publications to read that match their language skills and when possible also research interests. Thank you Oksana, Yury and Henrik for your great efforts here! 

Let us agree that everyone should preferably leave their comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file latest on May 14th, so that we can make the next large status check from May 15th on. Let us remember to update the VPHA-reading-overview-file too, to reflect the number of comments per paper. 

VPHA Correspondence - "Many hands make light work"

The email below was sent today to 30 potential VPHA co-authors as a check-point to see, who we will send out early ALD publications for reading and commenting to finalize the VPHA reading (we are now about 40% done). 

If you read this message and have not yet been in our list of prospective co-authors, this would be a very good time to join the effort, also listed as a collaboration at european-ald.net. For sharing a bit of your time and brainpower with us, you will get to be an author of the poster presentation at ALD 2016. Please indicate your interest e.g. in an email sent to info@ vph-ald.com. Please tell in your message the languages in which you can read publications and optionally your ALD-related speciality and other relevant info. 

Everyone with some ALD knowledge is welcome to join and help to get this important work completed. We already have participants from Europe, North America and Asia. It would be nice to have someone involved from Australia and South America, where I know that people are working with ALD. Perhaps there is already someone working with ALD in Africa, too?

**** prospective co-author email begins ****

Title: VPHA question - "Many hands make light work"

Dear ____,

We are preparing to actively send out papers for reading in VPHA (see the earlier message copied below). As you have earlier expressed your interest in participating in the VPHA reading, we would like to include you in the list of people who will get papers. However, before doing this, we would like to re-confirm your interest in participation.

VPHA publication distribution - author info update (5.4.)

The message below was sent to 52 VPHA co-authors and 32 prospective co-authors 

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors:

This update continues on a topic raised in the latest VPHA status update (31.3., point 2, #2).

To get the VPHA reading done, we are planning to distribute the remaining publications for VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors for reading. The information of authors and publications is being paired in an open Google spreadsheet called VPHA-author-info-update; the info is in the 2nd tab called “reading-distribution” (link is embedded in the name and you can always find it through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html). The file is open for everyone to view and comment.

To pair authors and publications to distribute for reading, for each co-author, we list

• (Name, of course)
• Languages in which one can read publications (the current list is the first draft and probably misses a lot of language information)
• Optional: information on a person’s area of specialism
• Optional: knowledge of specific types of papers one wishes to get (some wishes can be accommodated, but it will probably not be possible to accommodate all)  

ALD workshop England 1985 - what else is missing from the conference list?

Yesterday while reading the licentiate's thesis of Olli Jylhä (with six appended publications!) for VPHA, I ran into an ALD (ALE) workshop of which I was not aware earlier: England, UK, in 1985 (reference 10 in the picture). If someone knows more of the event (e.g., the name(s) of the organizer(s), how many people were present, etc), we like to collect this information in the VPHA-ALD-conference-list.

Now we have ALE two symposia/workshops listed in the VPHA-ALD-conference-list before the first International Symposium on ALE. Would there have been more, are we still missing some? France? Japan? USA? Other countries?

Photo from the reference list of the licentiate's thesis of Olli Jylhä,  Tampere University of Technology, 1986. By Riikka Puurunen, published first in Twitter. 

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

History of ALD terminology: Growth per cycle (GPC)

Growth per cycle (GPC) is a term that is increasingly often used in ALD literature. Since when has it been used? Who has created it, or has it been created by many?

A discussion chain was just started in LinkedIn in the ALD - Atomic Layer Deposition group to find answers to these questions. Link to LinkedIn discussion chain: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1885076/1885076-6122818578006757376. Your views appreciated!


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

VPHA status update 2016-03-31

 The status update below was sent to 52 co-authors and 30 prospective co-authors.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

This VPHA status update shares progress in the following topics. The previous VPHA update was dated 12.2.2016, earlier updates can be accessed here.

• 1.       VPHA abstract to Ireland ALD 2016: a poster
• 2.       VPHA reading status & preparing to Ireland ALD 2016
• 3.       VPHA listed as a Collaboration in HERALD
• 4.       Worldwide list: ALD theses
• 5.       Worldwide list: reviews
• 6.       Worldwide list: conferences
• 7.       ALD terminology discussion
• 8.       Other ALD History Blog posts

ALD conference list with "sister file" to add info

We have now created a file to collect information on ALD conferences throughout the years. This adds to the VPHA files collecting info on ALD theses and review articles. Thank you Oksana Yurkevich for making the transition from the ALD History Blog page and improving the information on the way.

The new file is called can VPHA-ALD-conference-list and it can be viewed and commented upon in real time by anyone. There is also a "sister file" called VPHA-conference-to-be-added, where anyone can edit information on missing conferences. One can find links to both files through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html. Below is a list of information that we would like to collect for the conferences. All additional bits and pieces of information are appreciated which help us to complete the list. 

ALD thesis list now 274 entries - still many missing?

In the previous posts (latest here), I overviewed the status of the VPHA reading. In this post, I review the status of the ALD thesis list, and I am glad to conclude that there has been significant progress in the last weeks. 

The total number of PhD-equivalent theses listed at the moment is 274. (The previous post, Feb 29, listed 226.) The next figures show (1) how the number of PhD-equivalent theses listed in the VPHA-ALD-thesis-list has increased with time, and (2) how many theses we have at the moment listed per country. Since the previous post, theses have been added e.g. from Finland, France, Germany, South Korea, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey, UK, USA. Thanks for everyone who has contributed by adding information on missing theses!

The list in the end of this post contains the thesis list sorted per country (both PhD-equivalents plus "professor's theses). The list has been created from the parent file VPHA-ALD-thesis-list, which contains more information per thesis than the short list below, most importantly, the title of the thesis, language, etc. I know that there are still many theses missing at least from Belgium, Germany and Japan and probably many other countries, too. If you notice missing items, please add the info directly here in the file called VPHA-thesis-to-be-added. You find links to these and other VPHA open working files through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html.  

VPHA ALD publications with three (plus) comments - 42

This post completes the series listing the VPHA ALD publications with different amounts of comments. The publications listed in this post have already received three or more comments and the general VPHA reading target has been met.

Those people interested in these publications can still of course read and comment these still in VPHA, having more than three comments is also completely ok. Still, to have VPHA progress and to able to complete the reading for Ireland ALD 2016, the publications with less comments should have a priority for reading.

Earlier posts on this series listed below. All status info comes from the VPHA-reading-overview-file.

• http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/03/vpha-ald-publications-with-two-comments.html
• http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/03/vpha-ald-publications-with-one-comment.html 
• http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/03/vpha-ald-publications-with-zero-comments.html 
• http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/03/graphical-big-picture-of-vpha-reading.html 

VPHA ALD publications with two comments - 79

Continuing on the previous posts showing the graphical big picture of the VPHA reading status and individually listing the early ALD publications with zero and one comments, this post lists publications which have received two comments in VPHA (total of 79).

The target is that each publication would have three comments, so if VPHA co-authors would like to read and comment some of these, that would be welcome and useful for the overall VPHA progress. In this list, we have plenty of papers available in English as well as other languages.

VPHA ALD publications with one comment - 151

Continuing on the "big-picture" post, below are shared the codes and titles of the total of 151 publications listed in VPHA, which have so far been read and commented upon once.

This list contains a lot of works in Russian, some of which have translations in English, and also publications from other countries (Finland, Japan, Germany, ...). Language-wise, all VPHA co-authors should be able to find reading in this list. 

Since these publications have only one comment in VPHA, reading them is important for the progress of VPHA. Post listing articles with zero comments---thereby having a still higher VPHA reading priority---here.

VPHA ALD publications with zero comments - 78

Continuing on the previous "big-picture" post, below are shared the codes and titles of 78 publications listed in VPHA, which have not been read & commented by anyone. The grand majority of these publications are written and available only in Russian. However, there are some works included in Finnish, Bulgarian, and German, too, and one, for which an English translation exists (Avrutina1982).

All VPHA co-authors who are fluent in Russian: please choose your next publications to read from this list. Hopefully, next time we make an overview of the VPHA reading status, this list will be reduced to a small fraction of what it is at the moment.

Graphical big picture of VPHA ALD history reading status

With this post, I want to share the "graphical big picture" and describe the current status of the VPHA reading: how is the reading progressing vs time, how many authors there are from different countries, and how these numbers have evolved with time.

The four plots below show that from December 2015 to January 2016, there was good progress taking place, reading progressed significantly, and new authors joined (we are now 52, from 15 countries). Thereafter, reading has slowed down and little progress has been booked. Obviously, we need to get the reading to proceed again, to be able to make a good report at Ireland ALD 2016. (Within a few days we should know, if it is a talk or a poster.)

To help the VPHA ALD history reading to progress, I will publish new blog posts containing list again of articles with zero; one; two; and three+ comments. These should follow shortly. I hope that as many VPHA co-authors as possible could in the next weeks pick a few articles to read, preferably with zero or one comments, and share the comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file. 

european-ald.net HERALD VPHA collaboration updated - more people welcome

I have (finally) gone through the list of authors in the VPHA abstract submitted to Ireland ALD 2016, and added those people who have a HERALD profile, to the VPHA HERALD collaboration in the HERALD COST Action MP1402 webpage european-ald.net. One person who joined VPHA after the submission he been added also. The update needs still an acceptance by the HERALD coordinator; soon the updates should be visible to all,

More people are still welcome and needed, to complete the work to ALD 2016. New co-authors will make it to the VPHA ALD 2016 presentation as an author, although their names did not appear in the abstract. Here are links to:

• Introduction and invitation to participate
• Publication Plan

More info and Open Files on the VPHA website, http://vph-ald.com,

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

VPHA abstract submitted to Ireland ALD 2016: 51 authors

Abstract of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) --- item #9 in the publication plan --- was submitted to Ireland ALD 2016 conference, with 51 authors from 15 countries. (After the submission, one person has already joined, so now we are with 52.) The abstract text is copied in full below.

The work that now remains to do related to the ALD 2016 presentation is to (i) complete the VPHA reading and (ii) create a "conclusive recommended reading list" of the most important early publications and applications. Creating this list will be collaborative work, where all VPHA participants can equally influence the results. More to come on the selection method later---we will first have to decide how to do it.

Interestingly, the conference publishes short biographies of the invited speakers. Here you find links to the current VPHA co-authors who are also invited speakers at the conference: Prof. Anatolii Malygin, Prof. Fred Roozeboom, Dr. Massimo Tallarida.

--- VPHA abstract submitted to Ireland ALD 2016 ---

Thoughts on Open Access, VPHA and figshare

A publication is meant to be public. Many are not, as the journals limit the access to the subscribers of the journals --- the content is published, but not publicly available.

Mid-February, I blogged about "Open research: How sharing can help researchers succeed", linking to an excellent manuscript-in-progress by McKiernan et al. that considers open research aspects from a researcher-centric approach. The manuscript triggered my thinking in many ways, I recommend reading it to others, too. In this blog post, I continue around Open Access and Open Science from my own ALD scientist's viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the VPHA ALD history project, ending with a question: Could we use figshare to share VPHA's material, other than journal articles? Are there other good options?  Discussion on the topic is very much needed and welcome.