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Author Q&A Session: John Rumble

CRC Press is pleased to share with you our author Q&A session with John Rumble, author of CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 100th Edition.

Q&A with John Rumble

Congratulations on completing the 100th print edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. It must give you lots of pride to reach that milestone.
Well the 100th Edition is a team effort, as the Handbook has been all along. First, I follow a long, distinguished chain of outstanding Editors, starting with William Veazey, who founded the Handbook in 1913. In more recent years, Robert Weast, David, Lide and Mickey Haynes, my immediate predecessors, have for the last 50 years expanded the Handbook into what it is today – the leading source of high-quality data in chemistry and physics. And it is important to mention here that the same high-quality data is available in our Online Edition.
 
What makes the Handbook so enduring, especially today where seemingly you can find anything on the Web?
It is a mixture of the diversity of our data content – close to 400 separate scientific topics – combined with our dedication to quality. Let me expand on both these points. Every day, scientists in the course of their research and other activities require a wide variety of data. While most of the data they require can be found with great effort in the original literature, in almost every case, they are not able to assess the quality of the reported measurements and equally unable to choose among conflicting results.
The Handbook has worked with over 100 experts who collect the data in their respective fields, evaluate their quality according to well-established criteria, and then create the data tables found in the Handbook using the data they judge to be most reliable and of highest quality. Not only are the data easily found in one convenient Print volume or in our easy-to-use Online database, but also users can be confident these data are the best available.
 
It sounds like a lot of work to keep the Handbook up-to-date? How is that done?
If I had to do it alone, it would be impossible. Fortunately, we have a group of outstanding authors, experts in their own fields, who do most of the compilation and quality assessment. Many of these authors work at data centers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or other well-known research organizations, and can draw on those data resources in their work. Others have often compiled and evaluated data on a specific topic for their own research interests. They are willing to share those data collections with the Handbook to help advance science.
Also, in most fields, the cycle of improved measurements is three to five years, and most of our data tables are reviewed and updated in that time frame. Consequently, every year the new edition has between 15-25% updated tables, which is why it is important for our users to keep their volume current. I should note that a few topics, such as our Table of Isotopes, are updated almost every year.

What are some of the new features you have brought or are planning to bring in the near future?
Well, the most obvious one is that the number of pages in the Print Edition has been reduced by about 40%, from 2500 to 1500 pages. This was done for two reasons. First, use of the Online Edition, which contains All our data, has grown so rapidly that I wanted to keep the size of the Print Edition manageable while adding new content. Our Senior Publisher, Fiona Macdonald thought this was the time to make such a change, and working with Dave Lide, the Associate Editor, we were able to do this quickly, yet continue to keep the essence of the contents in the Print Edition.
The second set of changes focus on improving the user experience with both the Print and Online Editions. While we are keeping the organization of the Handbook based on property types, we recognize our user community represents the broadest possible set of chemists, physicists, and other scientists, who consider themselves to more specialized – for example, environmental scientists, toxicologist, green chemists, nanotechnology, energy researchers, etc. Maybe we can call this “applied chemistry.”
To help these users, we are have expanded many of the introductions to the data tables to make them more accessible and easier-to-use for the non-specialist. This is a three-year process, and the 100th Edition is the first to have these updated introductions. We are also in the process of creating virtual views that help users find the diverse data that are spread across many tables, but relevant to the new scientific research areas as listed above. Now that the entire Handbook is in a database, we can more easily ensure that property data that occur in different tables are consistent.
We recognize that some of the heaviest users of the Handbook are students at all levels, undergraduates, graduate students, and those in high school. We are creating free user guides that help students and their teachers understand better how the Handbook is an invaluable source for chemistry and physics problem sets. Here I also want to mention that we are working to improve our applied physics coverage in the same way that we are improving our applied chemistry and will be producing similar guides for physics students.
Of course, we are constantly looking for new areas of chemistry and physics which are now mature enough to have enough data to permit compilation and quality assessment activities. I am always looking for new authors and editors to help with this process.
 
What do you see as the challenges of the future, and are you ready to make sure the Handbook can meet them?
Probably the greatest challenge is the tsunami of data that is a result of advanced instrumentation, our improved ability to synthesize and purify chemical and materials, and, quite simply, the number of researchers who are publishing papers. Obviously, all new data cannot be included in the Printed Handbook, but our Online database system is capable of handling very large data volumes. More important is the question of how to assess the quality of individual data values within this massive flow. One key issue is that rarely does a single measurement yield a long-lasted property value, yet most measurements are not repeated, Assessing the quality of a single measure is a big challenge.
The second challenge is one of the emerging of so-called knowledge discovery tools – machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc. These tools require fairly large volumes of high-quality data. Specialized data repositories such as those found in the area of crystallographic structure will be heavily used. At the same time, many complex systems and phenomena depend on multiple properties, so resources such as the handbook, which cover many properties will be sought by these tools. How to interface with them will be an interesting activity.
Finally, I need to mention that modern modelling techniques, whether based on first-principles quantum chemistry, or more heuristic models, have advanced to begin producing accurate property data. To date, however, there is virtually no accepted methodology for determining or expressing the uncertainties for modeling results. The Handbook contains few calculated property values not based on physical measurements. That will change in the coming decade, and the editors are working with the authors to determine how to assess the quality of model results, independent of comparison with experimental results.
 
In summing up, what final thoughts do you have about the 100th Print edition of the CRC Handbook?
Aside from my pride in working with such a great team to produce such an important resource for modern science, I guess my final thought is to ask users to let us know what we can do better – in terms of substance coverage, property coverage, and online data capability. We are excited to be starting our second century of work and look forward to being a valuable partner for research and education for many decades to come. I believe our theme for the 100th Edition of the CRC Handbook captures that well: A Heritage of High-Quality Data Looking to the Future!
 

Fiona Macdonald

Senior Publisher

Chemistry

Science and Medicine

Fiona Macdonald manages the Chemistry publishing program at CRC Press and is the primary contact for the CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics, which has been in print since 1913. She also works on the award-winning Chemnetbase suite of products, which include Combined Chemical Dictionary and Dictionary of Natural Products (www.chemnetbase.com). Additionally Fiona oversees the Science Publishers imprint of CRC Press.

[email protected]
Dr. John Rumble has long been a leader in

developing and providing access to databases in numerous S&T disciplines. From 1980 through 2004, he worked in the NIST Standard Reference Data Program and later was responsible for NIST measurement services programs. From 2004 to 2011, He was Executive Vice President of Information International Associates in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Today he is President of R&R Data Services in Gaithersburg MD.

Rumble has served on numerous national and international STI policy committees and review panels and was a member of the Board on International Scientific Organizations of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Rumble was among the first to build online, PC, and Internet/web-based factual databases for scientific and technical (S&T) data. While at NIST, he sponsored data projects with scientists in China, Japan, England, France, Germany, and Russia. During that time, he also worked with many industry organizations and professional societies to develop industry-related data programs in materials science and chemistry, as well as standards for S&T data exchange.

Dr. Rumble has considerable experience in chemistry, physics, materials science, nanomaterials, and informatics and data science experience and has published widely in all these areas. Rumble received a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Indiana University.

In 1998-2002, Rumble served as President of CODATA, the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology. Dr. Rumble is Fellow of IUPAC, AAAS, APS, ASTM International, ASM International, and IAFoST, as well as a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Metrology. He was awarded the CODATA 2006 Prize for outstanding achievements in S&T data. He has served two terms as Editor-in-Chief of the CODATA Data Science Journal.

During the last five years, Dr. Rumble has led a multi-disciplinary effort to develop a uniform system for describing nanomaterials. This work has been done under the auspices of CODATA International and the International Council for Science. Rumble has put together a unique group of international union representatives from the diverse scientific and technical fields interested in nanotechnology, including chemistry, physics, materials science, food science and technology, nutrition science, toxicology, and more. In addition, he has reached out to more general audiences in these fields through international workshops, symposia at union conferences, and liaisons with U.S. and European Nanosafety projects. This work is available at www.codata.org/nanomaterials

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