Summary of APS Report on Physicists in Industry (Chaired by Charlie Duke)
Charles B. Duke, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester and member of the National Acadedy of Science and National Academy of Engineering is the Chair of the APS Task Force on Physics in Industry .
The task force recommendations are summarized article in the November 2006 Issue of APS News: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200611/industry.cfm
The following is a summary of the report:
Industrial Physics and Physicists in the Global Economy of the 21st Century 11/14/06
C. B. Duke http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200602/profile.cfm , http://spider.pas.rochester.edu/mainFrame/people/pages/Duke_Charles_B.html )
Abstract
In 2006 the American Physical Society (APS) commissioned a task force for industrial physicists to study the evolving roles and needs of industrial physicists in the global economy of the 21st century. This task force identified an emerging schism between physicists employed in academia and government, who create new knowledge, and those employed in industry, who use that knowledge to create new products and services. It analyzed the nature of this schism and made eight recommendations to enable the APS to serve better its industrial physicist members.
The times they are a changing (ref 1). The Cold War has morphed into a War on Terror. A set of loosely coupled national economies has evolved into a highly interconnected and tightly coupled global economy based on a worldwide digital information network the Internet (ref 1,2). The creation of economic value from research knowledge has moved from the province of vertically integrated firms to loose global consortia (ref 2,3). Research projects and their funding have gone global, with contributors from all over the world working together via the Internet (ref 1,2). Trained technical manpower has become globally available and plentiful, as has the capital for commercially oriented R&D projects (ref 2).
These changes have exerted a powerful influence on physics and physicists. An increasing percentage of physics PhDs are employed by industry: Up from 36% in the 1950s to 56% in the 1990s (ref 4). In the global economy, the value of R&D, including physics R&D, is increasingly measured in terms of the economic value resulting from that R&D (ref 1-3, 5). Moreover, this value is no longer being created primarily in large firms that sponsor central R&D organizations that perform basic research, like Bell Labs, GE, IBM, Dupont and Xerox in the past. Rather new models of creating value of R&D are being pioneered in which loosely-coupled, globally distributed organizations connected via the Internet constitute the new product development pipelines (ref 2,3). In this new world industrial physicists no longer do basic research in the physical science in analogy with their academic cousins. Rather they perform applied research directly related to product development in a fashion that has historically been more associated with engineering than with science (ref 6,7). Thus, although industrial physics is increasingly the link between physics and economic prosperity as well as the main source of jobs for new physics PhDs, industrial physicists play a declining role in professional societies like the American Physical Society (APS).
In order to assess the nature and impact of these changes, the APS commissioned a Task Force for Industrial Physicists http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200611/industry.cfm chaired by C. B. Duke of Xerox and The University of Rochester http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200602/profile.cfm . This group performed two major studies. It orchestrated a survey of industrial physicists who are members of APS in order to determine how they obtained and used physics information in their jobs (ref 8).
It also surveyed other scientific societies, specifically the American Chemical Society (ACS), Electro-chemical Society (ECS), American Vacuum Society (AVS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Optical Society of America (OSA), and Materials research Society (MRS). From this survey it determined the participation of industrial scientists in these societies and the special offerings to this group made be each society. One of its major findings is that the participation of industrial scientists and engineers in all the societies has been declining. Thus a schism is arising in the scientific community between the creators of new knowledge in academia and government and the users of this knowledge in industry.
The role of industrial physicists in the APS has been declining. The percentage of APS members employed by industry has been dropping to its current value of about 20%. Industrial APS members rarely either publish in APS journals or attend its meetings (ref 8). They receive a negligible share of APS prizes and awards. Very few are active in APS governance. Approximately 70% belong to some other professional society in addition to APS. Most are connected to APS primarily via their use of Physics Today and APS News. Thus, at a time when the importance of physics to the nation is increasingly felt via its contributions to economic growth and prosperity, the role in the APS of the physicists who make these contributions has declined to the point of their being almost invisible in the major APS activities.
Industrial physicists in the APS come in two flavors. The most familiar one consists of physicists with institutional IT access to the literature (e.g., those in large & medium size firms as well as those in essentially all universities and government research laboratories.
There is, however, another sizable segment consisting of industrial physicists without institutional IT access to the literature (e.g., those in small firms, consultants, retirees). These individuals currently do not have access to the physics literature except by bootlegging such access as adjunct or other temporary faculty at an academic institution. Yet increasingly they are the critical links between the knowledge of physics embodied in the physics literature and the innovative new products and services that create economic growth in a competitive global economy. They constitute, therefore, an important new market for technical information products offered over the web with pricing appropriate for individuals with modest usage requirements.
This survey of APS industrial physicists also reveals other important characteristics of this group. They are web-email-telephone oriented; use physics on the job; need physics information far beyond APS journals; usually belong to other professional societies as well as APS; rarely publish in APS journals or attend APS meetings; use APS journals once a year or less; are connected with APS primarily via Physics Today, APS News.
Therefore the survey presents a picture of industrial physicist members of APS who are loosely coupled to the APS and who desire and need a variety of information services that APS does not currently offer.
The final task force report (ref 9) identified a profound difference between the value systems of physicists employed in industry and those in academia and government. Academic (and most government) research is valued primarily on the basis of its effect on the community as reflected in publications, citations, invited papers at conferences and community service. Industrial research, on the contrary, is valued primarily on the basis of its impact on the commercialization of a new product or service. Publications and conference presentations are at best secondary. Often, they are explicitly discouraged in order to protect the intellectual property resulting from the work. Time devoted to professional society activities is sometimes regarded as time that should have been spent on the job. Professional societies like APS are going to have to devote special attention to maintaining a productive contact between these two groups.
In its final report (ref 9) the task force made eight recommendations. Foremost among these is the creation and maintenance of an on-line network of physicists analogous to myspace.com . This online service would facilitate interactions and networking among industrial physicists and would enable physicists in small firms to locate other physicists with expertise on specific technical topics. A second important class of recommendations deals with the expansion of the notion of web-based journal packs to include all physics journals published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the offering of new classes of membership in which limited journal packs come bundled with the membership fee.
A final important class of recommendations involves making the prizes and awards of the APS more open to industrial physicists, including the sponsorship of a new prize for the industrial applications of physics. All these recommendations are aimed at making APS membership and involvement more attractive to industrial physicists.
In summary, during the past 20 years the world has changed profoundly, requiring physics and physicists to do likewise. These changes are affecting the APS in three major ways.
(1) First, the creation of economic value from physics research and the industrial employment of physicists are increasingly becoming primary value propositions for physics to secure funding from the public purse. The shock troops that generate this value are industrial physicists. Thus, industrial applications of physics created by industrial physicists are becoming the primary currency to motivate incremental governmental investments in physics research and education.
(2) Second, the employment of PhD physicists is increasingly in industry as opposed to government and academia. Therefore the jobs for which the academic physics profession is supposed to prepare its graduates are changing in character relative to the decades of the 1950s through 1980s.
(3) Third, the relative competitive attractiveness of physics education and employment in the US is declining. Opportunities for physics research and education are increasing in both Europe and the Far East. Rapid technological growth is migrating away from the physical sciences into information technology and biotechnology. These trends all point to a future for physics and physicists, which is rather more challenging than the past: A future in which industrial applications of physics and industrial physicists are increasingly important to the health of the whole profession.
References
1. Friedman, T. L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Strauss and Girous, New York, 2005).
2. Chesbrough, H. Open Innovation: The New imperative for Creating and Profiting From Technology (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2003).
3. Duke, C. B. Creating Economic Value from Research Knowledge. The Industrial Physicist 10, 18Ã∞¢ââ√˚Ë˚×Ë˚20 (June/July 2004).
4. Neuschatz , M and McFarling, M. NSF Survey of Doctoral Physicists (NSF, Washington DC, 2001).
5. Teresko, J. Recapturing R&D Leadership, Industry Week (Aug. 2006), pp. 28-36.
6. Haas, K. Educating Physicists for Industry: The Rest of the Story. Physics Today 55 (issue 12, 2002).
7. Duke, C. B. The Future of Research in Industry: Implications for Physics and Physicists (Pake Prize Lecture, APS March Meeting, Baltimore MD, 2006)
8. Chu, R. Y. and Guo, S. 2006 APS Industrial Membership Survey: Preliminary Report
9. C. B. Duke et al., Report of the APS Task Force on Industrial Physics (American Physical Society, College Park MD 2006)
The task force recommendations are also summarized article in the November 2006 Issue of APS News: http://apsweb.aps.org/publications/apsnews/index.cfm (http://www.aps.org/apsnews/current/110601.cfm) (password needed).
The following are excerts from the article:
" The APS can and should do more to serve the needs of its industrial members, according to a task force on industrial physics that submitted its report to the Executive Board in September.
The task force was formed to assess the situation of APS activities for industrial physicists and make recommendations of how APS can better serve this segment of the membership.
About 20% of regular APS members are industrial physicists. Over the past 20 years, this proportion has been falling, even as the percentage of physics PhDs employed by industry has been increasing. In the 1990s, 56% of physics PhDs worked in industry, up from 36% in the 1950s......
Academic physicists publish papers and attend meetings, and are rewarded for those activities. "That culture is not shared by the new industrial physics community," said Duke. "The new industrial physics members have a different value system. They produce products, not knowledge." Industrial physicists are discouraged from attending meetings and publishing papers so that they will not give away trade secrets. Therefore, recognition for industrial members needs to take into account their different value system, the task force says. Since industrial physicists need access to all the physics literature, not just APS journals, one important finding of the survey was that they need ways to locate information from a variety of sources. Many work as consultants or in small companies and do not have institutional access to the literature.....
Because industrial physicists need access to all the physics literature, not just APS journals, the task force recommends APS work with other AIP member societies to create all-AIP-and- member-society journal packs for individual APS members and to allow AIP and member societies to create similar offerings to small firms as well as individual members. This is an important recommendation, the task force emphasized. This is what the APS is all about: Disseminating the knowledge of physics to the folks that can use this knowledge to create products and services that serve mankind and generate economic prosperity. This is a high calling for the APS in the 21st century, the task force report says. However, this recommendation will be challenging to implement, and would require coordination with AIP and other member societies....."
Article submitted by:
Arie Bodek
12/3/06; 5:04:21 PM