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news articles in fullCommunity initiative helps preserve scholarly content |Apr 06|Publishers, librarians, and learned societies are using the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology to support a 'large dark archive'. The aim is for it to be a failsafe repository for published scholarly content. The Controlled LOCKSS system (CLOCKSS) aims to assure the research community that journal content could still be accessed in the event of a disaster. After a 'trigger' event, such as the material no longer being available from the publisher, a joint advisory board, representing societies, publishers and libraries, will begin the process to determine if the content in CLOCKSS is 'orphaned' and whether it should be made publicly available. The board ensures that content is controlled but that no one person or sector has authority over orphaned digital materials in the system. 'Our community needs to ensure that when content becomes orphaned there is a process through which it becomes publicly accessible,' explained Vicky Reich, director of the LOCKSS programme for Stanford University Libraries. The CLOCKSS project offers an alternative solution to archiving and its strength lies in the fact that it has been founded by publishers and librarians and will remain collectively managed.' The initial two-year pilot will include at least five research libraries, and several commercial and society publishers. During this time, publishers and libraries will continue to work closely to collect and analyse data and develop a proposal for a full-scale archiving model. As part of a longer-term strategy to permanently preserve published work, CLOCKSS will report the findings to the wider community and begin discussions about a global infrastructure to ensure preservation of all past, present, and future scholarly content.
Project will enhance access to US digital resources |Apr 06|Researchers at Virginia Tech and Villanova University in the US have received a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The aim is to develop technology that will allow college students and professors to conduct customised information searches from course websites to the large collection of science, technology, engineering and mathematics resources available in the National Science Digital Library. 'Our goal is to get content from the National Science Digital Library closer to its intended audience,' said Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, Virginia Tech assistant professor of computer science, who is directing the project. 'The project's target beneficiaries are students and professors in all areas of computing. We hope to extend the library's reach into the educational system and thus increase its number of users.'
RSS can put data into catalogues automatically |Apr 06|Emerald Group Publishing is leading a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) project to develop a RSS (really simple syndication) news-feed service that automatically pushes publisher and e-journal information into library catalogues. With this in place, e-journal table-of-content data will be fed automatically into library catalogues without the need for cataloguing, classification or data entry. This should improve accuracy of records, save time for staff and deliver a more integrated experience to users. Library systems and services supplier Talis is the project's technology partner. It is working with Emerald to develop the publisher RSS and will develop the open-source software environment to manage the service at educational establishments. The UK's University of Derby is working as the test bed and evaluation partner. JISC is backing the project with £15,000, and all partners have committed to match the funding, making a total of £60,000. 'RSS has, up until now, been used to deliver news-feeds or alerts of blog postings to individuals' desktops,' commented Richard Wallis of Talis. 'This simple, yet powerful, technology has many potential applications in machine-to-machine communications.' The project is scheduled for completion in July 2006. A demonstrator service is expected to be up and running by June 2006. The open-source software developed will be freely available to further and higher education establishments, publishers, and library-management systems developers.
Improving supply-chain efficiency |Apr 06|The industry is coming together to see if a common institutional identifier that can be used throughout the industry, from purchaser to end-user, could help reduce problems in subscription renewals. The project involves the British Library, HighWire Press, Ringgold, Swets Information Services and a group of HighWire-affiliated publishers. It is a response to the turbulent time at the start of every calendar year when issues can be missed, access to electronic journals can be lost and problems arise relating to the setting up of initial access. Many problems occur because of communication breakdowns on the journal supply chain. Each organisation has its own way of recognising customers, users, clients and subscriptions. The hope is that the utilisation of a standard institutional identifier will help eliminate problems or at least enable them to be diagnosed earlier. The project will set up real-use case scenarios to discover whether the creation of such a standard identifier for institutions would be beneficial. It will also test implementation strategies. The pilot will be limited to the UK customers. The British Library will be working with the pilot to look at the implications of providing access to electronic archives. HighWire Press will act as a technical advisor. Ringgold has been working with publishers for three years to create a database of institutions and its metadata will form a key basis of the pilot. Swets' role will be to oversee how a standard identifier would affect the workflow between the publishers and consumers of information.
Google's French deal |Apr 06|The Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) has partnered with Google. This agreement, through Google Scholar's Library Links programme, is intended to enhance the discovery and access to INIST's resources through Google Scholar. Under the partnership, when authorised users of INIST's portals search Google Scholar, an INIST link appears next to results for articles that are available through INIST's range of subject portals. This customised Google Scholar environment is expected to provide CNRS researchers with simplified access to information they seek. Google Scholar-enabled access is already available with INIST's BiblioVie research portal for life scientists, and other portals will follow soon. The integration of INIST research portals with Google Scholar is the first of several joint efforts that Google and INIST will undertake in 2006. 'We are pleased to partner with INIST to better support the important work of CNRS researchers,' said John Lewis Needham, who is in charge of strategic partnerships for Google France. 'Our Google Scholar search service is greatly enhanced by this collaboration.'
British Library via Google Scholar |Apr 06|Searches on Google Scholar now include links to the British Library's document delivery service. If search results match the library's holdings, users will have the option to buy articles via the British Library's online document ordering interface, British Library Direct. 'We exist for everyone who wants to do research and we give priority to initiatives that make our collection more easily accessible,' said Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library. 'By partnering with Google Scholar, the British Library will enable users to identify and locate relevant articles more effectively than has previously been possible.' This move helps researchers to move from online subject searches to full-text access. Articles that are available from the library can be delivered direct to users' desktops via Secure Electronic Delivery in as little as two hours.
Swiss science organisations sign Berlin declaration |Apr 06|A collection of Swiss research institutes and other organisations have signed the 'Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities'. This declaration promotes access to information in the sciences and humanities free-of-charge. The new signatories are the Rector's Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS), the Conference of the Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences(KFH), the Swiss Conference of Schools for Teacher Education (SKPH), the Council of the Swiss Scientific Academies (CASS), and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). By signing the so-called Berlin Declaration, the organisations commit to encouraging researchers to make their 'peer reviewed' journals openly available through personal archiving and to developing a technical infrastructure that permits fast and convenient access to scientific content. Researchers will also receive institutional support for their open-access efforts.
OCLC acquires Openly Informatics |Apr 06|Library cooperative Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) has purchased the assets of Openly Informatics, a provider of linking software and services for the library market. Openly Informatics' 1.2 million-record database of linking metadata for electronic resources will be used to enrich the OCLC WorldCat database of bibliographic information. The enhanced records are expected to improve WorldCat applications such as FirstSearch WorldCat, WorldCat Resource Sharing, WorldCat Collection Analysis and Open WorldCat. OCLC WorldCat, in turn, will extend the Openly Informatics database by contributing metadata covering materials in other electronic formats, including electronic books, digital audio books, digital theses and dissertations.
Usage statistics service launches commercially |Apr 06|MPS Technologies, a subsidiary of Macmillan India, has launched a new service that it says will 'provide librarians with more opportunities to analyse and understand usage within their institutions or corporations.' ScholarlyStats, which was beta tested with over 50 libraries during 2005, builds on the work of Project COUNTER in creating standards for vendor usage reporting. It enables libraries to outsource the collection and consolidation of journal and database usage reports. 'COUNTER does not endorse individual products, but we welcome initiatives like ScholarlyStats from MPS Technologies that help to make usage statistics more usable and accessible to libraries,' commented COUNTER's project director Peter Shepherd. The service has already attracted some major partnerships. Thomson Scientific's forthcoming Journal Use Reports will use ScholarlyStats to provide data on usage, as well as its usual information on citations and institutional academic research. Jayne Marks, CEO of MPS Technologies said, 'We are delighted that our two organisations can co-operate to help information professionals uncover a clearer view of how users are utilising information within academic institutions.' MPS Technologies has also announced a deal with Swets where the Netherlands-based subscription agent becomes the first global channel partner for ScholarlyStats. SwetsWise usage statistics are also now included in the ScholarlyStats service and further integration between the two services is being explored.
Software hunts through catalogues with just a sketch |Apr 06|A US company has used pattern recognition techniques developed at Purdue University to create a tool that searches online resources using a simple freehand sketch. Imaginestics' search engine lets users find items in an online catalogue without needing to know the items' names, part numbers or keywords. The search tool, called 3D-Seek, and its associated catalogue, are currently aimed at manufacturing firms, which are constantly looking for products such as hinges, bolts and motors, but it could be extended to other applications. The 3D-Seek software was built on top of technology created by Karthik Ramani and his colleagues at the Purdue Research and Education Center for Information Systems in Engineering. They developed search algorithms that enable computer-aided design files and other 3-D images to be compared rapidly. These algorithms have been refined into a system that requires only critical shape characteristics, rather than entire image files. As well as speeding up the search process and protecting proprietary information, this enables engineers and designers to search for a component by just drawing a simple sketch.
Funding bodies seek supplier for UK PubMed Central |Apr 06|The Wellcome Trust and a group of major UK biomedical research funding bodies are looking for a supplier to host, manage and develop a UK version of PubMed Central (UKPMC). Based on the US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central, the aim of this initiative is to create a stable, permanent, and free-to-access online digital archive of the full-text, peer-reviewed research publications and datasets that arise from the research funded by the organisations involved. UKPMC will be fully searchable and provide context-sensitive links to other online resources, such as gene and chemical compound databases. It is anticipated that the site, which should be fully operational by the beginning of next year, will handle around one million unique users per month and contain more than 500,000 research articles. From last October it became a condition of Wellcome Trust funding that research papers had to be deposited in PubMed Central and eventually the UK version when it comes online. Robert Terry, senior policy advisor at the Wellcome Trust, said: 'We are seeking a contractor who has a good track record of high-quality service provision and experience of collaborative working.'
Oxford Journals preserves data with Portico |Apr 06|Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, will archive its content with Portico, an electronic archiving service launched in 2005 with funding from JSTOR, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ithaka, and the Library of Congress. This is the third major archiving agreement that Oxford Journals is participating in. In 2004, Oxford Journals became one of the first publishers to sign an archiving agreement with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, and in 2005 became a member of the LOCKSS preservation initiative from Stanford University. 'The agreement offers a further development to our archive provisions, by preserving an exact copy of journal content and by ensuring the usability of the archived content by migrating the files to future file formats as technology evolves,' said managing director Martin Richardson.
Pilot tests Open WorldCat benefits in Europe |Apr 06|OCLC PICA is currently running pilot initiatives to expand the Open WorldCat programme in Europe. The aim is to enable European libraries to increase the visibility of their holdings as well as their usage, and to strengthen their position as a source for online research. As a result of the pilot, holdings of libraries in the Netherlands and the UK will begin appearing in response to 'Find in a library' links from Open WorldCat search engine partners such as Yahoo! Search, Google and Ask Jeeves. During the pilot, a number of features will be introduced that will help tailor the programme for European users. These include raising the ranking of records in country-specific search engine sites for items held in domestic libraries. The Open WorldCat 'Find in a Library' site and its links will also be translated, so that they can be immediately understood in the local language. In addition, more specific European geographic data (for example, postal codes) for library locations will be included. The first phase of the pilot will run until the end of June 2006.
News in brief |Apr 06|SAGE chooses PublisherStats
web analytics tools and reports
Springer takes on
Experimental Mechanics
Ingenta strengthens subscription activation programme
OCLC PICA supplies portals to Norwegian libraries
Library service in South-West Germany partners with Springer
Nielsen BookData and BDS separate their library services
International ISBN Agency moves
Publishers expand peer-review relationships with ScholarOne
Bailey Solutions teams up with Nielsen BookData
Endeavor and TDNet expand electronic-access partnership
Blackwell regains
dermatology contract and
buys dentistry journals
Italian hospitals choose Emerald
Nature will publish Immunology and Cell Biology
Oxford University picks VITAL for repositories
Back to top Publishers sue Google over copyright of booksThe Association of American Publishers (AAP) has filed a lawsuit against Google over its plans to digitally copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owners. AAP says the lawsuit was filed 'only after discussions broke down between AAP and Google's management regarding the copyright infringement implications of the Google Print Library Project'. The project involves digitising millions of books from the libraries of Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Michigan in the USA, as well as publicly available works from Oxford University and the New York Public Library. The suit seeks a court declaration that Google commits infringement when it scans entire books covered by copyright, and asks for a court order preventing the search engine from doing so without permission of the copyright owner. AAP filed the suit on behalf of five of its major publisher members: the McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster, and John Wiley & Sons. This came after 'an overwhelming vote of support' by the 20-member AAP board.'The publishing industry is united behind this lawsuit against Google and united in the fight to defend its rights,' said AAP president Patricia Schroeder. 'While authors and publishers know how useful Google's search engine can be and think the Print Library could be an excellent resource, the bottom line is that under its current plan Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers.' AAP proposed that Google resolve the issue by using the ISBN numbering system to identify works under copyright and secure permission from publishers and authors to scan these works - but Google is said to have rejected the proposal.
'By rejecting the reasonable ISBN solution, Google left our members no choice but to file this suit,' explained Schroeder.
The AAP action follows an earlier lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild on behalf of its 8,000 members.
Swets completes SUSHI integration testsSwets has successfully completed integration tests of its Electronic Resource Management statistics with two ILS vendors, Innovative Interfaces and Ex Libris, as part of the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI). The statistics transferred in these tests were all compliant with the internationally recognised COUNTER format.
SUSHI is an initiative created by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) that aims to help librarians track usage of online content. Although many content providers supply usage data, libraries have discovered that receiving statistics on a provider-by-provider basis is time consuming and costly to administer. SUSHI aims to provide a protocol that will enable libraries to retrieve and analyse that information in a standard data container.
UK libraries try out LOCKSS in an effort to preserve accessTwo UK-based organisations, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and CURL (Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles), are carrying out an extended pilot to deploy the LOCKSS system, devised at Stanford University, in selected UK libraries. This is a move to address the potential problem of educational institutions losing access to entire back runs of electronic journals when subscriptions are cancelled or when journals cease publication. LOCKSS ('Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe') preserves access to a library's online journals in a local 'LOCKSS box' in a manner acceptable to publishers. The chosen libraries will each keep copies of the journals they subscribe to and, together, they will ensure continued access to subscribed online journals - even if a publisher should disappear, a journal cease publication or the library end its subscription.
Robin Green, executive director of CURL, said: 'The profile of digital preservation has increased significantly in recent years, but there is still a great deal to do in this area and libraries have a vital role to play. We hope that a great many will be interested in playing their part in this important programme.'
Partnership delivers multilingual text mining solutionsBasis Technology, which supplies tools for multilingual computing and information retrieval, has formed a business alliance with text-mining supplier TEMIS for mutual technology integration and the development of new multilingual text mining applications for government and commercial markets. The integration of TEMIS' Insight Discoverer solutions for European languages and Basis Technology's Rosette language analysis system for Asian and Middle Eastern languages will allow users to extract meaningful intelligence from unstructured data. The companies' multilingual text mining applications will allow organisations to identify, group, and classify unstructured documents based on relevancy, similarity, and combined statistical and linguistic analysis. This integration has also strengthened Basis Technology's language coverage, adding 16 additional European languages to its Rosette Linguistics Platform.
Charles Huot, CEO of TEMIS, said: 'This alliance brings great value to our customers who frequently ask for new, innovative solutions and more language support. It is also an important step forward in establishing our presence in the US.'
Springer buys Current Medicine GroupSpringer Science+Business Media has acquired the Current Medicine Group (CMG), a publisher for the healthcare community based in the UK and the USA. 'The acquisition of CMG further strengthens Springer's position in sponsored publishing in the US and UK. Springer already has similar operations in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy and with the acquisition of CMG we will strengthen these activities significantly,' explained Derk Haank, Springer's CEO. He said that Springer's STM operations and CMG's publishing programmes will not be integrated since they serve different markets. However, he added: 'In the coming months we will look at the appropriate organisational structure to give us maximum benefit.' Approximately 100 employees from CMG's four units will join Springer. Abe Krieger and Jane Hunter, managing directors of CMG's US and UK businesses respectively, will also join Springer and continue to run the CMG units.
Abe Krieger said: 'I am truly excited to join Springer and am convinced we can grow CMG activities by accelerating our publishing programmes and by increased marketing and sales, not only in pharmaceutical publishing, but also in surgery and radiology.'
Investment changes access to library resourcesA survey by the UK's Research Information Network has shown that investment of £30 million over six years has dramatically changed the provision of access to research resources in university libraries. Over the period 1999-2005, the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) access funding scheme has enabled almost 50 university libraries in the UK to invest in activities and initiatives aimed at extending access to their collections.
A major result of this funding is that there is now a national scheme for universities to provide access to their research holdings and facilities on equal terms to all researchers in the higher education sector. The RIN says that the survey demonstrates how libraries no longer need to fear that opening up access to external users will lead to unsustainable over-use and swamping.
Publishers expand STM activities in AsiaWiley, Nature and Thomson are all expanding their science, technology and medicine activities in Asia. Wiley will create a new STM publishing programme that will be located at its Asian headquarters in Singapore. This is in addition to its other three STM publishing programmes that are located in Hoboken, New Jersey; Chichester, England; and Weinheim, Germany. The new programme will publish book and journal content from Asia for a worldwide audience, to benefit from Asia's recent emergence as an important source of STM content. Another goal of the initiative is to strengthen coverage of Asian content in existing Wiley publications from the US, UK, and Germany. 'Asia is an area where we see tremendous publishing and market opportunities' said Steve Miron, vice-president, Wiley Asia and general manager for Global STM Books. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is also expanding in Asia with plans to transform its representative company in Japan into 'the hub of a scientific, technical and medical publishing powerhouse in the Asia-Pacific region'. Editors of two new journals, Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Photonics, will be based in Tokyo and more are expected to be located in Japan and China in the future. 'Scientific research in Japan, Korea and China is really making heads turn,' said David Swinbanks, NPG publishing director in charge of the new strategy. 'With science in the region moving ahead so quickly, we have to move forward as well.' The emergence of Asia in STM research has also been noticed by Thomson, which is creating a joint lab for intellectual property development with China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). The lab will be located in the MII-China Silicon Intellectual Property Public Service Platform (CSIP) building, and will equip Chinese researchers with resources for scientific innovation, including scientific and knowledge tools for patent and literature search and analysis.
The lab's mission is to promote the rapid development of intellectual property within the IT industry; to educate researchers throughout China about efficient and effective ways to conduct research using world class intellectual property research and analysis tools; and to work together to accelerate the awareness and capabilities of Chinese companies.
Scopus wins STM award for ElsevierElsevier's abstracting and indexing database, Scopus, won the International Information Industry Award for best Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Information Product at the recent Online Information 2005 show. Scopus accepted the award with two of its development partners, David Price of Oxford University, and Hilda Nassar of the American University of Beirut. Eefke Smit, Elsevier's managing director for ScienceDirect and Bibliographic Databases, commented: 'Scopus was designed by researchers and librarians and embodies their unique needs and requirements. Therefore we want to thank the hundreds of researchers and librarians who continue to give us their time and expertise to develop Scopus. This award is as much theirs as it is ours.'
Other winners included the National Institute of Mental Health in England Knowledge Community for innovation in knowledge management and ProQuest SmartSearch for best specialist search product.
Users need to know more about their librariesInformation consumers view libraries as places to borrow print books, but are unaware of the rich electronic content they can access through libraries, according to a new report from Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the world's largest library cooperative. The report found that 84 per cent of the 3,348 respondents use search engines to begin an information search, while only one per cent begin with a search on a library web site. Information consumers say that they still use the library but that they use the library less and read less since they began using the internet. And they still used the library most often for borrowing print books. Meanwhile, quality and quantity of information are top determinants of a satisfactory electronic information search, not speed of results. However, respondents do not trust purchased information more than free information. The report also found that 90 per cent of respondents were satisfied with their most recent search for information using a search engine. In addition, information consumers like to use personal knowledge and common sense to judge if electronic information is trustworthy, and they cross-reference other sites to validate their findings. These results were consistent among respondents in the six countries surveyed (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the UK and the USA). 'We wanted to know more about people's information-seeking practices and preferences, how familiar people are with the wide variety of e-resources libraries provide for their users, and how libraries compare to other information resources, particularly web-based resources,' said Cathy De Rosa, vice-president, OCLC Marketing & Library Services, and a principal contributor to the report. 'The challenge for libraries is to clearly define and market their services and collections, both physical and virtual,' said De Rosa. 'It's time to rejuvenate the "Library" brand.'
Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources is available for download free of charge at www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm.
Wiley acquires Dialysis & Transplantation from Creative AgeJohn Wiley & Sons has bought Dialysis & Transplantation from California-based Creative Age Publications. Said to be the oldest peer-reviewed renal care journal in the world, Dialysis & Transplantation provides nephrology and renal transplantation information to nephrologists, surgeons, internists and other physicians, nurses, administrators, medical directors, dieticians, and other professionals in more than 130 countries.
Wiley begins publishing the journal in 2006 and will continue to make it available in print and online at no charge to qualified readers and through subscription to other individual and institutional customers.
MIT chooses Atypon for its journals platformTHE MIT Press is partnering with Atypon to host the new MIT Press online journals publishing platform. 'At The MIT Press, we serve an audience of intelligent, increasingly busy readers who have more information to digest than ever before. We are confident that the decision to move to Atypon will allow our readers to access our wide range of journal content on a high-quality and well-developed web platform with great ease' said Rebecca McLeod, journals manager for The MIT Press.
Springer partners with the Association for Educational Communications and TechnologyThe Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and Springer will publish two journals together in the field of education. Springer is taking on the role of publisher and exclusive distributor of the AECT journals Educational Technology Research and Development and TechTrends.
Phillip L. Harris, executive director of AECT, commented, 'The opportunity to work with such a well-known and respected publisher will enable AECT to ensure the continued growth of its journals and their influence in the field.'
CSA acquires Community of Science internet siteCSA has acquired Community of Science (COS), an internet site for the global R&D community that is said to have established itself, over the last 15 years, as a leader in grant funding opportunities and researcher expertise information. COS, which originated as a spin-off of The Johns Hopkins University in the USA, represents more than 1,300 universities, associations, and other research institutions that, together, comprise more than 480,000 scholars and researchers. The Community of Science builds web-enabled expertise management and content services to connect its members with scholarly information and resources.
Users' current access to the COS products will be maintained but these products will also be integrated into CSA Illumina, CSA's access platform.
AAPS and Springer expand their partnershipThe American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and Springer have added a book publishing programme to their partnership. The AAPS has sponsored Springer's journal Pharmaceutical Research for nearly 20 years.
Knovel teams up with NylinkKnovel Corporation, which provides web-based information services, has announced a partnership with Nylink, the not-for-profit membership organisation of libraries and information organisations throughout New York State and surrounding areas. A cooperative purchasing agreement makes Knovel Library available to Nylink's college and university members at a discounted rate. 'Partnering with an esteemed organisation like Nylink is an honour for Knovel,' said Chris Forbes, CEO of Knovel Corporation. 'Its collective purchasing power offers members significant price benefits, and its thorough partner evaluation process allows customers to subscribe with confidence.'
The partners will also develop relationships with other library networks.
Oxford Journals takes over publication of EuropaceEuropace, the official journal of the European Heart Rhythm Association of the European Society for Cardiology (ESC), is now being published by Oxford Journals.
Europace - The European Journal of Pacing, Arrhythmias and Cardiac Electrophysiology journal provides peer-reviewed European and international scientific work and reviews in the fields of Arrhythmias, Pacing, and Cardiac Electrophysiology.
This new agreement is the second of the ESC's titles to join Oxford Journals, following The European Heart Journal in January 2005.
All TMS members have access to a library of important references.Knovel Corporation, which provides web-based information services, has announced a partnership with The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS).
The new service, called TMS e-Library, uses Knovel's publishing platform and grants all TMS members online access to full-text versions of three important reference books. In addition, an additional 21 titles are available to members for a small yearly access fee. Knovel's intuitive research platform is said to help users quickly locate data, analyse it, and export the results.
French physical therapy journal joins SpringerSpringer France will publish La Lettre - Médecine Physique et Réadaptation, a leading physical therapy journal of the Association Nationale de Médecins Spécialistes de Rééducation (ANMSR). This agreement is said to strengthen Springer France's French-language portfolio in orthopedics and related medical fields.
Scopus links to JSTORScopus now including links to full-text articles in over 250 of the journals archived by JSTOR, the not-for-profit organisation that aims to create, maintain and provide access to a trusted archive of important scholarly journals. From this archive, researchers can retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated.
-------------------------- Authors to benefit from new royalties agreementThe Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) have signed an agreement that establishes terms for a new five-year partnership. This agreement provides for the equitable distribution of secondary rights royalties (from photocopying or scanning) between UK-registered publishers and authors. It is also the first formal publisher/author agreement in the history of the UK's collective rights management. In the past, publishers have been asked to declare that they owned or controlled over 90 per cent of rights to a publication to be entitled to 100 per cent of photocopy fee revenue attributed to that title. If they owned less than the 90 per cent, they would only be entitled to 75 per cent of the revenue, the remaining 25 per cent going to authors/contributors. This declaration has now been replaced with a one tier payment split of 85 per cent of revenue to publishers, and 15 per cent to authors across all serials publications, irrespective of the percentage of rights owned or controlled. This marks a shift in revenue from publishers to authors and a perception that publishers are increasingly recognising the rights of authors. The agreement streamlines the payment of royalties and means authors contributing to serials, including academic journals, will receive 15 per cent of photocopy revenue, irrespective of the amount of rights that the publisher owns or controls. 'This agreement provides a sound foundation for writers and publishers to work together to raise awareness and improve the understanding of the benefits of copyright and respect for creativity,' says Jane Carr, CEO of ALCS. 'Along with publishers, writers must be recognised for the economic contribution they make to the "knowledge economy". They need to receive both recognition and reward for the vital role they play in the value chain from which publishers and users benefit.'
Technology partnership tackles digital preservationSun Microsystems and Endeavor Information Systems will work together to create global digital repositories and preservation technologies to protect critical educational, cultural and historical information. The multi-year partnership will combine Sun's infrastructure technologies, such as its Solaris operating system, with Endeavor's expertise in digital library management software. Endeavor will also draw on the experience that its parent company, Elsevier, has in STM publishing, particularly in managing large scale content repositories with millions of assets. Together, the companies plan to create a next-generation platform for digital preservation and storage. 'With their current offerings, Sun and Endeavor already enable us to better manage our physical and digital assets,' commented Kai Ekholm, who is national librarian for the National Library of Finland. 'What's exciting about this expanded partnership is that the combined strength of these two companies will truly help any institution with long term repository and preservation needs to achieve their goals.'
Under terms of the agreement, Sun, Elsevier and Endeavor will collaborate on specific solutions and optimise current technologies for each other's platforms. Sun is creating software that connects Endeavor's award-winning ENCompass digital library management system to Sun's Java System Access Manager to ensure that the appropriate digital data is being distributed to the appropriate people. The companies are also collaborating on technologies such as Sun's StorEdge Content Infrastructure System to ensure optimal ease-of-use.
OCLC PICA acquires Fretwell-DowningOCLC PICA, a library systems and services provider based in the Netherlands, has bought the UK-based Fretwell-Downing Informatics Group (FDI).
FDI will continue to trade under its own name. Both OCLC PICA and FDI are said to be committed to supporting the existing product ranges. The acquisition is expected to enable both companies to make use of each others' technology, capabilities and skill sets.
This announcement follows OCLC PICA's acquisition of Sisis Informationssysteme (Germany) in July 2005.
Springer plans European growthSpringer Science and Business Media plans to acquire a fast-growing group of publishing companies in the Netherlands. The group consists of Rendement Uitgeverij (Rotterdam), Checklist Publishing (Dordrecht), the educational publisher Uitgeverij Goed Bestuur (Rotterdam) and the service company Publicount (Rotterdam). The companies and their 26 employees will become part of Springer Uitgeverij in the Netherlands. Luc Muijser, Jan Schelling and Arne Westerhof, who make up the current management of the companies, will continue to act as publishers. Derk Haank, CEO of Springer said: 'These companies are not only important publishers in their own field, but they also are well managed and will contribute directly to Springer's results, thus helping us to achieve a more significant position in the Dutch B2B publishing market.'
Springer is also expanding in Central Europe with a new partnership with Polish company Central European Science Journals (CESJ). In 2006 the two companies will begin co-publishing journals of Central and Eastern European societies and other institutions. During the next few years, the number of co-published journals in a variety of disciplines will reach approximately 40 and will cover societies and institutions in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia and Albania.
Reed Elsevier in controversy over arms trade promotionA group of researchers, scientists, medical professionals and campaigners has called on Reed Elsevier to 'end its international promotion of the arms trade'. The request refers to Reed Elsevier's involvement in some of the world's largest arms fairs through its exhibition wing, Reed Exhibitions, and was made in a letter in the 10 September 2005 issue of the journal, The Lancet. The group claims that Reed Elsevier's involvement with the arms trade contradicts Reed Elsevier's own subscription to the UN Global Compact, which aims to prevent conflicts and human rights abuse. The group members also claim that 'there is a demonstrable lack of effective regulation' at the company's arms fairs. They maintain that, for example, at the 2003 Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition, although organisers asked exhibitors not to promote cluster munitions, journalists found cluster bombs openly on display.
In response, Reed Elsevier stated: 'The defence industry is central to the preservation of freedom and national security... All nations participating in DSEi are subject to the strictest rules and regulations about what they may exhibit and sell at the event. Should any exhibitor be found to be displaying or promoting prohibited items during DSEi, its stand would immediately be closed, its licence to exhibit would be rescinded and the breach would be reported to the appropriate prosecuting authority. It is our view that the defence industry is necessary for upholding national security, for the preservation of democratic values and supporting the ever-widening role played by the armed forces.'
Southern Queensland library selects FDIThe library of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia has selected Fretwell-Downing Informatics (FDI's) ZPORTAL system for federated searching of electronic resources and the OL2 OpenURL-enabled link resolver to dynamically build links between citation information and digital content.
Almost 80 per cent of USQ students are classified as 'off-campus' or external, presenting a challenge for the university library in terms of student access to resources, service and resource delivery, and student support. In March 2004, the university library implemented FDI's VDX software, locally called DocEx, to provide web-based document discovery, request and delivery as an option for off-campus students. The ZPORTAL/ OL2 solution will expand the range of services available through DocEx. The architecture is also capable of evolving to meet new functional requirements that the university library may have for federated searching and document delivery in the future.
Wiley acquires InfoPOEMWiley has acquired InfoPOEM, a provider of evidence-based medicine (EBM) content and web-based search tools. InfoPOEM delivers daily email summaries of medical evidence and provides a web-based software tool called InfoRetriever that enables access to EBM resources at the clinical point-of-care. 'The future of clinical practice is evidence-based medicine and InfoPOEM has strong brands in the high-growth market for point-of-care EBM solutions,' said Shawn Morton, Wiley's vice-president and publishing director for medicine. 'Through this acquisition Wiley will provide an integrated content tool offering that enhances the quality of medical care.' The acronym POEM stands for 'Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters'. POEMs are selected from over 100 leading peer-reviewed medical journals and chosen on the basis of unique and reproducible criteria developed by the company's founders.
InfoRetriever allows physicians to easily and quickly look up this and other evidence to support medical decision-making at the point-of-care via desktop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs), including devices using both the Palm and Pocket PC operating systems.
Oxford Journals LOCKSS up contentOxford Journals will begin preserving its content in Stanford University's LOCKSS Programme. LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is a community-based, open-source, persistent-access, digital preservation system. It enables publishers to guarantee long-term perpetual access to their content by allowing libraries to store, preserve, and provide back-up access to the content they have purchased. Oxford Journals is the first HighWire publisher to join the programme. 'Preserving access to scholarly research is a critical issue for Oxford Journals and its publishing partners,' commented Martin Richardson, managing director, Oxford Journals. 'With more and more content becoming available online, we are concerned to ensure that this electronic information is as permanent and safeguarded as possible, so that research remains available for the long term.' By participating in the programme, Oxford Journals grants permission to LOCKSS alliance member libraries to use the LOCKSS software to collect, preserve, and provide back-up access to its content. The company has already added 13 journals to LOCKSS and further titles are scheduled for addition over the coming year.
This announcement follows other preservation moves by the company, including its archiving agreement with the National Library of the Netherlands, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) in 2004. Oxford Journals is also undertaking a backfile digitisation programme, which is due for completion in early 2006.
Wolters Kluwer Health acquires Boucher CommunicationsWolters Kluwer Health has acquired the total assets of US-based Boucher Communications (BCI). BCI assets will become a part of Wolters Kluwer Health's Medical Research unit, a provider of print and electronic research information for medical and academic institutions, medical practitioners, and corporations.
BCI specialises in serving the optometry, opticianry, and ophthalmology markets, with publications such as Eyecare Business, Optometric Management, Contact Lens Spectrum and Ophthalmology Management, as well as Retinal Physician, a bi-monthly publication covering the latest scientific developments regarding advances in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, and posterior segment care.
New JISC service draws on UK visualisation expertiseResearchers who would benefit from visualising their data have a new support network to turn to for advice and guidance. The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced the funding of a Visualisation Support Network (VizNet), which pools the expertise of key visualisation centres in UK universities. This service will tap into existing expertise whilst supporting other universities to exploit the potential of visualisation in their research activities.
JISC has allocated funding for the Visualisation Support Network over the next three years to centres based at Loughborough University and King's College London. The Loughborough centre, representing a consortium of Loughborough University, the University of Cardiff, the University of Leeds, the University of Manchester, and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, will provide a focal point for sharing knowledge and best practice between application domains and provide training in advanced visualisation techniques. The centre at King's College London will provide a 3D Visualisation in the Arts Network, with the same broad aims as the Loughborough centre, but focusing on the needs of researchers in the arts and humanities. The centres will work closely together to ensure maximum synergy and to avoid duplication of effort.
ALPSP award winners are announcedThe European Respiratory Journal and Nature Publishing Group were among the winners of this year's Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) Awards and the ALPSP/Charlesworth Awards. The European Respiratory Journal (ERJ) won the ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Learned Journals 2005. Alan Singleton, chair of the panel of judges for 2005, said: 'The ERJ has recently been redesigned and demonstrates really good balance between design and content. The cover and content are clear and attractive; affiliations, citation data and complex statistical information are presented clearly, with the different elements defined through the use of features such as floating columns, colours and tints.' Nature Publishing Group's Connotea won the ALPSP Award for Publishing Innovation. Connotea is a free online reference management service for scientists. It allows users to store their web links online, enabling them to be accessed from any web browser, and to organise them using individually chosen tags. The site also allows users to share their links with others and discover links to new publications or other resources that are relevant to their interests.
Chris Matthews, former director of digital content and publishing at the Department of Trade and Industry, was presented with the ALPSP Award for Scholarly Publishing.
Springer adds two journals to its portfolioSpringer is to publish the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (with the Society for Mathematical Biology) and the Journal of Urban Health (with the New York Academy of Medicine). Both publishing partnerships will commence in January 2006. The two journals were previously published by Elsevier and Oxford University Press respectively. Springer plans to increase the number of editorial pages published in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, as well as to install a manuscript tracking system to speed publication of important articles in the field. 'The field of mathematical biology is one of the fastest-growing in science at the moment,' said Mark Chaplain, president of the Society for Mathematical Biology. 'The rate of submission of high-quality papers to the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology has doubled over the past three years. The Society for Mathematical Biology is pleased to be working with Springer at such an exciting time.'
Under Springer, the Journal of Urban Health will increase its publication frequency to bimonthly and expand editorial content. Both publications will be accessible via SpringerLink, Springer's electronic platform.
JISC plans to invest extra £80m in UK education and researchThe UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced plans to invest an extra £80 million in a range of activities to support UK eduction and research from 2006 to 2008. The funds, which have been awarded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, are expected to significantly enhance the UK's digital infrastructure and bring a wide range of benefits to the higher education and research sectors. The plans cover several areas. In the area of repositories, JISC money will be used to: provide institutions with policy advice and technical guidance on setting up digital repositories; support institutions in developing a critical mass of content; and provide national structures to support searching across federated repositories. Further investment was also announced for the digitisation of important scholarly resources; e-Learning; e-Research; the next-generation SuperJANET5 network; and the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) programme.
Sir Ron Cooke, chair of JISC, said: 'These activities represent an important milestone in the continued development of our national e-infrastructure. The wide range of activities covered in these plans will bring widespread benefits to the higher education and research communities, and JISC is delighted to have been entrusted with what are significant funds for further investment.'
Project links local library catalogues and search enginesInnovative Interfaces has completed a project to link Open WorldCat, a web-accessible union catalogue of over 61 million records, with over 700 Innovative public and academic library systems in North America. Users of search engine tools like Google and Yahoo! Search will be able to view local items from Innovative libraries with just a few clicks of their mouse. Open WorldCat makes records of library-owned materials in Online Computer Library Centre's (OCLC's) WorldCat database available to web users on popular internet search, bibliographic, and book-selling sites. Innovative libraries, which collectively contain tens of millions of items in North America, will provide web users with holdings information for the citations they find in WorldCat. When a search engine produces results that match a searcher's keyword or title, it also presents a link to the Open WorldCat 'Find in a Library' interface. There they can locate the item they want at a local or regional library.
'The OCLC Open WorldCat programme directs millions of web searchers each month to their local libraries to find the information they're seeking,' said Jay Jordan, OCLC president and CEO. 'OCLC's partnership with Innovative Interfaces will help guide these web searchers a step further - to the record of the item they want in their local library. This makes records of items in local libraries just a few clicks away from a search on the open web.'
National Library of Wales chooses VTLS productsThe National Library of Wales has signed a contract with VTLS of the USA that will bring together records for around three million of the library's books and journals and about 55,000 archive and manuscript records, as well as putting 60,000 records of the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales onto one system. VTLS will supply its VIRTUA interlibrary system, its VITAL institutional repository tool, its VERIFY electronic rights management product, and AquaBrowser, which is its graphic search tool. The library's purchase of VIRTUA included cataloging, circulation, acquisitions, serials, iPortal, InfoStation, Ad Hoc Reporting and FRBR. The VERIFY system was purchased with a 10-user licence.
The new information management system, which is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, will replace several current individual computer systems and will allow searching of all the library's collections through one interface. It will also allow more specific searching to take place. It is expected that the main elements of the new system will be in place by the spring of 2006 and further enhanced features will be added in 2006-07.
Cavendish registers titles with BookDataCavendish Publishing is to register its digital publications with the newly established DOI Registration Agency at BookData. All digitised titles from Cavendish will be identified using a digital object identifier (DOI), allowing the publisher to ensure that every reference made to a title on the internet is guaranteed to lead the reader to the desired location, even if the location of the title has changed since the reference was first made.
'DOIs will be the new ISBNs, anyone serious about online or web marketing, promotion or selling will have to consider DOIs for their content. With DOIs we will be able to sell more of our content chapter by chapter,' commented Sonny Leong, managing director of Cavendish Publishing.
Wiley acquires medical robotics journalJohn Wiley & Sons has completed the acquisition of The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery, from Robotic Publications. Wiley will continue to publish the quarterly journal, which launched in June 2004, in both print and online formats. The original editorial team of international experts in the field of robotics and related technologies for medical applications will continue to work with Wiley to ensure the quality and relevance of the journal's content.
UK Patent Office moves to the British LibraryThe UK Patent Office has moved into the British Library's flagship building at St Pancras, London. The move brings together the Patent Office's London search room and the resources of the British Library's Business & Intellectual Property Centre. The centre already provides free access to the world's largest collection of market research reports and a comprehensive range of online subscription databases. By incorporating the resources of the Patent Office, it says that it will offer researchers, SMEs and entrepreneurs a one-stop-shop for the latest information on patents, markets, marketing and business.
Emerald buys four journal titlesEmerald Group Publishing Limited has acquired four journal titles in the field of accounting and investment. Purchased from four different publishers, the journals are said to offer practical management advice and complement Emerald's existing seven-strong portfolio of accounting, auditing and legal titles. According to the company, the purchases are part of an ongoing strategy of targeted acquisition to ensure that Emerald remains the world's leading management journal publisher. The four titles are the Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, the Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting, the Journal of Investment Compliance and Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management.
RIN supports library borrowing schemeThe UK's new Research Information Network (RIN) has given its first funding grant to the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) to ensure the continuation of the SCONUL Research Extra Scheme. Launched in 2003, with an initial grant from the Research Support Libraries Programme, SCONUL Research Extra is the largest academic access scheme in the UK and Ireland, and allows researchers in an extended academic community to share resources by extending borrowing privileges to all participating libraries.
TSW forms two new alliancesCustomers of the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) will now be able purchase articles from TheScientificWorld (TSW) publications thanks to an agreement between the two organisations. OpenURL linking allows registered CISTI clients to order articles directly from TheScientificWorld's web site.
TSW has also signed an agreement with Swets Information Services to participate in SwetsWise Online Content, a service that provides single access to e-journals. Through this electronic service, libraries and information centres around the world are now able to access TSW publications, including the peer-reviewed journal, TheScientificWorldJOURNAL.
Techstreet and ISPE form online digital content partnershipThe International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) has selected Techstreet to distribute its publications in digital format through a new online web store. In addition to obtaining ISPE publications in digital format, ISPE members and customers can search, order and download related industry standards from Techstreet, which is part of Thomson and the provider of one of the world's largest online databases of technical information.
ISPE publications provide essential benchmark data for pharmaceutical engineering and manufacturing professionals worldwide. These include the GAMP Good Practice Guides, the Baseline Pharmaceutical Engineering Guide series, training tools and programs for clinical trial materials, and other GMP publications and products.
InforSense and MDL expand relationshipInforSense and Elsevier MDL have announced an expanded strategic relationship to integrate the new-generation MDL Isentris informatics platform with the InforSense KDE workflow-based integrative analytics platform. They will also explore further joint development initiatives. The companies believe that the collaboration will enable scientists in the life sciences to use information and knowledge more effectively and improve R&D productivity.
Nature Publishing Group amends its licence policyNature Publishing Group (NPG) is amending its site licence policy to provide customers with post-cancellation rights to content associated with their licensed publications, subject to payment of an annual access fee. At the same time, the period of content associated with site licences will be redefined. Currently, the content accessible via a site licence includes all content published during the site licence period, plus specified archive content; usually back to 1997, or the first issue of the journal on the nature.com platform. This will be maintained for licences starting in 2006.
The new licences will provide post-cancellation rights to the licensed content. This means that all renewing customers will be granted post-cancellation rights to the content that they can currently access via their site licence.
SAGE provides access to researches in developing countriesSAGE Publications will provide online access to more than 300 of its journals to research institutions in 66 of the world's less developed countries, either free of charge or for greatly subsidised rates, in 2006.
This agreement was arranged via the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI), which is an initiative of the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP). This programme supports capacity building in the research sector of developing countries by strengthening the production, access and dissemination of information and knowledge.
OA journals receive further financial boostThe third round of open-access funding from the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) will benefit three journals that have already received funding in previous years. JISC's Open Access programme awards seed money to help publishers to explore open-access models of publishing. The latest funding, which totals £84,500, will be awarded to the New Journal of Physics (published by the Institute of Physics Publishing); the journals of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr); and the Journal of Medical Genetics (BMJ Publishing Group).
Google Print for Libraries comes under criticismGoogle has continued its push into the research information sector with the development of Google Print for Libraries, a tool to make off-line inform-ation searchable. For this project, the company is indexing the book collections of several major research libraries. This content is searchable through Google Print for Libraries. This complements the books provided by publishers that can be searched through Google Print for Publishers. The company says it aims to make it easier to find relevant books, particularly books that readers might not be able to find any other way. It also claims that it aims to 'carefully respect authors' and publishers' copyrights'. Books that are in the public domain are shown in full in the company's search engine, whereas books that are still under copyright are shown only in the parts that are relevant to the user's search term. The user can then chose whether they want to find a physical copy of the book. The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), however, claims that Google Print for Libraries 'was apparently developed without any consultation with publishers'. The association is calling on Google to cease unlicensed digitisation of copyright materials with immediate effect. It wants Google to enter urgent discussions with representatives of the publishing industry in order to arrive at an appropriate licensing solution for Google Print for Libraries. Sally Morris, chief executive of ALPSP said: 'Google Print for Libraries entails making complete digital copies of publications, including works which are still in copyright. Irrespective of whether the results may be damaging or beneficial to the copyright owners, the fact remains that copying on such a scale is in clear contravention of copyright law and is not covered by any exception in any relevant legislation. Permitting pub-lishers to 'opt out' is not an acceptable substitute for proper licensing in the first place; while we appreciate that publisher-by-publisher negotiations could be impractical, by working through representative trade organ-isations, or even collective licensing agencies, it should be possible to negotiate a workable licensing framework.'
New ISBN standard publishedThe International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published the new edition of the ISBN standard. The new edition, which has been in preparation for over three years, is said to contain the most far-reaching changes to ISBN since it was first standardised in 1972. With effect from 1 January 2007, the ISBN will cease to be a 10-digit number. All ISBNs will become 13-digit numbers and for the first time be identical to their relevant barcode numbers. Commenting on the publication of the new standard Michael Healy, editorial director of Nielsen BookData and chairman of the ISO group that revised the ISBN, said: 'Many publishers, booksellers, distributors, and librarians in the UK are well advanced in their preparations for the new ISBN and for January 2007, but for those that are not I hope news of the publication will be a wake-up call. Preparations in other countries such as the US also seem to be going well, but the ISBN is used in more than 200 countries and there's still a great deal to do to implement all of this on time.'
www.iso.org
Survey considers threat to the UK's digital heritageThe Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has launched a 'state of the nation' survey to discover how much of the digital material held in the UK's public and private sectors is at risk of loss or degradation. The software services company Tessella will carry out the UK Digital Preservation Needs Assessment. The company will look at archive practice in government bodies, archives, museums, libraries, education, scientific research organisations, pharmaceutical, environmental, nuclear, engineering, publishing and financial institutions. 'We have cared for our physical collections for generations but we need to ensure that our digital material remains as relevant and as accessible for the researcher of the future,' said Lynne Brindley, chair of the DPC and chief executive of the British Library. 'This survey is vitally important to help us identify not only what is being created in digital format, and how it is being preserved, but also what items are potentially vulnerable or at risk. It will ultimately allow us to develop a national strategy.'
Effective libraries are 'vital to making poverty history'Effective library and information services are vital in every country if the Make Poverty History campaign is to succeed, according to delegates at the Umbrella conference held in the UK in July. Delegates unanimously backed a resolution declaring their support for the campaign and calling on the UK government to recognise and promote the essential role that library and information services would play. 'Managing a country's knowledge is no different from managing its other assets such as agriculture or transport,' commented Debby Shorley, president of Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). 'It needs properly-qualified, professional and paraprofessional specialists, and expert technical support, if it is to succeed.' Sending out a strong message both to the recent G8 Summit and to the forthcoming World Summit on the Information Society, conference participants made clear that the developed world would be failing poor countries unless it took seriously their need to develop their own strong knowledge economies. 'Investment in telecommunications is not enough on its own, and the World Wide Web provides only a fraction of the detailed and complex scientific, technological and economic data that countries will need if they are to pull themselves out of poverty,' Shorley continued. 'If governments are serious about empowering countries to eradicate poverty, they must recognise the need for library and information services that are as effective as those we in the developed world take for granted.'
Publishers get high-speed link to ChinaAtypon Systems has now established high-speed connectivity for publisher customers who license content to institutions in China. Through an agreement with CERNET, the China Education and Research Network, Atypon can now provide publishers with a broadband avenue directly into the academic community in China. This will enable publishers using Atypon's Literatum e-publishing solution to reliably distribute their online journals, books, and other content to libraries within China.
AIP to distribute ECS journalsThe American Institute of Physics (AIP) and The Electrochemical Society (ECS) have announced an agreement for AIP's Circulation & Fulfillment Division to provide fulfilment and customer service for the print editions of three ECS publications: Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters (ESL); Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES); and the ECS members magazine, Interface. AIP will track and maintain ECS subscribers; issue renewal invoices and process payments; distribute and fulfil print and online subscriptions; provide customised consortia processing; and provide reporting, statistics and marketing tracking.
Fayetteville wins Library of the Year awardThe Fayetteville Public Library in the US has won the 2005 Thomson Gale/Library Journal Library of the Year award. Library usage has rocketed in the past seven years, with library visits tripling and checkouts increasing by more than 2.5 times. Among the library's success stories is a programme where more than 160 regular volunteers contributed more than 14,500 hours in 2004. The volunteers delivered books to the homebound, converted 190,000 items to RFID, shelved and covered books, put on programmes, and staffed the computer laboratory. This donated time equates to seven additional full-time employees.
Wiley to digitise its journals contentWiley has launched a programme to digitise back issues of all its journal holdings, dating back to the 1800s, on Wiley InterScience, its online publishing platform. The project will continue through 2005 and 2006, and is scheduled for completion in 2007, in conjunction with Wiley's 200th anniversary. The completed backfile collection will span two centuries of scientific research and comprise more than 7.5 million pages. This is expected to be one of the largest archives of its kind issued by a single publisher.
CABI will publish Animal Science on behalf of BSASFrom 2006, CABI Publishing will publish Animal Science on behalf of the British Society of Animal Science (BSAS). Animal Science is the official journal of the society and one of the leading journals in the field of animal science, publishing both fundamental and applied research. The journal publishes original research at molecular, cellular, organ and system levels as well, as research involving whole animals, production systems and mathematical modelling.
Ovid wins IBSS contractOvid Technologies has won the contract to be the exclusive provider of the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) to the UK higher education and further education community. The UK user community will continue to benefit from access to IBSS free of charge, as a result of funding by the country's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Recent pricing studies illustrate the value of society publishingTwo studies have confirmed that IEEE journals, magazines and periodicals are less than half the price of competitive publications. The annual Periodical Price Survey averaged the prices of 4,893 titles documented in three Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) databases. Based solely on price, the survey reveals that the average cost of an engineering journal in 2005 is $1,683, and the average cost of a maths and computer science journal is $1,262. Using the same calculation method, the average price of an individual IEEE journal is just $549. In addition, the 2005 edition of the annual IEEE Journal Pricing Study finds that based on a statistically average 500-page journal, commercial scientific publishers charge an average of $896 per journal, compared to an average price of $387 for IEEE journals. 'According to this study, IEEE publications are 57 per cent less expensive than those of commercial publishers,' reports William O'Connor, IEEE director of marketing operations, whose office conducts the annual IEEE study. 'In addition to total journal price, we also looked at the average price per page,' he added. 'IEEE journals in this study averaged $0.68 per page, while commercially published journals averaged $1.59 per page.' The IEEE study also found that the average 2005 journal price from other non-profit publishers is $460, and the average price for all commercial and nonprofit scientific journals combined is $695. The Library Journal Periodical Price Survey singled out commercial publisher Elsevier, which has the highest overall median price in each of six subject fields. According to Library Journal, the most expensive journals in 2005 are from Elsevier Science, at an average cost of $1,070.
Oxford Journals launches open-access initiativeOxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, has announced its latest open-access project, Oxford Open. It will offer an optional author-pays model to authors of accepted papers in a range of Oxford Journals titles. Oxford Journals has also amended its post-prints policy to be compliant with the latest National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy. Oxford Open will give published authors in participating Oxford Journals titles the option to pay for research articles to be freely available online immediately on publication. The open-access charge for each article will be £1,500, or $2,800, with authors being given the option to pay this amount once their manuscript has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication. Discounted author charges of £800, or $1,500, will be available to authors from institutions that maintain a current online subscription. In addition, and with immediate effect, authors who publish with Oxford Journals are entitled to upload their accepted manuscript ('post-print') to institutional and centrally organised repositories (including PubMed Central). However they must stipulate that public availability be delayed until 12 months after first online publication in the journal unless the paper is being published within Oxford Open, in which case the post-print may be deposited and made freely available immediately the article is accepted for publication. 'Oxford Open is a logical extension to our current open-access experiments, and will allow us to collect valuable first-hand data on the demand for open access by authors across a broad range of subjects,' said Martin Richardson, managing director of Oxford Journals. 'It also offers research funders a choice as to how quickly they wish the research results they fund to be made freely available online, without undermining the current business models that allow high-quality peer-reviewed journals, still highly-regarded by researchers as the preferred quality 'kite-mark' for their work, to continue to be viable in the long term.'
Open Access: CorrectionThe article 'Open Access: The Swedish Hub' in the May/June 2005 issue of Research Information contained an error which we are happy to rectify. It was not Lotte Jørgensen who discussed the idea of a directory of open-access journals while at the first Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication in October 2002, but instead Lars Björnshauge, Lund University's director of libraries. The discussion there came about because he realised that Lund University Library was well placed to take up the challenge of creating such a directory; the idea itself was originally conceived by Open Society Institute board member Istvan Rev. The DOAJ was launched in May 2003 but Lotte Jørgensen did not become involved with the project until January 2004. The online version of this article has been updated to reflect a more accurate description of events. We apologise to those involved for this misrepresentation and we thank Lotte Jørgensen for kindly informing us of the error.
Taylor & Francis buys IOPP's book businessTaylor & Francis Group has bought the books publishing programme of the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), the publishing arm of the UK's Institute of Physics (IOP). Taylor & Francis has assumed all editorial, sales, marketing, customer service, and warehousing responsibilities for the IOPP's list of almost 600 titles. Taylor & Francis is also now handling all IOPP order processing. The books will move into the Taylor & Francis UK and US warehouses shortly. Returns will be handled by IOPP until 31 October. Taylor & Francis plans to recruit a new editor, to be based in its London office, who will assume responsibility for existing authors and further development of the publication list. While books currently in print and under contract will continue to be published under the IOP imprint, all new titles will carry the Taylor & Francis imprint. Chief executive of the IOP, Dr Robert Kirby-Harris, said, 'The Institute is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and education in pure and applied physics. Taylor & Francis has a distinguished tradition of publishing excellence in physics that dates back to its founding in 1798; we believe that they will take forward and develop this extensive list of titles for the benefit of the physics community.'
IFLA elects new president and boardThe International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has elected a new governing board and president. Claudia Lux, director general of the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek, Berlin, Germany won the IFLA presidential election with a large majority. She will succeed Alex Byrne as president in August 2007 for a two-year term. Lux said: 'Libraries worldwide work to support education and research, to preserve our cultural heritage and to offer equal access to information. Libraries need more financial support for these tasks, but at the same time they need to strengthen their position in society and to cooperate on a world-wide scheme. I am dedicated to work for this goal.' Bob McKee, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) has been elected to the Governing Board of the IFLA. Other governing board members are: Barbara J. Ford (US); Shawky Salem (Egypt) (2nd term); Zhang Xiaolin (China); Gunnar Sahlin (Sweden); Réjean Savard (Canada); Sang-Wan Han (Republic of Korea); Adolfo Rodríguez Gallardo (Mexico); Vinyet Panyella (Spain) (2nd term); and Tiiu Valm (Estonia) (2nd term).
US loses dominant share of world science publicationsOver the last two decades, the US has seen its share of world output of scientific papers steadily decrease, while the collective shares of nations in the European Union (EU) and the Asia Pacific region have increased. This observation comes from a recent study published in Science Watch, the bimonthly newsletter of Thomson Scientific. The study was conducted using citation data from the more than 8,700 high-impact journals archived in the National Science Indicators database. In the mid-1990s, the US's declining share of world science output was intersected by that of the ascending European Union. Today, the EU exceeds the US's share by almost 5 per cent. The Asia Pacific region enjoys the most dramatic increase in share percentage, up by approximately 12 per cent. If current trends continue, the Asia Pacific region will be likely to outstrip the US by 2011. Although the US's share of world science has lessened, the number of articles it publishes is still increasing. In fact, the US published nearly 50 per cent more papers in 2004 than it did in 1981, the first year of available data, while the world total of papers increased by 56 per cent.
British Library and JISC agree to work more closely togetherThe British Library's and JISC (the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee) have signed a memorandum of understanding committing both partners to what they describe as a wide range of innovative development projects. The agreement builds on the activities currently being developed and implemented by the British Library and JISC. In addition to the digitisation of newspapers and sound recordings, the agreement formalises existing partnership arrangements and currently covers some 16 different projects and services. Examples include: an e-theses pilot service to investigate mass digitisation of current holdings of theses in the British Library and UK universities; collaborative work in the area of digital preservation and digital repositories; and the provision and development of a range of national resource discovery tools, such as SUNCAT, COPAC and Zetoc.
Science and medical journals join Blackwell's open-access serviceBlackwell Publishing has announced the names of 30 journals that will participate in its Online Open service. Online Open is a new service that offers authors the opportunity to make their articles freely available to all internet users upon payment of a publication fee. The new Online Open service will be on trial until the end of 2006. During this period, authors of accepted articles in these journals will have the option to pay a fee of US$2,500 or £1,250 (plus VAT where applicable) to make their articles freely accessible via the online journals platform Blackwell Synergy. Online Open articles will be published to the same standards as subscription-based articles, including having the full peer-review process. The British Pharmacological Society is one of the society publishers involved. Its chairman, Jeff Aronson, explained: 'At the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology we recognise that there are different views about the potential merits and demerits of different models of open-access publishing. We have therefore decided to give our authors a choice between two different publishing models, in the hope that by catering for different needs we shall improve the dissemination of scientific results in our discipline. We look forward to seeing the results of this experiment, which we believe will be influential in guiding future publishing practices.'Back to top Chemical databases are always at handChemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has demonstrated the delivery of chemical information - including structures - via live interaction, to more than 20 different handheld electronic devices including the BlackBerry from Research in Motion. The demonstration, which took place at the CAS annual conference in Vienna, allowed participants to retrieve hundreds of literature references, as well as molecular structure and related data for specific substances from the CAS CAplus and CAS Registry databases, in real time. 
'This capability opens up a new vista of convenient and personalised access to CAS data,' said Bob Massie, president of CAS. 'Information professionals and scientists can retrieve key scientific information from CAS' unparalleled databases at any time and anywhere.' The technology to bring chemical information, including structure diagrams, to the small-screen, handheld devices resulted from a CAS team effort led by Brian Bergner, CAS vice president of information technology. 'Our goal is to make CAS information available on the platforms and through the tools gaining the most rapid and widespread use,' said Bergner. 'We know the pace of scientific research demands instant access to the best research data, and this advancement will give researchers the ability to log in even when they are away from their desktop workstations.'
CAS says it will make this mobile route to scientific databases, called CAS Mobile, available through its STN and SciFinder services, 'in the near future'.
College library clicks on to text alertsThe library at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, UK is developing a text messaging initiative so that it can send messages to students' mobile phones to let them know that reserved items have become available. Edge Hill is working with Innovative Interfaces as a development partner for the project, named the 'Short Messaging Service (SMS) Initiative,' and has opted for Innovative's Millennium library management system to this end. 'This service is paramount for students, particularly as many are working alongside their studies,' said Sue Roberts, head of Edge Hill's Learning Services. 'With this in mind we were keen to become associated with Innovative, which has built a strong reputation on its reliable and flexible software.'
Managing Edge Hill's digital library was also a priority. Innovative's products MetaFind (for federated searching) and WebBridge (for smart linking) will allow the Learning Services department to take a step further towards providing less complicated access to digital resources, while the library's electronic journals team will make use of Innovative's Electronic Resource Management module.
CERN confirms commitment to open access to results
'This underlines CERN's commitment to sharing the excitement of fundamental research with as wide an audience as possible', said Guido Altarelli, chairman of CERN's Scientific Information Policy Board (SIPB). CERN has implicitly supported Open Access from its very inception, exemplified by Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web. The latest endorsement follows earlier steps taken by CERN in the direction of Open Access throughout the past 18 months. In November 2003 it published the document An Electronic Publishing Policy for CERN, and it signed the Berlin Declaration in May 2004. 'Authors must continue to have the freedom to publish where they want,' said Altarelli, 'and currently only rather few journals have adopted Open Access with acceptable business models.'
The position of CERN as a leading international research laboratory and its advocacy of Open Access, says the SIPB, could cause this situation to change quickly.
New CILIP president will ring the changes
Debby Shorley, University Librarian at the University of Sussex, said: 'I am truly delighted to be taking up this role and look forward to a challenging and rewarding year. 'I see this as an immensely important time for CILIP. As a profession we must learn to look forward... rather than continually rake over the past. We have to redefine ourselves and be prepared to change the way we work if we are to successfully meet the needs of today's users.' Shorley is currently concerned about insufficient funding for libraries in higher education and wants to see CILIP develop much closer working relationships with bodies such as the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) and the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL). 'The way to maximise our impact is to work in partnership both as individuals and at an institutional level,' she said. Shortly after the investiture of its new president, CILIP announced its strategic plan for the year, which outlines new priorities in ethics, equal opportunities and information literacy. It also emphasises improved services for members and more powerful advocacy on the behalf of the profession. In the strategy document, CILIP pledges to introduce new arrangements for qualifications and for accreditation of courses, to offer more scope for networking and knowledge sharing and to make better use of technology. In the meantime, CILIP Consultancy Services has re-branded itself as CCS, a move said to reflect a 'new range of benefits offered by CCS to its clients' which take into account changes to the regulatory and legislative environment and the rapid development of new electronic information products and services.
Members can see the full text of the strategic plan at www.cilip.org.uk/aboutcilip/annualreport.
Dutch libraries allow remote digital searchingPublic libraries across The Netherlands have introduced a new approach that will enable the Dutch public to search and request books, recorded music and sheet music from national, provincial and regional catalogues, should their request be unavailable at their lo | ||
The new president of the UK's Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) has called on the profession to redefine itself and to be prepared to change.