• ScholarlyStats and Thomson Scientific announce successful SUSHI test
• Search engines have bigger effect on usage than open access
• Scirus partners with The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
• Malaysian librarian scoops international award
• Dialog honours North American information professionals
• Cambridge University Press acquires CABI Journals
• SAGE acquires Hodder Arnold’s journals
• Blackwell and Le Jacq announce partnership
• Industry bodies clarify definition of data
• STM publishers added to digital licensing programme
• Portland Customer Services takes on new fulfilment duties
• Study reveals importance of online journals
• Research Councils UK updates open-access position
• NEWS IN BRIEF

LATEST ISSUE INDEX

MPS Technologies and Thomson Scientific have successfully completed the transfer of data between their two systems, using the SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) protocol. This joint initiative came in response to the growing demand for more in-depth usage analysis, as well as the continuing need to ease the time-consuming process of managing vendor usage statistics.

The recent test successfully provided the University of Melbourne with usage data for 21 vendors, automatically transferred by MPS Technologies into Thomson Scientific’s Journal Use Reports system using the XML SUSHI protocol. SUSHI allows completely automated request and delivery of usage reports, saving time and resources for the library.

The University of Melbourne library already uses ScholarlyStats for its monthly collection of journal and database usage reports, and has been working with Thomson Scientific to develop the new Journal Use Reports. Shirley Sullivan, electronic information coordinator, said 'Analysing and understanding usage statistics is key to decision-making within our library. With the integration of these two systems we have the benefits of the ScholarlyStats dashboard reports, and the integration of the valuable Impact Factor and publication information from Journal Use Reports. This will help us make the decisions that count.’
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Growth in online usage of Oxford Journal’s Nucleic Acids Research, a large, well-established journal that went fully open-access in January 2005, is more linked to search engines than to the change in publishing model. David Nicholas and co-workers at University College London’s CIBER used deep-log analysis to study the traffic patterns of this journal and found that the big growth of traffic came before the journal became open-access – but after the publisher started to allow search engines and robots to access the site in June 2003. They also found that open-access publishing of this journal has had the biggest impact on access from Eastern European countries.

However, the picture is not necessarily the same on other journals. Research at the University of Loughborough’s LISU found that the effects of open-access publishing vary dramatically from journal to journal. A fairly consistent theme between journals, however, according to LISU’s Claire Creaser, was that having some open-access papers also drove up traffic for non-open-access content in the same journal. It also changed user-behaviour for abstract and full-text usage.

The initial results of these studies were presented at a one-day conference held in London in June.

'Until recently there has been a lack of data to support whether an open-access model would result in cost-effective dissemination of research,’ commented Martin Richardson, managing director, Oxford Journals. 'We hope that, by making the results of our experiments public, we can help to foster a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of open access and subscription-based business models.’ There is also an invitation for other publishers to contribute their open-access journal data to the same scrutiny.
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Scirus, Elsevier’s free science-specific search engine, is partnering with The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to index its repository, the HKUST Institutional Repository. The addition of the new content is said to be reflective of Scirus’ mission to remain the most comprehensive source of science-focused content on the web. Scirus is also helping to power the search capability on the HKUST repository site, which contains more than 2,300 records including theses, preprints, technical reports, working and conference papers, journal articles and presentations.

'Having recognised the need for preservation and dissemination of our scholarly information, HKUST was one of the first institutions in the world to establish an openly-accessible repository to support the needs of our students and faculty as well as researchers around the globe,’ said KT Lam, head of library systems, HKUST Library. 'Using Scirus’s search solution, we hope to increase the accessibility of our content for the HKUST community and remote users.’
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Khan QuayKin has become the first recipient of a new international award to recognise excellent work in libraries and information services outside the UK. The award was presented by the International Library and Information Group of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

QuayKin is head of information services, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. Her proposer, Bob Oldroyd, former librarian of Nottingham University, UK explained: 'Khan was chosen to honour her achievements and leadership in setting up the library and information service for the University of Nottingham when it opened its first overseas campus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2000.’

'Appointed as chief librarian in June 2000, Khan embarked single-handed on the challenging task of planning and organising the library in time for the opening of the campus in September that year. The library was open and fully operational on time.’
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Dialog has announced the four North American winners of its 2006 Quantum2 InfoStars Awards, which are given annually to information professionals whose creativity and innovation are inspirational to others.

Thomas J Froehlich, of Kent State University, was recognised for his vision of an interdisciplinary programme encompassing information architecture, information use, and knowledge management, and his creation of a graduate degree based on this vision. Karen O Lehman and Ginger R DeMille of SRC Aerospace Corporation for the US Patent and Trademark Office were also both honoured in these awards. The fourth award recipient was Kelley Martin, of intellectual property law firm Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox. She was recognised for her leadership in managing the information needs of her organisation and empowering the use of electronic resources.
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Cambridge University Press (CUP) has acquired the CABI primary journals list, consisting of 15 titles that are either owned or published by CABI on behalf of various learned societies. The CABI list complements Cambridge University Press’s existing journals portfolio of over 200 academic and professional journals and significantly builds its collection in the life sciences.

'As well as exceeding the business and commercial expectations laid down by CABI, Cambridge University Press was also chosen because it shares CABI’s not-for-profit status and scholarship-friendly principles,’ said Andrea Powell, executive director of publishing at CABI. 'We felt that CUP offered an attractive alternative for our partner societies, and we were also confident that the whole list, including titles owned and developed by CABI for nearly 100 years, would be in good hands.’
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SAGE Publications has bought Hodder Arnold’s journals list, incorporating 33 titles. The Arnold list complements SAGE’s existing portfolio of more than 400 academic and professional journals, and enhances its offering in the medical market. SAGE will continue to publish all journals, with the existing editors, with immediate effect.

'We are delighted to have acquired such a robust list of journals from Hodder Arnold’, said Blaise R Simqu, president and CEO of the SAGE Publications group of companies. 'The acquisition enables us to grow our already significant content in social sciences but crucially, contributes to our plans to build our portfolio of titles in STM journal publishing, and medical journals in particular.’

'Our ambitions to develop a global STM publishing programme are already well under way,’ added Stephen Barr, managing director of SAGE Publications in London. 'We have 63 STM titles, a small number in engineering and materials science and the rest in medical and life sciences. We have a talented STM team, both in California and London, with plans to grow the team and the program quickly.’

Hodder Education’s strategy, meanwhile, is to build on its strengths in book publishing in the knowledge that academic journals publishing has become a specialised activity for larger journals publishers such as SAGE. 'We are pleased that we have managed to find an excellent home for this important list of journals that we have nurtured over many years,’ said Philip Walters, managing director of Hodder Education.
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Blackwell Publishing and Le Jacq have announced an exclusive long-term partnership. The aim is to develop new medical educational products and enhance the current Le Jacq list of peer-reviewed journals, clinical trial review books, Continuing Medical Education projects, and web-based initiatives.

The Connecticut-based medical publishing house will become a significant component in Blackwell's independent medical educational portfolio.

'No medical publisher other than Blackwell Publishing could enhance our success and ability to develop innovative clinical outreach products and solutions for the medical community in conjunction with professional medical societies’ mission to educate the clinician,’ stated T Anthony Howell, president of Le Jacq. 'We look forward to our long-term collaboration that will add value to both the Blackwell medical publishing portfolio and in our offerings to our collective clients, authors, physicians and patients alike.’ Howell will continue to serve as president of Le Jacq.
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The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and The International Association of Scientific, Technical, & Medical Publishers (STM) have clarified the views of scholarly and scientific publishers concerning access to research data, including that submitted with research papers.

Scholarly publishers have been concerned for years over confusion between data, databases and journal articles in the public policy debate over databases. At times publishers have been accused of trying to obtain intellectual property rights in raw data, and otherwise placing obstacles in the path of access to research data.

The associations recommend that raw research data should in general be made freely available. When data sets are submitted along with a paper for consideration in a scholarly journal, the publisher should not claim intellectual property rights in those data sets, and best practice would be to encourage or even require that the underlying research data be publicly posted for free access.

'Publishers are not in the business of locking up facts. However, the processed outputs, such as databases and journal articles, have additional costs which need to be recovered,’ explained Sally Morris, chief executive of ALPSP.
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Several leading publishers of scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals are now included in Copyright Clearance Center’s (CCC’s) list of important publications licensed for digital uses inside organisations. The publishers are: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Medical Association, British Medical Journal (BMJ) Publishing Group, and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), published by the Massachusetts Medical Society.

'BMJ has followed CCC’s innovations with interest and we signed their digital repertory agreements in recognition of the shift to digital content by our users. We are confident this will be a simple and easy way to enable and promote lawful digital use of our valuable content within corporations,’ commented Alex Williamson, publishing director, BMJ and BMJ Journals. 'We are delighted to add these publishers to our digital repertory,’ said Bob Weiner, CCC senior vice-president, licensing.
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Portland Customer Services will provide journal subscription fulfilment on behalf of Woodhead Publishing. The fulfilment agreement will take effect with the renewal of journal subscriptions for 2007. Woodhead Publishing currently publishes six journals in the areas of food science, technology & nutrition, materials engineering, welding and metallurgy, textile technology, environmental management and finance, commodities and investment.

The company will also handle journal subscription fulfilment on behalf of The Royal Society, with effect with the renewal of journal subscriptions for 2007. The Royal Society publishes seven journals in the life and physical sciences. This UK society previously handled journal fulfilment in-house.

In addition, Portland has signed an agreement to handle journal subscription fulfilment and online journal hosting on behalf of Earthscan, also from next year’s subscriptions. Earthscan publishes six journals in the field of sustainable development.
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Around 90 per cent of journals are now online, compared with 75 per cent in 2003, but only about a fifth of publishers are experimenting with open-access journals. These are some of the results of a new ALPSP study, carried out by John Cox of John Cox Associates and Laura Cox of Frontline Global Marketing Services.

Other developments since ALPSP’s last study of this industry in 2003 include an increase in the availability of back issues online to 91 per cent in 2005, with many publishers having digitised their publications back to the first issue. Online article submission and peer review processes have also been widely adopted in the last five years.

The study looked at the policies and practices of 400 academic journal publishers, both not-for-profit and commercial, drawn from the memberships of ALPSP and other major publishing associations.
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Research Councils UK (RCUK) has reaffirmed its belief in the value of repositories as a means of improving access to the results of publicly-funded research. It also encourages UK researchers to deposit their outputs in e-print repositories at the earliest opportunity.

The RCUK’s statement leaves the choice of whether to pay any publishing fees up to authors, and makes no judgement as to the most appropriate publishing model. However, it suggests that such funds could be part of an institution’s indirect costs under the full economic costing regime.

According the RCUK statement, 'ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.’ In addition, 'the outputs from current and future research must be preserved and remain accessible for future generations.’

The RCUK’s position has been welcomed by open-access publisher BioMed Central. 'After months of discussion and debate, it is exciting to see the research councils taking such positive action to enhance access to the results of the research that they fund. The UK is now leading the world by demonstrating that open access to research is both a desirable and an achievable goal,’ commented BioMed Central's publisher, Matthew Cockerill.

'This statement represents an important step in ensuring that the outputs of UK research are made more visible worldwide, and in enhancing still further the international standing of UK research,’ added Malcolm Read, executive secretary of JISC.
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OCLC joins LOCKSS Alliance
OCLC has joined more than 90 libraries from around the world that participate in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) Alliance, a library membership consortium and active-user community that provides open-source archiving software to build digital collections. OCLC will work with LOCKSS to explore the expansion of the LOCKSS technology to operate with different types of digital content.

Major journals archive made available free to UK universities
Oxford Journals’ archive, containing 300,000 journal articles and encompassing over 135 years of human knowledge, is being made available free of charge to the UK academic community in perpetuity, thanks to a deal with the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The archive, if purchased individually, would cost in the region of £80,000 per institution.

Cadmus expands Indian operations
KnowledgeWorks Global (KGL), a wholly-owned Cadmus Communication subsidiary based in India, claims to have added significant capacity to its operations as a result of continued strong growth in volume. KGL’s staffing has grown from approximately 80 employees in 2003 to over 550 full-time employees today. KGL provides a full range of content processing, content management and related services to scholarly and educational publishers, and other organisations.

Swets sells e-books for Springer
Subscription agent Swets has become a global sales partner for the Springer eBooks Collection. This collection allows researchers and students access to more than 10,000 fully searchable e-books, with plans to add a further 3,000 e-books every year.
'As an intermediary, our main role is to make the process of managing our customers’ holdings as streamlined and as transparent as possible. As the demand for books and publications in an electronic format has grown dramatically, this initiative with Springer will make a substantial library of information and content available to our customers in the most efficient and economical manner possible,’ said Arie Jongejan, CEO of Swets.

Scopus helps Australian universities assess research
University of South Australia, University of Tasmania and University of Western Sydney have chosen Scopus to support their literature research workflows. One of the factors in their decisions was the Research Quality Framework, an Australian government initiative to assess the quality and impact of publicly funded research and its contribution to scientific innovations. This framework recommends the use of quantitative indicators such as bibliometrics to support the assessment of research quality. The Scopus Author Identifier and Citation Tracker are expected to help in providing this data.

IOPP chooses PublisherStats for COUNTER
Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP) has chosen PublisherStats to provide its web analytics and COUNTER reporting services. PublisherStats is a usage statistics service designed to meet the needs of the publishing industry, and is provided by MPS Technologies in partnership with Coremetrics. PublisherStats’ client base also includes Elsevier, IEEE, Nature Publishing Group, Royal Society of Chemistry, SAGE Publications and William S. Hein.

Four more BioMed Central journals will be tracked
Thomson Scientific (ISI) has accepted Biology, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, Molecular Cancer and Nutrition and Metabolism for citation tracking and inclusion in Web of Science. Some 37 journals in BioMed Central's portfolio now have an official impact factor, or will receive one within three years. 

Librarian snaps up award
Alyson Dalby, librarian with the History of Medicine Library at the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Sydney, is the SLA Australia-New Zealand Chapter’s (SLA-ANZ) Information Professional of the Year for 2006.
'Alyson is very deserving of this honour, as she is committed to not only improving information services within her own library, but also greatly influencing the information profession overall’, said Sue Henczel, SLA-ANZ chapter past-president. Dalby will be presented with her award, which includes a cash prize of AUD$2,000, at the Information Online 2007 conference to be held early next year in Sydney.

RLG membership approves merger
Member institutions of Research Library Group (RLG) have approved the proposal to combine operations with OCLC. RLG’s programme initiatives are being continued as RLG-Programs, a membership-based organisation that operates as a new division of OCLC Programs and Research to support architecture, standards development and best practices. Staff from both organisations have been meeting since the proposal was announced in May, to plan for the integration of systems, products and services.

Annual Reviews and BioOne sign archiving deals with Portico
Annual Reviews has signed a journal archive agreement with Portico to preserve its collection of critical reviews. Annual Reviews will ensure that its collection of 32 yearly critical reviews is preserved for future scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students across the biological, physical, and social sciences.
BioOne, a not-for-profit aggregator and online disseminator of scholarly research in the biology, ecology, and environmental science fields, has also agreed to preserve its e-journal content in the Portico archive. Both publishers have agreed to make annual financial contributions to support Portico’s ongoing operations.

Publishers join IngentaConnect
Ingenta, a technology provider that connects the publishing and information industries, has announced that 11 more publishers will add their journals to IngentaConnect. This platform provides subscription and pay-per-view access to nearly 10,000 scholarly e-journals. The new publishers to join include The Haworth Press, the American Institute of Chemists, the Mathematical Association of America, the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, the Dental Protection Society, Engineering Integrity Society, the South African Statistical Association and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, amongst others.

Indiana University Press commits to Atypon to host INscribe
Atypon Systems and Indiana University Press (IUP) will partner to develop INscribe, the new IUP online journals publishing platform. Indiana University Press will be using Atypon Premium for this platform. It will launch INscribe in January 2007.

ScholarlyStats to aid US Consortia with usage statistics
Three US consortia will provide ScholarlyStats to their member libraries. Libraries within the Michigan Library Consortium (MLC), PALINET and the Carolina Consortium will now have access to the usage statistics collection and consolidation service from MPS. ScholarlyStats is said to deliver standardised and consolidated journal and database usage reports covering 35 major vendors.

VTLS expands with new distributors
VTLS has announced a new distributorship agreement with INEO media system (IMS) to represents VTLS in France. IMS is a subsidiary of Suez.
It specialises in multimedia products with special interest in libraries. The agreement will provide a nationwide introduction of Virtua and Vital. IMS will handle sales, training and support.
Archimed MEA is VTLS’ new distributor for four countries in North Africa: Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia. Archimed is an established vendor of portal solutions for libraries and has its headquarters in Tunis.
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