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productsIf you have a new product that you would like considered for this section please email your press release, along with a high-resolution photograph or screen shot, to Siân Harris at sian@europascience.com. FOCUS ON CHEMISTRY
NEW JOURNALS
Dialog enables structure searches in multiple databases |Apr 06|DialogLink 5 can be used to carry out chemical structure searching in multiple drug pipeline databases simultaneously. Dialog claims to be the only information-services provider to offer this ability, which it says minimises the risk of missing a critical piece of information and saves researchers time and money. Files that can be searched in this way include Beilstein Facts, Derwent Chemistry Resource, IMS Patent Focus, IMS R&D Focus, Index Chemicus, Pharmaprojects, Prous Science Drug Data Report, and Prous Science Drugs of the Future.
ChemSketch and Chmoogle integrate |Apr 06|Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD/Labs) has integrated its commercial and freeware ChemSketch application with eMolecules' Chmoogle web site. Chmoogle is an open-access chemistry search engine with the mission to discover, curate, and index all of the public chemical information in the world, and make it available to the public for free. The integration is said to give ChemSketch users direct access to Chmoogle's structure and substructure searches. 'Chmoogle makes the world's chemistry searchable by structure. Just draw a molecule using your favourite structure drawing tool and hit Go! We are very intrigued by the clever integration of structure drawing and searching in Chmoogle that ACD/Labs is providing and we are even more excited about the fact that it is free for chemists around the world,' said Dr Klaus Gubernator, eMolecule's chief executive officer.
Wiley's Asian chemistry journal |Apr 06|John Wiley & Sons has announced a partnership with four Asian chemical societies to launch a new publication. Chemistry - An Asian Journal will be published by Wiley-VCH, the company's Weinheim, Germany-based operation. The new journal is published on behalf of the Chinese Chemical Society, the Chemical Research Society of India, the Chemical Society of Japan, and the Korean Chemical Society. In addition, the new publishing venture is supported by the German Chemical Society (GDCh). It is a sister journal of Chemistry - A European Journal (published on behalf of the Editorial Union of European Chemical Societies) and Angewandte Chemie (published on behalf of the GDCh). The new journal will appear monthly in print and electronically through Wiley InterScience and publish full papers and reviews from all areas of chemistry.
New tool helps track materials |Apr 06|Elsevier MDL has introduced MDL Logistics. This new reagent procurement and inventory management application has been developed in collaboration with customers to meet the needs of research organisations. It is said to simplify the process of locating, purchasing and tracking essential chemical materials. It also offers regulatory capabilities such as managing, tracking, and reporting on controlled substances in an organisation. MDL Logistics provides access to the MDL Available Chemicals Directory database (a collection of chemical supplier catalogues) as well as to the in-house inventory. It integrates with leading commercial purchasing systems and laboratory hardware devices (barcode printers, scanners, balances, inventory robotics), and offers support for multiple workflows at different sites.
Mass spectral register updated |Apr 06|Wiley has launched the 8th edition of its Registry of Mass Spectral Data. The latest edition is said to contain nearly 400,000 mass spectra with over 183,000 chemical structures. Most spectra are accompanied by the structure and trivial name, molecular formula, molecular weight, nominal mass, and base peak. New features in the latest edition include chemical warfare precursors; combinatorial library compounds; high molecular diversity for fragmentation analysis; new high-resolution organics; structure and substructure search capability; and more spectra with retention indices.
WIT Press launches publications |Apr 06|The International Journal of Ecodynamics is the first of three journals that WIT Press will launch this year. It covers all aspects of ecosystems and sustainable development, ranging from physical sciences to economics and epistemology. The objective of the journal is to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary communication between scientists, engineers, economists, and other professionals working on ecological systems. In addition to this launch, the first issue of International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning will be available soon, to be followed by International Journal of Design and Nature.
Peer-review model changes |Apr 06|Biology Direct is a new online open-access journal from BioMed Central. It will operate a completely open peer-review system, where named peer reviewers' reports are published alongside each article. The journal also requires authors to approach Biology Direct editorial board members directly to review the manuscript. This novel review process is expected to give authors the opportunity to discuss points raised directly with the reviewers, and to revise their manuscript as much or as little as they wish, according to the suggestions or criticisms of the reviewers. Ultimately, reviewers can express reservations about the manuscript but publication can still go ahead unrevised (if the author wishes) unless there are ethical or scientific problems with the manuscript. The aim is to publish the most complete, informative, and interesting manuscripts possible but not to obstruct publication except in extreme cases. The journal launches with publications in the fields of systems biology, computational biology, and evolutionary biology, with an immunology section to follow soon. Biology Direct considers original research articles, hypotheses, and reviews.
Instrumentation inspires journal |Apr 06|Journal of Instrumentation (JINST) is a new multidisciplinary online-only journal created by the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) and the Institute of Physics (IOP). It is a sister publication to Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP), Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) and Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (JSTAT).
Humanities researchers get online reviews journals |Apr 06|Blackwell Publishing has launched a series of online reviews journals designed for researchers, students, and teaching faculty working in the humanities. History Compass, Literature Compass, and Philosophy Compass are available now and will be joined by a further six titles over the next two years. Each Compass journal publishes 100 peer-reviewed survey articles from across their entire discipline each year. The articles are described as succinct and accessible . They are said to provide overviews of current research in the field as well as fresh thinking on key issues.
New IEEE journals go online |Apr 06|The first issues of IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine and IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security have been published and are now available online through the IEEE Xplore digital library.
DataStarWeb gets new tools for knowledge sharing |Apr 06|Dialog has launched two new products for use with DataStarWeb. AlertsManager is designed for the information professional seeking a more effective way to govern the information flow of their organisation. It provides information managers with the ability to publish, track and manage access to alerts. Once the information manager has created an alert, end-users can be invited to subscribe to available alerts. ReportAid facilitates post-processing and distribution of search results and is said to reduce the time taken to refine search results and create publishable information dossiers for distribution to decision makers. The tool allows DataStarWeb searchers to: post documents from different searches and later assemble those documents in a single, comprehensive report; rearrange documents and fields and automatically create an index; add text to a front page, include images and define the report layout; and output the report in three versatile formats (PDF, RTF and XML).
Portal makes sense of terminology |Apr 06|A new tool should enhance the value of the terminological resources (glossaries, dictionaries, thesauri) developed by public research and higher education institutions and help to build up a common terminological reference base. The development of TermSciences was initiated by the CNRS Directorate for Scientific Information in France and has been conducted jointly by three laboratories in Nancy, INIST; LORIA; and ATILF. This terminology database should help users make better use of bibliographic databases and the web in general by allowing them to formulate their queries - often simple terms or expressions - in multiple ways, including as synonyms or translations. This will allow them to retrieve documents that are relevant even if the term actually sought does not appear in them. The navigation system will also enable users to exploit a network of hierarchical and associative relations to broaden or narrow down their initial query.
Free-text query service goes on trial |Apr 06|CrossRef is trialling a new free-text query service for its member publishers. In partnership with Inera, CrossRef has deployed a custom version of Inera's eXtyles refXpress that parses unstructured, free-text references into granular and valid XML and returns any matching digital object identifiers (DOIs) for those references. A simple cut-and-paste form accepts one or more references formatted in common bibliographic styles and returns the DOI for the article if one is found in CrossRef. CrossRef is inviting its members to comment on their experiences of using this pilot service (a link to a feedback form is provided from the FTQ site). The hope is that some smaller publishers will experience this interface as a viable alternative to CrossRef's batch query interface and that, as a result, more publishers will be able to implement reference linking using CrossRef.
New patent tool goes beyond IP professionals |Apr 06|PatentCafe has launched the newest generation of its patent research and intellectual property management solution, ICO Suite V.2. The new release is said to coincide with the most significant restructuring of PatentCafe's web properties since its founding in 1996. The company claims that the new ICO Suite V.2 delivers more patent research, analysis and IP management capability than ever before and is now tailored to both patent and non-patent professionals. It allows organisations to add on special function modules. These include ICO Patent Portfolio Manager, ICO Competitive Patent Alerts, patent team Blog collaboration, patent landscape charts, and statistical qualitative analysis patent reports.
Helping institutional repositories integrate with bookmarks |Apr 06|Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has released new software that enables institutional repositories running EPrints to integrate with the social bookmarking services Connotea and del.icio.us. The software allows content within institutional repositories to be bookmarked, tagged, and linked to related content. The work behind this development was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) as part of its PALS Metadata and Interoperability Projects 2 programme. Once installed in a repository, the software will enable users to bookmark documents in that repository using their Connotea or del.icio.us account, assigning their own tags without leaving the web page. They can also see what tags have already been assigned to the document they are viewing in the repository and click on links to related content, either within the same repository or elsewhere on the web.
Scopus's fresh look at citations |Apr 06|The Scopus Citation Tracker provides researchers and librarians with a user-friendly way to check and track citation data for the purposes of gaining intelligence about articles, authors, their own published work and research trends. The result of intensive development with librarians and researchers, the Scopus Citation Tracker offers at-a-glance intelligence about the influence of a set of articles, an author or group of authors over time. This helps users to spot trends. Users can control the specific articles and date ranges they want to evaluate and easily navigate through the cited and citing literature using a visual table of citations broken down by article and chronology.
Clinical data repository launched |Apr 06|Oracle has introduced a product that it claims will help life sciences organisations make decisions based on more accurate and timely information. Oracle Clinical Data Repository supports the task of integrating clinical data from multiple sources and provides a repository for the integration and reporting of clinical and non-clinical data that enables regulatory compliance. It does this by managing all aspects of the integration process - data access, transformation, persistence and distribution - in a compliant framework. The tool is designed to receive and present data using current and future data exchange standards. All data objects are said to be fully audited and version-controlled. This provides complete traceability from the data source, through the transformation process, and to the data and reports themselves.
New version of Unicorn |Apr 06|The newest version of the SirsiDynix's Unicorn library management system is available this spring. Unicorn GL3.1 includes updates to all modules and addresses critical issues such as ISBN 13 support and patron privacy. It is also said to provide libraries with better resource-sharing capabilities with the new Unicorn Collection Exchange module.
Dialog adds world patent index |Feb 06|The enhanced version of Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) is being added to the Dialog online service. Thomson Scientific's DWPI is a comprehensive database of value-added patent information. The enhanced DWPI database (Files 350, 351 and 352 on Dialog) will extend the content and functionality of the database. It is expected to improve the ability of searchers to find the patent records they need. The file is being re-designed to accommodate the requirements of the International Patent Classification (IPC), Version 8, which came into force on 1 January. As a result of the changes to the IPC classification, all DWPI records affected by the patent office reclassification will be updated on an ongoing basis and IPC fields will be added in the online file, allowing users to distinguish between original and re-classified IPC data. Another new feature will be the 750,000 documentation abstracts that are now available in a text-searchable format. The enhanced file is also said to include new family member sub-sections. These provide first-level data such as the original patent titles and abstracts, extra bibliographic data such as full names of inventors and associated addresses, patent assignee addresses and patent agent information.
Contact: www.dialog.com
Enhanced Derwent World Patents Index joins STN |Feb 06|The enhanced version of Derwent World Patents Index is also being made available on STN International (The Scientific & Technical Information Network). Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) the comprehensive database of value-added patent information, has been reloaded at FIZ Karlsruhe, which operates STN in Europe, in 'a considerably improved form'. This is said to comprise enhanced features to fully exploit the additional wealth of data now provided by Thomson Scientific.
Contact: www.fiz-karlsruhe.de
INCOM launches patent information alerts |Feb 06|Germany's INCOM IPS has launched a new patent information alert service. The service allows quick cross referencing of all patent publications that are held under key national patent offices (US, JP, DE, AU, GB, FR, etc.), the European Patent Office, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation, regarding specific patent citations. Subscribers are automatically notified via email when a document containing a patent number relating to their area of interest is published. The online option of PatCitation allows for timely, practical checks and enables the user to follow a selection of more than 45 million citation links. Each month, new publications released by these patent offices are checked for patent citations in a chosen subject area. An exhaustive report is then produced for the patent document under observation by exploring its entire backward, forward and collateral citation relations. Options for sorting and viewing the information allow for efficient, perspective-specific analyses. The service is also able to supply a bibliography of non-patent literature. All bibliographic data, the complete documents, as well as members of the family and their legal status are accessible online.
Contact: info.ips@INCOM.de
New resources help semiconductor researchers |Feb 06|Knovel has added the Electronic Materials Information Service (EMIS) Datareviews and the Electronic Materials and Semiconductors systems from Springer-Verlag's Landolt Bornstein to its Semiconductors & Electronics Subject Area. These resources should help researchers in the semiconductor industry meet increasing demands to deliver smaller boards and chips and faster process times. The EMIS Datareviews series, published by the Institute of Electronic Engineers (IEE), offers guidance on the most appropriate materials to use for particular applications, based on input from experts in the field. Landolt Bornstein, Group IV, Volume 5, presents phase equilibria and thermodynamic data of binary alloy systems.
Contact: sales@knovel.com
Inspec Archive back to 1898 is available via EBSCO |Feb 06|The new Inspec Archive - Science Abstracts 1898-1968 database is now available via EBSCOhost. The archive, created by IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers), provides access to the digitised version of the entire collection of Science Abstracts Journals, which was the precursor to the current Inspec database. This database provides coverage dating from 1898 to 1968 and contains more than 870,000 records, each retaining its original classifications. The archive's indexing is aligned to the current Inspec Thesaurus Terms and Inspec Classification Codes. This additional indexing is said to assist in creating a seamless search environment for users of both Inspec and the Inspec Archive. This database features longer abstracts which often include tables, graphs and figures from the original source document.
Contact: www.ebsco.com
Mechanical engineering launches planned |Feb 06|Professional Engineering Publishing, which is the publisher for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, is launching a new journal in May 2006. Proceedings of the IMechE Part O - Journal of Risk and Reliability will sit alongside its 16 existing peer-reviewed journals. In addition, the publisher's entire IMechE Proceedings Archive (1847-1996) will be available online for the very first time. This contains more than 200,000 pages of information including technical papers, obituaries, technical drawings and meeting reports and will be of great interest to engineers and historians alike.
Contact: marketing@pepublishing.com
Xplore digital library provides alerts by email and RSS |Feb 06|Researchers who use IEEE Xplore digital library may now receive notification of the posting of new IEEE journals in either email or RSS format. Users of this free service select which IEEE journal(s) they want to know about, then receive notification whenever a new issue is posted online, along with a link to the issue's table of contents in the IEEE Xplore digital library. In addition, all users of the IEEE Xplore digital library now have free access to non-indexed, ancillary content from IEEE publications. This includes content such as editorials and book reviews.
Contact: onlinesupport@ieee.org
Conversion technology helps migration to structured data |Feb 06|Content conversion company Exegenix has enabled its XML conversion technology to simplify the migration of unstructured material into structured XML data in IBM's next version of DB2, which is code-named 'Viper'. This is expected to help organisations in industry sectors such as insurance, financial services, and healthcare, to remove the barriers between structured and unstructured information. IBM's DB2 Viper adds a Native XML store to its DB2 repository to combine XML and relational systems. The majority of material exists in unstructured formats such as PDF, Word, and WordPerfect, and the applications that are used to create new material generate structures that are inadequate for today's XML content applications. Almost all methodologies that convert unstructured documents or content into XML rely on 'mapping' - the manual designation of combinations of formatting codes as specific XML constructs. But, according to Exegenix, these rules-based conversion maps can change from document to document, depending on the formatting discipline of each document's author. The company's alternative approach uses visual cues to uncover each document's structure automatically, in much the same way that humans do. Exegenix's technology interprets a document's logical structure based on the appearance and position of its components, with no dependency on consistently formatted input. This rules-free XML construction process, it claims, requires no mapping, no scripting, and no programming, yet produces the most consistently structured and highest-quality XML available.
Contact: mail@exegenix.com
Emerald launches librarian toolkit |Feb 06|Emerald Group Publishing has launched the 'Emerald Librarian Toolkit'. This series of free guides should enable librarians to better market electronic full text, reviews and abstracts to their faculty and student user base, in order to encourage optimum use of services. The toolkit comprises modules covering topics from training users to monitoring usage and promoting Emerald within the institution. Topics covered by the Librarian Toolkit include how to create links to full text, how to set up usage patterns and reporting, and how to view subscriptions and edit user profiles. Toolkit resources comprise a mix of reporting tools, online learning tools, printed 'how-to' leaflets and promotional items, such as posters. Materials are already available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan with Greek, Italian, French, Russian, Farsi and Turkish in production and Japanese and Mandarin to follow shortly.
Contact: information@emeraldinsight.com
Wiley buys tribology journals |Feb 06|Wiley has acquired a list of tribology journals from Leaf Coppin Publishing, a publisher of international reference books and journals in the field of tribology. The three journals acquired are Lubrication Science, The Journal of Synthetic Lubrication and TriboTest. Wiley plans to make the journals available via Wiley InterScience in 2006. The acquisition follows the purchase by Wiley of the book list of Professional Engineering Publishing (PEP), the publishing arm of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The PEP list includes more than 500 titles in areas such as automotive and aerospace engineering, fuel cells and nanotechnology.
Contact: cs-journals@wiley.co.uk
DynaMed users get PDA access |Feb 06|EBSCO Publishing now offers PDA access for DynaMed subscribers. PDA users can choose from a downloadable version of DynaMed, or access a live version of the database through available wireless connectivity. DynaMed provides clinically-organised summaries for more than 1,800 topics. It is updated daily. The point-of-care clinical reference tool was created by a physician for physicians and other health care professionals to replace most routine textbook and article searches. This resource is also used by medical students.
Contact: Info@DynamicMedical.com
EMBiology launched on Ovid platform |Feb 06|EMBiology, the new bibliographic database from Elsevier (producer of EMBASE), is available exclusively through Ovid. Intended for small to mid-sized academic institutions as well as all pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, EMBiology focuses on basic and applied biological literature not covered in EMBASE, but also includes biological science that is within the scope of EMBASE. The database contains more than four million bibliographic records dating from1980, covering international biological science literature.
Contact: www.ovid.com
Swets enhances user experience |Feb 06|Swets has released SwetsWise version 4.0. This release is said to include a new, modern look and feel to the SwetsWise user interface that is completely customisable. New functionality includes budget control reports and enhanced approval cycles. These options have been developed in order to aid customers with the planning and management of their budget spending.
Contact: info@nl.swets.com
Wiley provides MARC records for online books |Feb 06|MARC records are now available for all titles in Wiley InterScience OnlineBooks, the company's online book platform. MARC records are provided in MARC 21 format free of charge to Wiley InterScience customers for their online book holdings. MARC, or Machine-Readable Cataloging, is a data format that allows computers to exchange, use, and interpret bibliographic information. MARC records make it possible to catalogue online books more quickly and efficiently, and help facilitate access to those titles.
Contact: wissales@wiley.co.uk
Obesity journal is launched |Feb 06|Elsevier will publish a new journal, Obesity Research & Clinical Practice, in partnership with the Asia Oceania Association for the Study of Obesity (AOASO). This will be Elsevier's first journal on research and practices in obesity. The AOASO aims for this to be an international journal highlighting the global growing problem of obesity and specific regional problems.
Contact: www.elsevier.com
Dialog offers new pricing plan to academic institutions |Feb 06|Dialog is now offering its Dialog Choice pricing plan to academic institutions worldwide. The plan gives unlimited access to key research databases at fixed annual rates. With Dialog Choice, graduate schools, universities and other academic institutions can provide direct, desktop access to high-value databases of scientific, technical and medical research, as well as news, business intelligence and other current awareness content, aggregated by Dialog from leading information publishers. The plan currently includes 92 databases of research, intellectual property, business intelligence and news content.
Contact: www.dialog.com
Swets launches new tool for federated searching |Feb 06|SwetsWise Searcher is a new federated search solution from Swets Information Services. Built on Vivisimo's metasearch and clustering technology, the tool is said to facilitate faster and more effective federated searching by dynamically organising search results into meaningful categories for users.
Contact: info@nl.swets.com
Dialog offers alerting service for CSA databases |Feb 06|Dialog is now offering alerts subscriptions to CSA research databases for its customers in the corporate and government markets. Dialog is said to be the only content aggregator providing access to the CSA Technology Research Database. Alerts subscriptions to that database (File 23) are available immediately. Alerts subscriptions for more than 30 more databases of CSA scientific and technical research will be available in upcoming months as the databases are added to Dialog. The new alerts subscriptions will allow Dialog customers to receive email notifications when relevant new CSA research is added to Dialog's online service. In addition, information specialists in the Dialog Alerts Bureau will develop search strategies to match customers' individual research-monitoring needs.
Contact: www.dialog.com
Thesis repository adds flexible subscription options |Feb 06|INDEX TO THESES, which is said to be the only comprehensive repository of British and Irish theses, has announced a series of flexible new subscription options to complement its recent expansion of coverage. INDEX TO THESES, published by Expert Information, is currently available as a combined print/online edition; customers receive print editions seven to eight times per year alongside unlimited access to the publication's web service. From 2006 customers can dispense with the print or online editions as appropriate, subscribing to the print edition only, the online service only, or continue with the combined offering.
Contact: contact@theses.com
EBSCOhost expands image collections |Feb 06|EBSCO is adding more than 98,000 new images to its image collection, which is available as part of EBSCO's full-text databases. This collection will now feature a total of 188,323 images (photos, maps, and flags) from a variety of sources. The new image content includes 20,000 additional archival/historical images from Getty Images (with images added monthly), 71,000 new current events (sports, politics and news) images from United Press International (also with new images added each month), and 9,700 new images from the Motion Picture & Television Archive. This image content can be searched simultaneously with the full-text resources found in EBSCO databases. This ability is said to allow users to locate any applicable visual references that may complement the other textual information yielded by their search results.
Contact: www.ebsco.com
New journals and mobile service target clinicians |Feb 06|Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has expanded the Nature Clinical Practice series with four additional journals. The journals are published monthly, in print and online. The titles are: Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism; Nature Clinical Practice Rheumatology; Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology; and Nature Clinical Practice Neurology. Nature Clinical Practice has also recently launched a mobile service. Clinicians can access the service using any web-enabled mobile phone, smartphone or Blackberry device, as well as any Palm OS or Pocket PC-powered PDA. A range of formats, from text-only to mobile PDF, are available.
Contact: www.nature.com
Registry system helps digital preservation |Feb 06|The UK's National Archives at Kew (TNA) has announced a new technical registry system that it claims addresses the challenging problem of the rapidly changing IT sector. Designed for electronic record keeping, PRONOM 4 contains a database with detailed information on the technical dependencies of an electronic record. The latest version has a new tool, DROID (Digital Records Object Identification), which is able to automatically identify those formats using a file's binary signature. As signatures are added or updated in the database, DROID is updated with the latest information. PRONOM and the new DROID tool has been made freely available on the web. TNA welcomes the input and participation of all interested parties to help in developing this tool further, for example by submitting new information for inclusion in the database. In particular, TNA says that it is keen to collaborate with all who have specialist knowledge of particular types of electronic record, such as scientific data formats and software tools.
Contact: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom
Free software helps institutional repositories |Feb 06|VTLS has announced the availability of free, open-source components that will work with FEDORA and/or VITAL, two leading institutional repository products. The open-source software, developed on behalf of ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World), consists of: the Metadata Extraction Service via JHOVE; the Handles System, which assigns, manages, and resolves persistent identifiers for digital objects and other resources on the internet; and the Content Model Configuration Service, which allows customised content models to be created to suit the institution's needs.
Contact: Robert Pillow, pillowr@vtls.com
Bentham launches publications |Feb 06|In 2006 Bentham Science Publishers will launch 11 new titles for the pharmaceutical and health research community. The titles will focus on patent pharmaceutical sciences, clinical trials in drug safety, drug therapy and bioinformatics. The patent journals will publish state-of-the-art reviews of recent patents in therapeutic areas. The titles of the new publications will be Recent Patents on Anti-Cancer Drug Discovery, Recent Patents on CNS Drug Discovery, Recent Patents on Cardiovascular Drug Discovery, Recent Patents on Anti-Infective Drug Discovery, Current Stem Cell Research & Therapy, Reviews on Recent Clinical Trials, Current Drug Therapy, Current Drug Safety, Current Clinical Pharmacology, Current Bioinformatics, and Current Signal Transduction Therapy.
Contact: subscriptions@bentham.org
Combining semantic knowledge modelling and robust content management |Feb 06|SiberLogic, which provides XML content technology, has announced the DITA Edition of its content management system (CMS), SiberSafe. This is described as the only DITA solution currently on the market that combines semantic knowledge modelling with a robust, feature-rich CMS. Semantic knowledge modelling is the development of a set of facts and their relationships that captures and formalises all essential technical knowledge about a product. Semantic knowledge modelling is said to be ideal for DITA's topic-based approach to content development. Using SiberSafe Visual Modeler, knowledge is contributed directly into the semantic model by the subject matter expert, leaving no possibility of factual misinterpretation. The user interface is optimised for DITA-compliant topics and components, and can be pre-populated with concepts, tasks, and references that support individual specialisation requirements. This is said to shield the users from the complexities of DITA whilst ensuring precise content development planning and production. Information can be incrementally added to the semantic model as it becomes available during the product development life cycle, so there is no need to wait until all information is available before starting the modelling process.
Contact: general@siberlogic.com
Web-based tool improves reference management |Feb 06|Thomson Scientific and Thomson ResearchSoft have announced EndNote Web, a web-based bibliographic tool for managing and citing references. Annual EndNote Web subscriptions are expected to support a wide variety of users on campus - from students writing papers to faculty publishing in scholarly journals. EndNote Web provides a full range of bibliographic management on the web. Users can import and edit references via a personal web account and use these references to cite in papers and create bibliographies. EndNote Web searches ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed and hundreds of online library catalogues to help users build their personal reference collections. EndNote Web enables ISI Web of Knowledge subscribers to integrate with dynamic links to 'times cited' and related records, giving users one-click access to the latest information on a reference article. Each EndNote Web library is said to be able to store thousands of records and create bibliographies in more than 1,300 publishing styles. The Cite While You Write technology is available as an optional plug-in for anyone using MicrosoftWord to create bibliographies instantly. EndNote Web is available as a stand-alone subscription combined with EndNote and ISI Web of Knowledge.
Contact: www.thomson.com
Content management tool targets publishers |Feb 06|PubFusion from Wolters Kluwer Health is described as a new, online content management solution designed to enable professional publishers to streamline the publishing process. PubFusion, offered as either a hosted or in-house solution, provides a single-source/single-view to all supporting documents. It includes a complete integrated schedule; collaboration, automatic notifications, and alerts to enforce production timelines and multiple formats; and on-demand outputs from one set of files. PubFusion also allows publishers to manage their library of original content and supporting material, such as advertisements, editorial art, print layout, and permission information. Key features of PubFusion include version control; real-time audits; centralised progress monitoring; revision and proof monitoring; collaboration tools; and flexible output. It also supports interactions with suppliers, such as online aggregators, print production facilities, and advertising agencies, as well as integration with all major commercial manuscript submission systems, delivering a true digital end-to-end publishing pipeline. Wolters Kluwer is offering PubFusion in a hosted version, and is partnering with Flatiron Solutions to deliver an in-house solution to customers who prefer the system on their own site.
Contact: www.wkhealth.com
Platform supports web-based tools |Feb 06|Innovative Interfaces will launch an online public-access platform called WebPAC Pro that drives a set of web-based tools for libraries. WebPAC Pro is said to offer improved information retrieval using RightResult search technology and enhanced display functionality, such as more opportunities to customise content and features. WebPAC Pro will be offered to all Millennium customers free of charge as part of the 2006 Millennium Release. RightResult search technology returns a grouped result set based on a relevance-ranking algorithm developed by Innovative. The result, says Innovative, is that the patron is most likely to find the title in question immediately and at the top of the results display.
Contact: info@iii.com
Knovel releases plastics resource |Feb 06|Knovel has released Knovel Plastics, a resource which is said to contain three important components that will improve research and increase productivity in the plastics industry: reliable information, intuitive search capabilities and integrated software tools. Knovel Plastics includes over 160 titles from publishers including William Andrew Publishing, Hanser Gardner, Springer-Verlag, Society of Plastics Engineers, John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier Science and McGraw Hill. Knovel Plastics is also said to offer an impressive collection of analytical tools that calculate data, resolve equations, sort and export tabular data, and extract data from graphs. Many of these tools are useful to professionals in several industries but it also contains a set of specialised tools that are primarily utilised within the plastics industry.
Contact: sales@knovel.com
Nursing and allied health database is launched |Feb 06|Elsevier Bibliographic Databases has introduced the beta version of EMCare, a new bibliographic database that includes nearly two million records from the nursing, allied health and biomedical literature. EMCare is described as an affordable alternative to other nursing and allied health databases, providing an important information resource for professionals engaged in patient care, scientific research and education. EMCare indexes more than 2,700 international source titles, including peer-reviewed journals, trade publications and electronic-only titles. It currently has a 10-year backfile and promises to add almost 250,000 new records each year. EMCare features 1,200 titles that are not covered by its sister database EMBASE.
Contact: EMCare@elsevier.com
New release works with SUSHI standard |Feb 06|Innovative Interfaces claims that Electronic Resource Management Release 2006, the third major release of the product, will enable libraries to more easily access vendor statistics on e-resource usage by library patrons. Using web services to provide easy-to-understand, uniform, and up-to-date information, library staff will be able to make informed judgments about how they allocate funds to e-resources. The current version of software, Innovative ERM Release 2005 (which was released in June of last year), has the ability to import usage statistics from content vendors in COUNTER format. The new release will improve collection analysis further by facilitating transfer of resource usage data from content vendors to libraries using web services technology.
Contact: info@iii.com
Cell Research journal joins NPG |Dec 05|From January 2006 Nature Publishing Group (NPG) will publish Cell Research on behalf of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), which is affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Cell Research, which publishes exclusively in English, is said to be China's leading journal in the ISI category of Cell Biology with an impact factor of 1.936. NPG claims that this new partnership will mean that papers published in the journal will receive exposure through nature.com, more press coverage and quick publication, including publication ahead of print.
Further information at www.nature.com
Abstracts service gives dictionary links |Dec 05|Users of EMBASE.com, the web-based abstracts service for biomedical and pharmacological published literature, can now link seamlessly from EMTREE Thesaurus drug and disease terms to definitions from Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. This should enable EMBASE.com users to find more information on specific terms. For example, a user looking for records relating to terms such as 'cholestatic hepatitis' within the thesaurus will now automatically find a corresponding definition within the search results.
Access to content from Dorland's is available to EMBASE.com licensed institutions at no additional fee.
For further information, contact: ebd-marketing@elsevier.com
Full-text enhancement to CAB Abstracts announced |Dec 05|CABI Publishing is launching CAB Abstracts Plus. This full-text enhancement to CAB Abstracts promises to provide researchers with access to thousands of additional full text documents direct from the database. The main component of CAB Abstracts Plus is CAB Abstracts Full Text Select, which is a repository that initially contains more than 10,000 full text articles. Content will be made up of conference proceedings, reports and journal content not available through the major aggregators. Currently, much of this literature is not in electronic form or not permanently stored anywhere online. Some material is available on the internet for a short period of time, but then it is often moved or deleted. CABI Publishing will be permanently preserving and storing this research, and making it easily accessible via CAB Abstracts.
Other full-text content available as part of CAB Abstracts Plus includes: CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources and CAB Reviews Archive. In addition, CABI publications such as Distribution Maps of Plant Pests, Distributions Maps of Plant Diseases and Descriptions of Fungi and Bacteria are being made available electronically for the first time as part of CAB Abstracts Plus.
For further information, contact: publishing@cabi.org
Open-source software manages theses |Dec 05|VTLS is celebrating its 20th anniversary by offering VALET for ETDs for free. This open-source software is a web submission solution for managing electronic theses and dissertations. The software is the result of collaboration with the NDLTD project at Virginia Tech, the FEDORA Project, and the Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW) Project, led by Monash University in Australia. The product is described as simple, flexible, adaptable and easy to implement.
A typical process allows for thesis submission by students, editing and approval by faculty, approval by the graduate school and final deposit into a FEDORA-based institutional repository. The institution can configure the number of steps in the process and the details of each step. The software minimises errors and offers instant, form-based validation. When a thesis enters the repository, the software automatically creates standardised metadata. The initial version supports submission via a web interface but the next version will also support submission via email.
Further information at www.valet.vtls.com
Innovative launches products for delivering content |Dec 05|Innovative is launching a suite of content and metadata delivery products known as the Content Access Service (CASE). These include a MARC record service and a web-based profile manager. Together, the CASE services are expected to simplify library administration of e-resources and ensure that patrons get the most comprehensive and easy-to-use digital library available. CASE will be available to Innovative customers using integrated information discovery tools such as Electronic Resource Management, the Millennium library management system, and the WebBridge smart-linking solution.
The CASE MARC Record Service, planned for early 2006, should enhance patron access to e-resources by providing in-depth, pre-catalogued information for any e-serial a library offers. The company says that CASE Profile Manager, which is also scheduled for the first part of 2006, will make it easy for libraries to create their particular profile of e-resources through an easy-to-use web-based tool.
For further information, contact: info@iii.com
Further education gets search service |Dec 05|Fretwell Downing Informatics (FDI) has developed a new federated searching service for further education that will enable establishments to provide their electronic resources to users through one single interface. The new tool, called Aspire, has recently begun a pilot project with Rotherham College of Arts and Technology and Loughborough College of Further Education. The two UK-based development partners will advise FDI on the growth and progress of the new service from a user's point of view over the coming months.
The new service will initially be developed for the UK Further Education market and will be available as an application service provider (ASP) model, where FDI will maintain and run the service.
For further information contact Katie Anstock: katie.anstock@fdisolutions.com
Collaborative tool refines database coverage |Dec 05|Blog technology has been incorporated into the workflow for refining the serial sources which make up Engineering Information's Compendex database, the bibliographic database of engineering literature covering journal sources, conference proceedings, and trade literature. This development was driven by the Compendex Scope and Coverage committee, which is an independent body of Compendex customers that advises on the editorial direction of the Compendex database. The Compendex Scope and Coverage Committee blog was established in August 2005 to promote communication between committee members and help in the selection of content for the database. The blog allows committee members to share recommendations, post and review documents, and collaboratively discuss coverage issues. Some members have chosen to receive RSS alerts to notify them when new commentary is posted. The blog environment is said to create an ongoing conversation between participants while reducing the logistical issues of coordinating schedules of professionally active people situated across multiple time zones.
All committee members were provided with password protected access to the blog. Each member has the ability to create their own posting and comment on the postings from other members. Postings can be added at any time and all of the postings and comments are retained as a record of the committee's decision making process.
For further information, contact: eicustomersupport@elsevier.com
Taylor & Francis starts to digitise backfiles |Dec 05|Journals falling under the imprints Taylor & Francis, Routledge and Psychology Press, will be digitised and released over the coming months, according to the Taylor & Francis Group.
The first subject archives to become available will be the education archives, which includes access to 113 titles and over 1.1 million pages of backfile articles, and the business, management and economics archives, which has 45 titles and 250,000 pages. All articles include full cross-searching capability, article abstracts and references. The next backfile due to be digitised will cover physics, chemistry and materials science.
For further information, contact Ashleigh Bell: ashleigh.bell@informa.com
Peer review system gets update |Dec 05|Aries Systems, which makes web-based manuscript tracking and peer review systems, has released a new product. The company says that Editorial Manager Version 4.0 includes advanced features that enhance decision making by editors and reviews. With the new version, author-submitted bibliographies are automatically validated and linked to external resources such as PubMed and CrossRef. This means, says Aries, that reviewers and editors can more easily assess the quality of submissions and access the full content sources cited in manuscripts. Bibliographies can now also be automatically formatted to a specific journal style for reviewer and editor convenience, and to optimise downstream production tasks. Another enhancement is that journals can specify customised title, keyword and author name searches that are targeted at external databases such as GoogleScholar, PubMed and Scirus. A single click in the user record also initiates a database search to identify other articles authored by the user.
In addition, secure "deep links" mean that editors can initiate their assigned editorial tasks such as reviewer selection directly from email notifications generated by the system. Data mining reports also help editors to evaluate past reviewer performance better and obtain a snapshot view of ongoing peer review activities.
For further information, contact: info@edmgr.de
New collection focuses on management |Dec 05|Emerald Management Xtra from the Emerald Group Publishing brings together content from Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Reviews. It is said to offer the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed management journals and online support for librarians, faculty, researchers, teachers and deans in the management field.
The collection includes 40,000 full-text articles, 138,000 reviews from the world's leading management journals, case studies, literature reviews and book reviews. It also offers conference information, guru interviews and a tailored service for alumni. Emerald Management Xtra focuses on the different roles within an academic institution and content is organised to meet the needs of each role.
For further information, contact Gillian Crawford: gcrawford@emeraldinsight.com
Scholar profiles added to social science databases |Dec 05|CSA is sponsoring complimentary access to the new Scholar Universe: Social Science service for all customers of CSA social science databases that are delivered through the CSA Illumina platform. These records of verified author and faculty profiles are provided by Scholar Universe, a business unit of ContentScan, LLC. Scholar Universe: Social Science is said to represent the first time that more than 100,000 social scientists have been brought together with their publication records in a verified, regularly updated, and fully searchable format. It enables researchers to expand their search for relevant information beyond the document record to the relevant set of people and organisations working in what are often highly specific areas of interest.
The scholar and organisation profiles, which currently cover active researchers at four-year colleges and universities in the USA and Canada, will be available as a supplement to: ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts; CSA Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts; CSA Social Services Abstracts; CSA Sociological Abstracts; CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts; ERIC; Health & Safety Science Abstracts; LISA: Library and Information Science Abstracts; PAIS International; Physical Education Index; and Risk Abstracts.
For further information, contact: sales@csa.com
Thomson adds full-text links to JSTOR |Dec 05|Mutual subscribers to the Web of Science component of ISI Web of Knowledge and JSTOR can now link directly from Web of Science to full-text articles in the +JSTOR Scholarly Journal Archive. This adds links to more than 1.25 million articles.
The JSTOR Scholarly Journal Archive is multidisciplinary and offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and articles as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated.
For further information, contact: ts.info.na@thomson.com
PAIS Archive joins CSA Illumina |Dec 05|PAIS Archive is now available through the CSA Illumina platform. The database supplements PAIS International, enabling researchers, students, librarians, government agencies, and others to conduct complete research in the field of global public policy, world affairs, international relations, and history since 1915.
PAIS International currently includes records from the print PAIS Bulletin 1977 and forward; and from the PAIS print Foreign Language Index published 1972-1990, at which time it merged with the PAIS Bulletin. The complete PAIS Archive contains more than 1.2 million records from the print PAIS Bulletin covering the years 1915 to 1976.
For further information, contact: eurosales@csa.com
Bibliographic searches become free with AIP |Oct 05|The American Institute of Physics (AIP) now offers free searching of all bibliographic records for the journals and conference proceedings that are hosted on its Scitation online platform. Previously, searching was restricted to subscribers of at least one of these AIP publications. The searching facility allows users to browse tables of contents, with links to abstracts and full text and to download full-text article files from journals and proceedings to which they or their institutions subscribe. They can also purchase PDF full-text articles from publications to which they do not subscribe on a pay-per-view basis. All but three of AIP's 11 journals can be searched as far back as their first issues. Further information at www.aip.orgBack to top IEEE adds Electron Devices articles to archive |Oct 05|IEEE has added more than 15,000 articles from IEEE Electron Devices Society publications to its digital collection. These articles date as far back as 1954. The 9,272 papers from the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and 1,535 papers from the IEEE Electron Device Letters cover topics such as optoelectronic devices, nanoscale devices, solid-state devices, integrated electronic devices, energy sources, power devices, displays, sensors, electro-mechanical devices, quantum devices and electron tubes. There are also 5,026 papers from IEEE International Electron Devices Meetings (IEDM) held between 1955 and 1987. IEDM is a forum for advances in the technology, design, manufacturing, physics and the modelling of semiconductors and other electronic devices.
Further information at customer-service@ieee.org
AIP provides RSS-based content alerts for journals |Oct 05|The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has started to provide RSS-based content alerts for its journals. Applied Physics Letters was the first of its journals to offer this feature but other AIP journals should offer RSS feeds by the time this issue of Research Information hits readers' desks. Feeds from APL and other AIP journals will be available by topic and for the full content of the journals. RSS ('Really Simple Syndication') allows users to receive the titles and links for the latest articles in a chosen publication or topic. RSS feeds can be read with freely-available software. Further information at www.aip.orgBack to top IEEE announces five new titles |Oct 05|The IEEE says it will launch five new technical journals in 2006 that will focus on 'emerging technologies that can have a tremendous impact on industry as well as everyday lives'. IEEE Journal on Product Safety Engineering will look at issues like fire protection and software safety, which are vital for maintaining the security of products such as process control and automation equipment, medical devices, household appliances, aeronautical systems and military equipment. IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine is intended to provide the most up-to-date information on computational intelligence. The main topics will be applications-oriented development, successful industrial implementations, design tools, technology reviews, education and applied research. IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine will cover topics such as the components, systems and motive power for propulsion and auxiliary functions, mobile radio technologies for terrestrial vehicular services, and land transportation components and systems used in both automated and non-automated group transport technology. IEEE Computer Architecture Letters will be devoted to the knowledge and advancement of computer architecture. The main topics will include microprocessor and multiprocessor systems, microarchitecture and ILP Processors, workload characterisation, performance evaluation and simulation techniques, compiler-hardware and operating system-hardware interactions, and inter-connect architectures. Memory and cache systems, power and thermal issues at the architecture level, I/O architectures and techniques, independent validation of previously published results, analysis of unsuccessful techniques, network and embedded-systems processors, real-time and high-availability architectures, and reconfigurable systems will also be covered. The fifth journal, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, will tackle ideas and technologies surrounding coding, hardware, agents, signal processing, fingerprinting, stenography, metrics and validation, damage assessment, tracing code, and data mining for digital forensic evidence and digital watermarking.
Further information at customer-service@ieee.org
New chemistry journal planned for 2006 |Oct 05|Wiley is teaming up with two European chemical societies to launch a drug discovery journal in 2006. ChemMedChem is the result of a new publishing agreement between Societŕ Chimica Italiana (SCI), Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh), and Wiley-VCH, the company's subsidiary based in Weinheim, Germany. The journal aims to cover topics such as drug design and discovery; drug development and delivery; molecular modelling; combinatorial chemistry; target validation; and lead generation. The SCI's journal, Il Farmaco - An International Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, will cease publication at the end of 2005 to make room for ChemMedChem. In its first year, ChemMedChem will be available with Angewandte Chemie and Angewandte Chemie International Edition, two GDCh journals that are published through Wiley-VCH.
Further information at ChemMedChem@wiley-vch.de
Wiley plans publication for biotech researchers |Oct 05|Wiley says that is will launch a new journal called Biotechnology Journal in January 2006. The journal is intended for biotechnology researchers and professionals in related disciplines. It will be published by Wiley-VCH, the company's subsidiary based in Weinheim, Germany. According to the publisher, Biotechnology Journal will cover novel aspects and methods in all areas of biotechnology, especially those focusing on healthcare, nutrition, and technology. Special focus will also be given to the public, legal, ethical, and cultural aspects of biotechnological research. Each issue of Biotechnology Journal will be devoted to a special topic. Topics in 2006 will include: White Biotechnology - Bio Meets Chemistry; Synthesis of Chiral Compounds; Drug Targeting in Disease; Entrepreneurs in Biotech; New Bio-based Materials; DNA and Proteins as Diagnostic Tools; the Art of Bioprocessing; and BioNanotech. Biotechnology Journal will also report on biotech achievements and future applications in specific countries, and will devote an issue in 2006 to 'Biotechnology in China.' The journal will contain original papers, short communications, technical reports illustrating the latest scientific breakthroughs, and news from academia, industry, and governments worldwide.
Further information at service@wiley-vch.de
Online subscription module gives immediate access |Oct 05|E-publishing software and services provider Atypon Systems has launched a new online subscription module. When added to Atypon's Literatum and Extenza e-publishing platforms, the new module is said to allow publishers to offer users different licensing models for purchasing content. Features of the online subscription module include the ability to designate any collection or subset of content as saleable online and to provide automatic, immediate access for verified users. It also enables tiered pricing structures to be set up for institutions and individual subscriptions. A further feature is the capability to offer discounts and promotions along with space to input promotional codes. The ability to receive payments by secure credit card in three currencies is also included, as are complete and detailed tracking, notification and reporting.
Further information at inquiries@atypon.com
Nature archive goes back to 1970 |Oct 05|Nature Publishing Group has extended Nature's online archive back to January 1970. The addition of all content published between January 1970 and December 1979 equates to approximately 37,405 articles from 510 issues. Nature is currently digitising the archives back to 1950. Content will be released in instalments of 10 years until completion in 2006. When complete, the Nature archive will contain 2,399 issues (volumes 283 to 384), which represents approximately 154,500 articles. The next instalment of the archive, 1960-1969, is scheduled to be released in Spring 2006, with the articles from 1950-1959 following in Autumn 2006.
Further information at subscriptions@nature.com
EBSCOhost adds database of child development resources |Oct 05|The Child Development & Adolescent Studies database is now available via EBSCOhost as part on the ongoing partnership between EBSCO Publishing and the National Information Services Corporation (NISC) of USA. This database provides references to current and historical literature related to the growth and development of children and young people up to the age of 21. Child Development & Adolescent Studies includes all of the issues of Child Development Abstracts & Bibliography from 1927 - 2001 as well as new coverage on child rights and welfare issues. Book reviews and abstracts from hundreds of journals are indexed, as is a bibliography of thousands of technical reports, books, book chapters, theses and dissertations covering biomedical and social sciences worldwide.
Further information at www.ebsco.com
Dialog offers pay-as-you-go searching for CSA files |Oct 05|Scientists, engineers and information professionals worldwide will soon be able to search most of the CSA files that Dialog is adding this year on a 'pay-as-you-go' basis, as well as through annual subscriptions. Dialog has recently added six new files of CSA research as part of a phased rollout of more than 30 CSA files of scientific, technical and social science research for its clients in the corporate and government markets. The six new CSA files are Aluminium Industry Abstracts (File 33), Ceramic Abstracts/World Ceramics Abstracts (File 335), Corrosion Abstracts (File 46), Engineered Materials Abstracts (File 293), Life Sciences (File 24) and Materials Business File (File 269).
Further information at DialogCustomer@thomson.com
Library management tool gets update |Oct 05|VTLS has announced Version 46 of its VIRTUA product. The latest version promises more than 40 enhancements. Enhancements are said to include improved productivity. This is through serials EDIFACT invoice support with numerous vendors, including Swets and Ebsco, the ability to create acquisitions purchase orders from data entered by the customer on its book vendors' websites and the ability to alter the size of the check-in and check-out windows, so that the user can select the amount of information to be displayed. The user will also be able to adjust column width. Improved data security is promised via support for recovery options if a MARC record is inadvertently deleted from the database. There is also the ability to un-delete text. Enhanced consortia support features include special treatment of locations in circulation. For example, the check-in of an item that belongs to another location can be blocked and patrons can be prohibited from paying a fine at a different location from where the item was checked out and the fines assessed.
Further information at pillowr@vtls.com
Innovative announces three products for academic libraries |Oct 05|Innovative Interfaces has announced three new campus computing solutions: External Patron Verification, Courseware Integration, and Single Sign-On. The first, External Patron Verification, allows libraries to authenticate patrons through LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) servers, which are in wide use in business and education organisations. It enables students and faculty to log in to the library using their campus password, rather than having a separate library password. Courseware Integration links with online learning sessions. The initial implementation interfaces with the Blackboard Learning System. With this new product, students are said to be able to launch a library catalogue search directly from Blackboard without the need for re-authentication. Students can also navigate from a course title in Blackboard to the full course record in Millennium. The third product, Single Sign-On, is said to improve the user experience of campus libraries by eliminating the need for re-authentication. With Single Sign-On, patrons log in on the first server visited - either the library or another campus entity - and gain access to all the offerings of their portal.
Further information at info@iii.com
Journal Citation Reports extends to category level |Oct 05|Thomson Scientific claims that version 4.0 of Journal Citation Reports will offer expanded analytical capabilities beyond the journal level to include the category level. Data at the category level provides performance metrics that can be used to understand the journal content. This level of detail also enables analyses that show the citation dynamics common to a large collection of articles and journals in a subject. JCR version 4.0 will also offer a related journals list, which measures the concentration of citations between two journals or between a journal and a category. This reveals closely related titles. Researchers can use the list to identify journals to consider reading or publishing articles in. Librarians can build collections that include the most relevant journals in a particular area. And publishers will be able to spot competitor journals and the most effective advertising opportunities.
Further information at www.thomson.com
Enhancements benefit repositories |Oct 05|VTLS has announced Version 1.3 of VITAL. Developed in close cooperation with existing customers, the product is said to deliver rich new functionality in institutional repository software. New features include streamlined system installation procedures and a new web interface for managing custom indexing. Indexing rules within VITAL can be defined for any metadata schema, and at specific levels within the schema. There are also new web interfaces for system administration, content model definitions and SRU/SRW support. The VITAL Access Portal web interface has also been enhanced to include sophisticated and advanced search capabilities and support for JPEG2000 display and navigation. The new version offers users the option of automatically generating Dublin Core metadata from imported MARCXML records. It also allows object validation and metadata extraction with JHOVE.
Further information at angela@vtls.com
New UK website gives access to social and economic research |Oct 05|The UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has launched a new website to provide academics, students and researchers with a free digest of social sciences research available, both planned and in progress. As well as bringing together all ESRC-funded research, this new website is described as a gateway to other key online resources from the UK such as the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG), the UK Data Archive and the Office of National Statistics - as well as international coverage from services such as Europa and Social Science Research Network (SSRN). ESRC Society Today (www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk) is said to offer a broad picture of the latest research on the full range of social science subjects, including early findings, full texts and original data sets. Users can establish online discussion fora, track down researchers in their key subject fields or find details about ESRC funding and training opportunities. They can also register for regular news bulletins and email alerts in their areas of interest. To encourage non-academic visitors the site will also feature plain-English summaries of research findings, quick facts and figures, presentation slides and topical articles on subjects as diverse as pensions, the environment, lifestyles, terrorism and ageing.
Further information at societytoday@esrc.ac.uk
Seamless linking between citations and databases |Oct 05|Customers of both Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and EBSCOhost full-text databases can now link from citations in the CAplus database to corresponding full text in EBSCOhost databases. According to the companies, customers of both services will see CAS as a 'full-text database'. In addition, CAS customers subscribing to e-journals via the EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service will have full-text links to these journals.
Further information at www.ebsco.com
FASTRAC tool gets new version |Oct 05|VTLS has announced the release of Version 2.6 of the FASTRAC product. New features are said to include support for TI (Texas Instruments) tags and a re-designed module for return chutes. The new version offers support for optical barcode check-out, either as a stand-alone facility or in combination with RFID, foreign language support and a new check-in module.
Further information at crowderm@vtls.com
Russian patents added to STN International |Oct 05|FIZ Karlsruhe now offers access to Russian patent information via STN International. The new file, RUSSIAPAT, is produced by the Russian Agency for Patents and Trademarks (ROSPATENT). It covers Russian patented inventions from 1994 to the present and currently contains about 300,000 records and about 245,000 images. Titles and abstracts are in English. In addition, RUSSIAPAT records contain the International Patent Classification (IPC) codes, and inventor, assignee and patent application information. All drawings from the full document can also be accessed. RUSSIAPAT is updated three times a month.
Further information at stnweb.fiz-karlsruhe.de
OUP launches its first subject-based archive |Oct 05|Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, has launched its Humanities Archive, which is the first of five subject-based digital backfiles that the company plans to launch by early 2006. The other four archives will focus on law, medicine, science, and social science. With its earliest material dating from 1829, the Humanities Archive is said to contain some 300,000 articles, including major papers in history, music, religion, philosophy, literary studies, and linguistics, from Volume 1 Issue 1 of each title to the end of 1995.
Further information at www.oxfordjournals.org
Elsevier adds range of online handbooks to ScienceDirect |Oct 05|Elsevier has added seven new handbook series to its electronic platform, ScienceDirect. The handbooks are said to span a range of subjects within the fields of economics, mathematics, chemistry and physics. They can be purchased under one of two pricing options. With the annual subscription option, librarians pay a fee for site-wide access to online handbooks and regular new volumes. With the up-front payment option, a one-time fee lets librarians make use of their year-end budgets.
Further information at nlinfo@sciencedirect.com
Society of Hospital Medicine launches journal |Jun 05|The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) plans to launch a peer-reviewed medical journal, The Journal of Hospital Medicine, in 2006, to promote the science and practice of hospital medicine and the enhancement of in-patient care. This journal will be published by Wiley, which already publishes the society's newsletter, The Hospitalist. The chief objective of the new journal will be 'to publish original, important, well-documented, peer-reviewed articles on a diverse range of hospital medicine topics,' according to Laurence Wellikson, chief executive officer of SHM. In addition, the journal will provide hospital-medicine physicians with continuing education in basic and clinical science to support informed clinical decision-making. It will also better educate all clinical practitioners about the value of, and processes inherent in, hospital medicine, and foster responsible and balanced debate on medical issues or healthcare trends that affect hospital medicine and patient care.
It will also inform readers about non-clinical aspects of hospital medicine and public health, including the political, philosophic, ethical, legal, environmental, economic, historical, and cultural issues surrounding healthcare.
New journal focuses on kidney disorders |Jun 05|The International Society of Nephrology (ISN) and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) will launch a new journal, Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology, in November 2005. Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology will provide the practicing physician with a comprehensive overview of the most up-to-date literature relevant to the diagnosis and management of patients with kidney disease. It will include editorial and opinion pieces, highlights from current literature, commentaries on the application of recent research to practical patient care, comprehensive reviews, and in-depth case studies. All areas concerned with prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disorders of the kidney in the adult and child, including hypertension, infection/inflammation, dialysis/chronic uremia, renal failure, transplantation, applied physiology, epidemiology, pathology, immunology, cancer, and genetics, will be covered. ISN serves a global network of more than 20,000 nephrologists. The journal's editor-in-chief will be former ISN president, Robert W. Schrier, of University of Colorado School of Medicine, US.
NPG has also signed a 10-year agreement to publish Kidney International - the Society's leading international peer-reviewed journal - from January 2006.
Backfiles cover cell and developmental biology |Jun 05|Wiley has launched the Cell & Developmental Biology Backfile Collection, available via Wiley InterScience. Spanning 113 years (1887-1999), the collection contains digitised back-issue content from 13 journal titles. The new launch gives access to more than 37,000 research articles and 528,000 digitised pages of new cell and developmental biology content. The collection includes full coverage of such titles as American Journal of Anatomy (now published as Developmental Dynamics), The Anatomical Record, and BioEssays.
All journal articles are presented in a fully searchable PDF format, with abstracts, bibliographic content, and literature citations all available in HTML, allowing for both internal linking to cited content located on Wiley InterScience, as well as external linking via CrossRef/DOI, PubMed, and ISI Web of Science.
Licensing opportunities online |Jun 05|A new online database to highlight opportunities to license Sandia National Laboratories' intellectual property is now available to the general public. The purpose of Sandia's Intellectual Property Available for Licensing (iPAL) database, according to the US research laboratory, is to show Sandia technologies that may not be fully utilised in the commercial marketplace and to help companies move promising technologies toward commercialisation. The web-based system allows customers to search through intellectual property that is available for licensing, and get in touch with the appropriate people at Sandia to negotiate a licence. Sandia works with interested companies to execute a mutually-beneficial commercial licensing agreement.
'We would expect corporate technology officers at private firms and technology transfer agents at universities and other organisations to look at some of the technologies we are offering and decide if they want to license this IP from us,' said Sandia's licensing and intellectual property manager, Kevin McMahon.
Web of Knowledge links to HighWire archive |Jun 05|The International Web of Knowledge now links to the HighWire Press free archive. Once all links are in place, users will be able to link directly to the full text of more than 800,000 articles in HighWire Press, the world's largest repository of free full-text life science articles.
'These full-text links will be automatically enabled for all ISI Web of Knowledge customers, without requiring any action on their part. And, as additional free full text is made available by HighWire, we will continue to add the new links,' commented Phil Heller, senior director of linkage business development for Thomson Scientific.
CABI plans archive launch |Jun 05|CABI Publishing will launch its CAB Abstracts Archive on the CAB Direct platform in the second quarter of 2005. It will be available on Ovid and SilverPlatter in the third quarter, and on other platforms after that. Covering the literature from 1910 to 1972, CAB Abstracts Archive will make more than 1,860,000 records on every aspect of agricultural science, veterinary medicine, nutrition and natural resources, available electronically for the very first time. The archive will combine 17 printed abstract journals (the equivalent of 600 volumes) into a single electronic database, bringing to light important research that has only been available in print and so has effectively been forgotten by all but the most determined researcher. Users will be able to search more than 1.8 million records.
In addition to ensuring CAB Abstracts Archive will be fully searchable, CABI Publishing claims to have completely re-indexed all records in the archive. Obsolete terms have been replaced with modern equivalents to allow today's researcher full and immediate access to the research of the past. When combined with CAB Abstracts, the archive will provide access to almost 100 years of scientific knowledge.
Dialog adds chemical structure searching |Jun 05|Dialog now offers graphical chemical structure searching of research databases, including drug pipeline and patent files, through its online service. More than 10 million chemical compounds are searchable, according to the company. These are housed in databases such as Beilstein Facts (File 390), Derwent Chemistry Resource (File 355), Prous Drug Data Report (File 452) and Pharmaprojects (Files 128 and 928). The graphical chemical structure searching tool, launched as part of DialogLink 5, allows researchers to use their preferred chemical structure drawing software to launch a Dialog search. Chemical structure and substructure searching features within Dialog include substructure highlighting in retrieved records and the ability to edit retrieved structures. Multiple databases may also be searched simultaneously.
There is no chemical structure search charge for initial screenings or 'knock-out' searches that produce no results. The chemical structure search charge for simultaneous searching across multiple databases is $20.
VIRTUA boasts nearly 100 enhancements |Jun 05|VTLS says that the latest version of its VIRTUA product has nearly 100 enhancements. These include a number of improvements in the acquisitions/serials modules such as support for tracking and automated transmission of EDIFACT orders and invoices, the ability to search all open purchase orders by vendor status and date, as well as automatically updating currency conversion rates.
In keeping with libraries moving towards the increased support of self-service options, the ability to allow payment of fees/fines by credit card via the web has also been added. Other major new features include the ability to support web-based global changes to bibliographic records and the ability to automatically adjust loan periods, based upon a holds/item ratio specified by the library.
Tools provide browser access to staff functions |Jun 05|
Innovative Interfaces has added a suite of tools to its Millennium product, alowing routine library functions through a web browser. By using a browser-based interface, Web Works products are intended to be simple to use and light on bandwidth requirements. Innovative will initially offer two such products: Web Works Selection Lists and Web Works Quick Edit. Both will be optionally available in Millennium 2005. Selection Lists lets remote library staff select books and other materials to order from a centralised selection list. Quick Edit allows users to update holdings information by simply filling in a web form.
FASTRAC rewrite |Jun 05|
Version 2.0 of the VTLS's FASTRAC product is described as a complete re-write of the product. The modules now include the management console, self-check, programming station, staff circulation, book return chute, manual sorting and inventory control modules.
New features include support for the new TAGSYS C320 tag, an ISO 18000 compliant tag and self-check enhancements such as the ability to detect holds and excessive fines.
RFID reader helps inventory control |Jun 05|Bibliotheca RFID Library Systems has developed an RFID handheld reader, called BiblioWand, which can be used to maintain the complete inventory on a library's shelves. For the reader, there is no difference in the processing of books, VHS cassettes, CDs and DVDs. Only the attachment of all material with programmed BiblioChip RFID labels is required. All information is transmitted, in an encrypted form, to the handheld reader and the information is displayed on a portable PDA. A standard interface enables rapid data exchange with the in-house library management system. All the data is stored and managed on the library's internal database, rather than on RFID labels or devices, to avoid any violation of patron privacy. A touch-screen function on the PDA enables the user to choose between different menus. All the commands are directly entered into the mobile reader. The BiblioWand can be used for the initial recording of the freehand inventory, without moving the material, and for a continuous inventory control. If a book has been misplaced, an acoustic and visual signal identifies the missing material.
BiblioWand's reading distance is deliberately limited to prevent confusion about which material is being scanned and shown on the PDA. Only the items that are positioned within a range of about 10 cm along the shelves are displayed when scanned with the handheld antenna. The integrated storage battery provides four hours of energy.
Wiley changes sales model for online books |Jun 05|Wiley has launched a new sales model for its online book platform, Wiley InterScience OnlineBooks. Books were previously only available through subject-specific collections. Between 300 and 500 new back-list titles - dating back to January 2003 - are now available, many of which are said to be in subject areas not previously offered before. Also, around 100 new front-list titles are available, bringing the total number of online books available to almost 1,200. The new sales model consists of two options - the 'One Time Fee Option' and the 'Flexi-Subscription Option'. Both are said to offer customers unlimited concurrent user access to purchase titles, as well as COUNTER-compliant usage statistics reporting. With the 'One Time Fee Option', customers pay once for ongoing access, build collections by selecting holdings on a title-by-title basis, and add additional titles at any time. Pricing is based on the US list price of the hard-cover edition and the customer FTE (full time equivalent).
With the 'Flexi-Subscription Option,' titles are priced at an annual flat fee. This option also allows customers to build customised collections and add titles at any time. At renewal, titles can be added and deleted, as long as a minimum of 20 titles is subscribed. Once a title has been subscribed to for three consecutive years, ongoing access to that title is provided at no additional cost.
Swets updates library resource gateway |Jun 05|Swets Information Services has launched a new version of SwetsWise Title Bank, its customised gateway for library resources.
SwetsWise Title Bank enables Swets clients to customise their list of electronic subscription links, whether they originate from external databases, publisher websites or SwetsWise Online Content. The service assists customers in maintaining optimum control of their electronic resources and providing maximum full-text access to all titles. Additional enhancements include the automatic tracking of databases and full text collections.
Scientific American archive joins EBSCOhost |Jun 05|Researchers can now access the Scientific American Archive Online via EBSCOhost. The Scientific American Archive Online includes ongoing coverage for the publication, in addition to backfile content beginning with the January 1993 issue. The archive also contains Scientific American Mind, which was launched in late 2004, as well as all Scientific American special issues dating back to 1997.
Scientific American Archive Online, a standalone database, is a comprehensive, searchable science and technology resource containing the full text and graphics of every Scientific American issue, from 1993 to the present.
Database provides conference details |Apr 05|FIZ Karlsruhe's conference information service CONFnet is said to offer concise previews of international conferences in science and technology. CONFnet, incorporated into intranets of companies or academic institutions, provides central access to comprehensive information on worldwide conferences and offers the possibility to register for the conference and book hotels. The information contained in the database was either provided directly by the conference organisers, or has been compiled by the CONFnet editors from journals, calendars or the internet. To ensure that the records are as complete and up-to-date as possible, records in CONFnet are edited when they are added to the database and then revised and reloaded whenever necessary. The dynamic conference calendar is available in different versions, specifically designed for corporate intranets: the complete database hosted on FIZ Karlsruhe's server (CONFnet); a subject-related excerpt from the database (CIS); or raw data to be used by customers for various purposes. CONFnet is updated weekly. Updates for the excerpts are available monthly. There are approximately 7,000 conference previews per year for the subjects covered in the database. When the conference is over, the entry is removed from the file. Information can be found using free key words, or searching by country, date, conference title, subject, etc. Within seconds, titles and venues of the conferences have been found and are shown in the results list, which is displayed after the keyword has been entered.
The retrieved information is billed according to the chosen payment model, either based on an annual flat rate, or as pay-per-view. Searches up to the results list are free. Viewing one or more documents is chargeable.
Upgrade boosts organisational tool's accuracy |Apr 05|Parity Computing has announced the public release of version 3 of its software for automatically creating organisational and professional profiles. The platform can identify people and institutions from diverse data sources, such as research literature, books, patents, press releases, and company web pages, organising them into unique, unambiguous profiles. Scalability to handle massive data sources and improved accuracy to merge and disambiguate names are some of the new features of version 3.
It also includes a customer interface to combine and split profiles. Control updates and client management of individual privacy preferences are also included.
European patent database joins STN |Apr 05|FIZ Karlsruhe, STN International's European partner, has added EPFULL (the European Patents Full Text database) to its portfolio of patent databases. EPFULL covers the full text of European patent applications and granted European patents as well as bibliographic records for PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) applications transferred to the EPO. This new file replaces the former files EUROPATFULL and PATOSEP. Numerous search fields are said to allow detailed searches (also for special information such as the address of the patent assignee or inventor) and statistic evaluations. Records contain bibliographic data, the full text of the detailed description, and claims. The complete specification is given in one of EPO's official languages English, German or French for published, unexamined applications (A-documents) from 1987 to date and examined granted patents (B-documents) since 1991. Titles are available in all three languages. Claims can be accessed for A-documents in English, German or French and in all three languages for B-documents. Abstracts in the original publication language can be searched for A-documents. English abstracts are added to German and French documents within several weeks of their addition to the database. Patent, application and priority information, abstracts and claims are searchable. All documents featuring the same application number are grouped together in one single document. Bibliographic data correspond to those in the European Patent Bulletin/European Patent Register. The file is updated weekly.
All information in EPFULL can be accessed through STN's search functions. Search terms may be entered individually, or logically concatenated in a combined search. Only results matching all predefined criteria are retrieved. Truncated searches are also possible.
IEEE promises major platform upgrade |Apr 05|A major upgrade to the IEEE Xplore online delivery platform promises to offer researchers a more functional design, enhanced searching and usability, and an automated welcome page that recognises users' subscriptions and access rights. IEEE Xplore 2.0, to be released later this year, will provide subscribers with full-text searching of all content - more than 1.1 million documents - and will enable free, basic searches for visiting researchers. Another search option will enable subscribers to focus on only the latest content. 'The new features of IEEE Xplore are a direct result of the feedback we have received from our subscribers,' said Barbara Lange, IEEE director of publications business development. 'Many of our customers will also be invited to test a beta version of the interface in the coming weeks.'
IEEE Xplore 2.0 will also include functional 'homepages' for all IEEE periodicals. Each homepage will provide a review of the publication's aim and scope, along with links to all past and present issues. Author manuscript submission information will also be available through the homepages.
AIP goes back to the start |Apr 05|The complete archives of all American Institute of Physics (AIP) journals are now available online. The addition of 50,000 backfile articles provides researchers with access to nearly 350,000 articles. The AIP journals included since their inception are: Applied Physics Letters (from 1962); Chaos (from 1991); Journal of Applied Physics (from 1931); The Journal of Chemical Physics (from 1933); Journal of Mathematical Physics (from 1960); Physics of Fluids (from 1958); Physics of Plasmas (from 1958); and Review of Scientific Instruments (from 1930). All subscriptions to AIP journals include access to a five-year online backfile but subscribers can access the complete journal archive back to Volume 1, Issue 1, for a small fee.
All subscribers to AIP Archival, AIP Archival Plus, AIP Combination, and AIP All packages receive backfile access at no extra charge.
Spanish reference source is added to EBSCOhost |Apr 05|LIBROS EN VENTA en América Latina y España (LEV), which is produced by National Information Services Corporation, is now available via the EBSCOhost search interface. LEV has been a reference source of records and an acquisition tool for Spanish-language books-in-print since 1964. LEV includes in-print titles from over 26,000 Latin American and Spanish publishers and contains more than 794,000 records. LEV covers all types of books including: adult fiction, non-fiction, juvenile, scholarly subjects, textbooks, reprints, legal, medical, business, science and technology and religious material. LEV's publisher information includes publisher street addresses, phone and fax numbers, email addresses, website URLs, and the names of any distributors and sales outlets.
LEV is the most recent database to join the growing number of secondary databases available through EBSCOhost.
Zoological Record joins ISI Web of Knowledge |Apr 05|Zoological Record - the oldest continuing database of animal biology - is now available on ISI Web of Knowledge. Zoological Record is a respected information resource for every field in animal biology; for academic, government, and commercial projects; and for conducting reliable and in-depth information searches. With its electronic coverage extending back to 1978, Zoological Record has been described as the world's unofficial register of animal names.
While taxonomy represents a unique branch of life sciences, the scope of Zoological Record also covers every area of animal biology - from biodiversity and the environment to marine biology and veterinary sciences.
Dialog adds German patent information |Apr 05|Dialog has added a database of German full-text patents, with integrated English-language machine translations, to its family of services. The new file (324) contains about 3.1 million German patent records dating from 1967. It is published by Univentio, a Dutch-based aggregator of patent data from around the world. Univentio also supplies Dialog with WIPO/PCT (World Intellectual Property Organization/ Patent Cooperation Treaty) text records (File 349). Patent records from 1980 forward, which total about 1.8 million and include all German patent applications, granted patents and utility models for the time period, are in full-text German. They also have English translations of the abstracts, specifications and claims. This means that English-language keywords can be used to search the Univentio file. Patent records from before 1980 patents contain bibliographic information only. New German patent records are accessible through Dialog within four or five business days of publication by the German patent authority.
Fast updating is said to be especially important for German patents because the period of opposition in which patent applications may be challenged is more limited than in some other countries.
Springer's online library doubles in size |Apr 05|Springer Science+Business Media is launching an improved and expanded version of its SpringerLink online library. The service has now more than doubled in size - with a current total of more than 1,200 journals. As a result of the merger of Springer and Kluwer Academic Publishers (KAP), which was largely completed last year, 750 additional publications have now been integrated into SpringerLink. The online library also contains more than 2,700 volumes in 25 book series and a growing number of handbooks and reference works, eBooks, and databases. In addition, an online journals archive will begin providing successive online access to content published by Springer prior to 1997 and dating back to the 1860s. The full-text versions of papers marked as Springer Open Choice articles are available free of charge to all internet users. Content is organised into 11 'online libraries', each of which covers a separate subject category: Behavioral Sciences, Biomedical & Life Sciences, Business & Economics, Chemistry & Material Science, Computer Science, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Engineering, Humanities, Social Sciences & Law, Mathematics, Medicine, and Physics & Astronomy. All SpringerLink visitors have free access to the journals' table of contents and individual abstracts, which are presented on the journals' own websites. Links on the home page allow users to request sample copies in electronic form. Springer Alert users receive regular information about new publications in their own area of interest and research. A secure pay-per-view shopping cart allows individual documents to be purchased too. The full-text documents can be accessed by all subscribers to Springer's journals and by research libraries at educational institutions, consortia and corporations that have obtained a SpringerLink licence. They register by IP address, giving their employees, researchers and library users access to a constantly growing number of individual documents and to the book series and databases. To do so, they can use SpringerLink's full-text search engine. More than half of the journals are 'Online First' publications. That means that the papers accepted by the editors are available online and can be cited long before the next print version of the journal appears.
The Cross Reference Linking service provides cross-references to the articles cited in the
article.
New tools help visualise structures |Apr 05|The Cambridge Crystallographic Structural Database (CCSD) has released version 1.3 of its Mercury range of tools for structure visualisation and the exploration of crystal packing. The latest version allows input of hit-lists from ConQuest, or other format files such as CIF, PDB, MOL2 and MOLfile and claims to offer a full range of structure display styles. It also provides the ability to measure and display distances, angles and torsion angles involving atoms, centroids and planes, as well as the ability to create and display centroids, least-squares mean planes and Miller planes. The ability to display unit cell axes, the contents of any number of unit cells in any direction, or a slice through a crystal in any direction is also included, as is the ability to build and visualise a network of intermolecular contacts. Intermolecular and/or intramolecular hydrogen bonds, short nonbonded contacts, and user-specified types of contacts can be located and displayed. In addition, the powder diffraction pattern for the structure on view can be calculated, displayed and saved. Mercury is available as a free download but some advanced functionality is only available to registered subscribers.
The CCDC has also released version 2.2 of its protein-ligand docking program GOLD. This version can be downloaded from the CCDC's website but a user name and password are required.
Encyclopedia covers chromatography science |Apr 05|Dekker's new Encyclopedia of Chromatography 2e is available as both a two-volume print set and as an online database. It is said to provide an introduction to the science and technology of chromatography, as well as giving advanced references on the theory of the method.
The encyclopedia includes more than 400 cross-referenced articles, of which over 80 are entirely new. Topics and applications have been updated for this new edition. Key references to recent literature and discussions on emerging technologies and applications in chromatography are also included, as are tables and figures illustrating and clarifying the text's technical points and applications.
Reel Two's chemical search tool will aid researchers |Apr 05|Reel Two has announced a product that enables researchers and intellectual property analysts to find all the chemical compounds related to their search queries or areas of research. SureChem searches documents by name or structure. Compound names are highlighted in the text of documents such as MEDLINE abstracts, full-text patent documents and journal articles. SureChem also displays associations between compounds and the search query, as well as associations between the compounds identified and other entities retrieved during the search, including species, minerals and countries.
SureChem is based on by Reel Two's Entity Extractor, a technology that rapidly identifies, tags and extracts single and multiple-word proper name entities, and OpenEye Scientific Software's OGHAM, a toolkit that enables accurate conversion between chemical names and structures.
Spectral databases join UVIR Manager platform |Apr 05|S.T. Japan's ATR and Transmission FT-IR, and Raman databases will now be available worldwide for use with Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD/Labs)'s UVIR Manager software. S.T. Japan's databases total more than 80,000 spectra in more than 60 separate databases. Areas covered include polymers, surfactants, dyes, biochemicals, pesticides, forensics, and hazardous materials. Roughly half of this data has been collected by the Japanese government as transmission spectra (known as the SDBS database). The remainder has been collected independently as ATR/FT-IR spectra by S.T. Japan and cooperatively under agreement with Smiths Detection and Sigma-Aldrich. ACD/UVIR Manager is part of ACD/SpecManager, the overall spectroscopic processing and data management software that unifies analytical data information of all types into a single interface.
Composed of three tightly integrated industry-leading modules, ACD/UVIR Manager is said to provide the ability to manipulate and manage optical spectra in a continuous range from 1 cm-1 to 100,000 cm-1, while taking advantage of advanced chemical drawing and reporting features.
Database upgrades help compare molecules |Apr 05|OpenEye Scientific Software has announced new versions of its ROCS and EON databases which screen molecules for shape and electrostatic similarity to a lead compound and are thereby said to lead generation and library design for drug discovery. ROCS aligns molecules and compares their 3D shapes, while EON compares electrostatic potential fields throughout space around molecules. Both programs determine Tanimoto and Tversky measures as rigorous metrics for the comparisons, so that a database can be quickly sorted by similarity to the query compound. In a typical workflow, with a query molecule known to be active against a target protein, ROCS is used to screen multi-conformer corporate databases, while EON is used as a secondary screen on the best ROCS results. This process, yielding compounds with both similar shape and similar electrostatics, can be run on a million compound libraries in a day on a single processor.
Key new features in ROCS 2.1 and EON 1.1 include support for CCP4 and XPLOR map files as grid queries and new chemically aware colour force-fields for donor, acceptor, anion, cation, rings and hydrophobic groups. More efficient scaling to large numbers of processors and improved workflow between ROCS and EON are also said to be included.
Bio-Rad tool helps compare pharmaceutical and visual data |Apr 05|Bio-Rad Laboratories has added the CompareIt application to version 4.1 of its KnowItAll Informatics System. Pharmaceutical researchers can use this tool to visualise and compare numeric data between multiple databases. The CompareIt application enables users to select any two property fields from multiple databases for comparison. For example, suggests the company, a researcher might choose to compare ADME response data (e.g. Blood-Brain Barrier) to molecular physical property data (e.g. Polar Surface Area or logP) or to other ADME response data (e.g. Human Intestinal Absorption). Once the researcher selects the fields to be compared, the application generates a scatter-plot diagram of one variable versus the other. Selecting any point or group of points will display the compounds and the related data that is associated with that record.
The data input for this application can be either KnowItAll user-generated or reference databases containing experimental data, calculated results, or both. The CompareIt application is said to be fully integrated with all other applications in the KnowItAll environment, including searching, reporting, and prediction.
Thomson and ACS agree on linking |Apr 05|Thomson and the American Chemical Society (ACS) have announced a linking agreement that will provide Web of Science subscribers who also subscribe to American Chemical Society Publications with links to the full-text of articles from ACS Web editions and ACS Journal Archives. Current subscribers to ACS Web editions, ACS Journal Archives, and Web of Science, which includes access to Science Citation Index, Index Chemicus, and Current Chemical Reactions, can now link directly into the ACS journal of their choice.
ACS Web editions consist of over 33 peer-reviewed journals which are said to be among the most cited, most requested, and most respected journals in chemistry.
Structure and reactions platform gets update |Apr 05|InfoChem has launched a new version of its web-based structure and reaction research platform SPRESIweb, which, it claims, provides powerful new capabilities. The system is said to offer internet access to 4.5 million compounds and 3.6 million reactions from 565,000 references including 156,000 patents. Over 28 million facts such as chemical and physical properties, reaction conditions and keywords abstracted from the primary literature are searchable. SPRESIweb 2.1 enables reaction name searches in addition to common search types such as 'substructure search', 'isomer search', 'parent search' and 'flex match'. SPRESIweb can link to several document delivery services (such as FIZ AutoDoc, CISTI and subito), to online patent services (Espacenet, US Patent & Trademark Office and MicroPatent), to other cheminformatics services (ChemNavigator) and to online services for physical property and spectra prediction (ACD/I-Lab).
It also allows direct linking from the references to the abstracts and full text articles on the publishers' sites.
Google boosts internal search tool for business |Apr 05|Google has enhanced Google Search Appliance, its tool that enables businesses to offer Google-quality search across their own web pages and content. The Google Search Appliance, which is already available throughout Europe, is designed for larger enterprises. New improvements to the Google Search Appliance include database search, which provides access to the valuable information stored inside company databases and delivers a comprehensive, unified search across structured and unstructured data. It also enables localised administration so that IT managers can administer the Google Search Appliance in their local languages. Full administration is now supported in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Japanese and is automatically detected by the user's browser settings. Third-party content feed and SNMP monitoring are also included.
Google has also introduced the Google Mini for its US customers. This search appliance enables small-to-medium-sized businesses to offer employees, customers, and business partners Google-quality search across their own web pages and content. It is said to index all content within an intranet or public website so users can search up to 50,000 documents. Google plans to introduce the Google Mini to international markets in the future.
Ingenta expands Infotrieve relationship |Apr 05|Ingenta-hosted content will be indexed by Infotrieve's full-text crawler thanks to an extended partnership between the two companies. Infotrieve can now provide full-text article searches via its discovery research portals, increasing the depth of discovery resources for Infotrieve customers and generating additional document delivery traffic for Ingenta-hosted publishers.
'We are very pleased with this initiative,' said Andrea Powell, product development director at CABI Publishing, whose journals are hosted by Ingenta. 'Infotrieve helps us to reach new markets for our content, and this arrangement between Ingenta and Infotrieve gives us extra exposure and potential new revenue, without us having to do a thing. This is a good example of technology enabling retrieval and creating new distribution channels for our content.'
Infotrieve launches search and discovery tool |Apr 05|Infotrieve has launched a web-based search and discovery research environment called the Life Science Research Center (LSRC). The LSRC is said to simplify scientists' daily workflow by providing a robust user interface to search diverse types of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) information and to identify relationships across disparate sources of content. It enables full-text searching of pre-processed STM content such as literature, patents, drug pipeline data, genes, technical protocols, laboratory products, and industry news.
In addition to full-text searching and the identification of relationships through entity extraction and concept clustering, the Life Science Research Center offers secure meta-searching of external and internal corporate data sources, personalisation for individuals and collaborative workgroups, and robust search capabilities. Infotrieve is currently integrating the Infotrieve Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) with the LSRC, as well as literature retrieval, and laboratory product purchasing.
MediaLab and VTLS provide new way of searching |Apr 05|VTLS and MediaLab Solutions have joined to provide a new way of searching an OPAC as an optional component in VTLS's VECTORS portal. MediaLab's AquaBrowser is described as a graphic, associative, helpful and intelligent search tool. It finds items using associations, context, and spelling alternatives automatically generated from the library's catalogue. It eases searches by offering relevant suggestions, spelling variations, synonyms, translations, and associations.
'It is our belief that AquaBrowser is an important step forward for all libraries to ensure ease-of-use and, equally important, to appeal to users who've grown up on computers and expect a far more graphical interface to information,' said Carl Grant, president and COO of VTLS. 'For too long, OPAC's have offered only traditional approaches to searching. AquaBrowser breaks through that barrier.'
DialogLink update aids distribution |Apr 05|DialogLink 5 is now available for free downloading. This software package is said to have a more intuitive interface than previous versions, as well as additional tools to streamline the process of finding, retrieving and distributing information found through the Dialog online service. The software offers Electronic Redistribution and Archiving (ERA), a service that guarantees copyright clearance for copying, storing and distributing documents retrieved from Dialog. DialogLink 5 also helps users to take information and data from a search and put it into a desired format for customers, managers or others in their organisation. The new integrated report builder is said to make it easy to produce high-quality reports in less time by providing a selection of pre-formatted Microsoft Excel and Word templates. Users can also build customised templates with unique formatting and with company or department logos. It also offers automated research assistance. This means that users can instantly link to related information in other files, choose a display format based on search results, access relevant support materials with one click or ask questions of the Dialog support team directly.
The new version also recommends alternate sources and search strategies to be pursued for more in-depth research results.
New STN tool transforms information into graphics |Feb 05|STN International has enhanced its user interface for database searches and information processing. The new 'STN Express with Discover! Analysis Edition V. 7.01' is said to offer new possibilities for advanced data grouping, multifile results analysis, and visualisation. Retrieved data can be extracted or filtered according to certain criteria and subsequently processed with standard Microsoft office packages in order to create useful statistics and trend analysis. Automatic electronic assistants, combined with an interactive menu, take the user through complex searches and results analyses, and display the extracted information as graphic hit lists and 3-D Excel bar charts. Another new feature is the 'Analyze Plus Wizard', which analyses and processes results from multifile searches in one single step and groups them so that they can then be displayed as Excel charts and easily be included into management reports. In the new version the CAS Registry Number Wizard facilitates the access to experimental or calculated properties of chemical substances and there are additional ways to access the 'Polylink' and 'Seqlink' commands for chemical searches.
STN Express with Discover! allows searches to be prepared offline and supports the analysis and post-processing of results, as well as offering seamless access to electronic or printed full-texts.
FIZ CHEMIE Berlin improves thermophysical properties database |Feb 05|The newly-upgraded version of Infotherm from Fachinformationszentrum Chemie (FIZ CHEMIE Berlin) is said to be one of the largest internet-based databases of thermophysical properties. It covers approximately 24,000 chemical mixtures and approximately 6,600 pure compounds. The online database, programmed in XML, is said to offer improved functions for professional searches of chemical data on the internet. For example, the Boolean operators 'and' and 'or' can now be used to make logical combinations of search criteria to retrieve the property data of a particular mixture. Further improvements of Infotherm assist in the processing of the search results and their integration into company networks. For example, diagrams can now be downloaded as PDF files. The diagrams are shown directly on the display screen without the need to install the usual Java applet. Furthermore, they can be displayed as a file that can be stored separately. Retrievable data in Infotherm includes PVT properties, phase equilibria, transport and surface properties, caloric properties and solid-liquid equilibria. The information provided in the database has been compiled and evaluated by a team of highly qualified specialists using international publications in scientific journals, handbooks, and data collections, as well as sources that are difficult to access such as measurement protocols produced by the chemical industry or internal reports from research institutions. The data are checked in several quality control cycles before they are entered into the database.
Much of the retrievable data is free of charge, including basic data on pure compounds. There is a fee for certain data on the behaviour of pure materials and on mixtures.
Ovid speeds up bibliographic database searches |Feb 05|A new, cost-effective and efficient way to dramatically speed up online research sessions is promised from Ovid's new Database Link Packages. The packages, which are available immediately for current Ovid and SilverPlatter Online customers with database subscriptions, offer one-click access to hundreds of e-journals and subject-specific websites. This is expected to ensure that valuable and relevant resources are not missed. To provide this coverage, Ovid identifies and sets up links that connect to a specific bibliographic database, such as CAB Abstracts or MEDLINE. Links only become active for articles cited in the bibliographic database. This means that users experience a more productive search session because they are immediately directed to all of the full text available at their library as well as open-access and subscription-based journal entries. The link can be extended by adding other internet resources such as patent or dissertation databases. The packages include an inherent search quality filter to select which of the thousands of free e-journals available on the internet appear in the Database Link Packages.
Ovid can provide Link Packages for bibliographic databases covering fields such as agriculture and conservation (CAB Abstracts), medicine (AMED), nursing (BNI), economics (EconLit), pharmaceutics (EMBASE), biomedicine (MEDLINE) and engineering (INSPEC).
Dialog expands organic chemistry collection |Feb 05|Dialog has reorganised and expanded its Beilstein organic chemistry collection. The company is now offering the Beilstein collection in three separate files that may be searched simultaneously or individually. Beilstein Facts (File 390), with research back to 1771, provides chemical structures and comprehensive details on the properties of organic chemicals, such as melting points, densities and spectral data. The second file is Beilstein Reactions (File 391), which contains data for more than nine million chemical reactions and preparations. Data retrieved through File 391 is now linked to the properties in File 390 and the abstracts in File 393, allowing for follow-up research. The final file, Beilstein Abstracts (File 393), includes citations from literature and patents published from 1771 until 1979 and citations with abstracts of articles published since 1980. These are drawn from approximately 175 key journals. References may be supplemented with data retrieved from Dialog's extensive portfolio of scientific literature and worldwide patents and users can now be notified automatically via email when relevant new data is added.
According to Dialog, the reorganisation and enhancements to the collection will make it available at simple, predictable and the most competitive pricing, and make it easier to search and manage results.
Web of Science will span more than a century |Feb 05|Thomson will add another 45 years of backfiles to its Web of Science bibliographic database. From the first quarter of 2005, the Century of Science initiative will boost Web of Science content with backfiles, cited reference data and navigation from 1900 to 1944. This database, accessed via the ISI Web of Knowledge research platform, already offers backfiles as far back as 1945. The Century of Science initiative will add approximately 850,000 selected articles from more than 200 journals from the published research of the first half of the 20th century. 'Many groups within Thomson went to extraordinary lengths to identify, locate, acquire, and index the journals from this 45-year period,' said Keith MacGregor, executive vice-president for academic and government markets at Thomson Scientific.
Citation and geographic patterns and a meaningful balance across scientific disciplines were important criteria in selecting the journals to include. 'Cited reference searching puts data into context. This makes it an invaluable tool not only for the researcher, but also for Thomson as an information provider compiling decades of significant research,' he added.
Nature continues to digitise archive |Feb 05|The full text of Nature's archives is now available as far back as January 1980. Nature is currently digitising its archives back to 1950 and the content is being released in installments. All editorial content from the print issues is available, including articles and letters, review material, news and views, news and comment, literature and essays. Supplements are also included. All images have been included when available within online copyright. When the archive has been completed it will contain 2,399 issues (volumes 283-384), which corresponds to around 154,500 articles. Each article includes an HTML abstract and PDF version of the full article, as well as hyperlinked references using the abstracting services of CrossRef, Medline, and ISI Web of Science.
The Nature archive is also integrated with current content from across the Nature Publishing Group portfolio.
Wiley InterScience evaluates backfiles |Feb 05|Wiley has launched its New Directions for Evaluation Backfile Collection. The launch represents the online debut of the first 88 issues of the journal, which were published from 1978 to 2000. The New Directions for Evaluation Backfile Collection is available via Wiley InterScience. New Directions for Evaluation is an official publication of the American Evaluation Association. First published under the title New Directions for Program Evaluation, the journal is said to provide programme administrators, institutional researchers, and evaluation specialists with techniques and procedures for evaluating all types of programmes from educational to health.
With the launch of the Backfile Collection, subscribers will have online access to around 10,000 editorial pages and 550 articles of new journal content that has previously been out of print.
Open-access biology journal invites submissions |Feb 05|Molecular Systems Biology, the new online journal from the European Molecular Biology Organization and Nature Publishing Group, is now accepting submissions for its inaugural issue in March 2005. The new journal will be published exclusively online with access to primary research free of charge to all readers worldwide. Publication will be supported in part by an author fee.
The journal will cover all aspects of systems biology at the molecular level and, in particular, the evolving areas of proteomics, functional genomics, structural genomics, transcriptomics, computational biology, bioinformatics, theoretical biology and mathematical biology. In addition, Molecular Systems Biology will work together with the systems biology community to present standards and metrics for global complex datasets.
Ovid announces portal service for clinical research |Feb 05|Ovid Technologies has ann-ounced what it describes as a unique service, designed to allow society and publishing partners to develop specialised portals that support communities of practitioners and researchers in medicine and science. Communities@Ovid, based on Ovid's Portal Advantage Service, provides an online service that can be tailored by subject theme for society members and other groups of professionals with similar literature research needs. For the clinical market, Communities@Ovid is said to offer a one-stop destination for information about research in a clinical context. Ovid works in partnership with the society or publishing partner, combining their proprietary content with Ovid's rich data repository to create one easy-to-use resource for important peer-reviewed journals, books, and databases, as well as other resources including news feeds, guidelines, conference papers, continuing medical education courses (CME), and drug information and tools.
The American Heart Association (AHA) recently used the Communities@Ovid service to enhance its MyAmericanHeart.org website.
Database gives resistances of plastics to range of chemicals |Feb 05|FIZ CHEMIE Berlin and TDS Herrlich have launched a new CD-ROM database containing manufacturer-independent information on the resistance of plastics to various chemicals. Polyresist covers thermoplastics, thermoplastic elastomers, blends and thermosetting moulding compounds. In addition to the classification of the plastics into resistance classes, various influencing variables, such as temperature, concentration and exposure time to certain media can be retrieved for the respective plastic. Polyresist will be published in three stages. The first, currently available, stage is said to include 19,800 commercial products from more than 200 manufacturers, media information on 1,600 commercial products and more than 170 media in approximately 600 combinations of physical conditions such as concentration and temperature. It also includes 4,200 application keywords, 2,500 property keywords and the supplier addresses for 8,900 commercial products.
The information stored in Polyresist is available as a self-contained CD-ROM database or in combination with the materials databases Polymat or Polymat light.
Innovative tool links libraries to Amazon |Feb 05|Innovative Interfaces has added a Web Services link between its Millennium product and Amazon.com. This, it says, will speed up the process of buying books and entering them into the library's catalogue and online portals. With a single click, library staff can search Amazon.com for a specific title, check the library catalogue for duplicates, download pricing and availability information, and obtain the information necessary to create a database record. This enhancement to Inventory Express has been customer-tested and will be included in the Millennium 2005 release.
Web Services is XML-based and facilitates application-to-application communication between disparate sites on the internet. In addition to Amazon.com, Inventory Express also connects with Baker & Taylor and BWI using the Web Services framework.
SwetsWise adds interfaces for Japanese, Chinese and Spanish users |Feb 05|Swets Information Services has added Japanese, traditional Chinese and Spanish interfaces to its online service for the procurement, access and management of subscriptions and online information. It already offers English, French, German and Swedish interfaces.
The new language versions are part of Swets' drive to reduce the complexity and expense involved in e-journal management. To further boost its 'Gateway to China' publisher services programme, Swets will launch a simplified Chinese interface in early 2005.
STN gains Korean patents in English |Feb 05|STN International has added KOREAPAT, a new bibliographic file covering Korean patents, to its product portfolio. KOREAPAT (Korean Patent Abstracts), produced by the Korean Institute of Patent Information (KIPI) on behalf of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), provides access to Korean patent information from all areas of science and technology in English. The database covers Korean examined patents (B-documents) from 1979-2001 and Korean unexamined patents (A-documents) from 2000 onwards. The records contain inventor and assignee data, publication information, and international patent classification codes. More than 440,000 images of representative drawings are also included. The database currently contains more than 485,000 records and approximately 80,000 new records are added each year. Records appear about four months after publication in Korea.
STN already offers the Japanese patent database JAPIO and is also said to be adding Russian patents.
Elsevier MDL launches chemical patent database |Feb 05|Elsevier MDL has introduced the MDL Patent Chemistry Database, a new structure-searchable collection of patent chemistry information designed for research scientists and information professionals in chemistry, pharmacology and other life sciences. According to the company, the database will enable researchers to rapidly explore world, US and European patents dating from 1976 using structure, reaction and text searches. It should also improve synthesis planning, enable access to enhanced bioactivity profiles and help determine data relevance. The database is available via MDL CrossFire Direct or for in-house installation. It will also be offered through the DiscoveryGate web platform, which is used for accessing scientific information from databases, journal articles and major reference works. 'With 28 years of chemistry patents from around the world, the database offers researchers important access to information about unique compounds - nearly 70 per cent of the compounds in the Patent Chemistry Database are not found in other DiscoveryGate databases,' said Lars Barfod, the company's CEO.
The MDL Patent Chemistry Database contains 1.5 million structure-searchable chemical reactions and more than 1.6 million organic, inorganic and organometallic compounds and associated information taken from approximately 340,000 organic chemistry and life science patents. The database is updated bi-weekly and approximately 500,000 reactions, 800,000 compounds and 35,000 patent publications are added each year. All reactions have the full experimental text supplying crucial process details, and are indexed with InfoChem ClassCodes. This is said to allow seamless retrieval of similar reactions from all MDL databases and integrated major reference works. The database indexes not only compounds with data, but also prophetic compounds, which are seldom covered elsewhere.
Derwent data added to Delphion toolset |Feb 05|Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) data, along with full-text patent office data, can now be used in intellectual property workflows because of enhancements made to Delphion's productivity and analysis tools. A significant new development is the inclusion of DWPI records in Work Files, which are personalised lists of patents that can be shared and annotated. This is said to provide an ideal way for groups of users to collaborate on research findings.
In addition to enhanced patent titles and abstracts written in English using clear, descriptive, industry-specific terms, DWPI data enables researchers to view only one record per invention, eliminating the duplication created by multiple patent publications. This, claims Delphion's parent company Thomson, enables more accurate analysis and faster review of relevant records than can be done with patent office data alone.
Software simplifies technical publishing |Dec|Wolfram Publicon, a new integrated software solution for composing sophisticated technical documents, is now available from Wolfram Research. Intended for the growing number of academic researchers, students, and industry professionals who need to create or publish documents with technical content, Publicon produces platform-independent files that can be exported to HTML, XML, LaTeX, or custom Publicon formats. According to Wolfram, technical writers have previously only had cumbersome means of integrating mathematical typesetting into their documents. The company's software is said to incorporate intuitive maths typesetting technology with additional templates for chemical equations, special characters, and symbols. These are expected to help produce publication-quality documents quickly and easily. Mathematical notation from a Publicon document can be copied and pasted for computation in Mathematica, Wolfram's technical computing system.
Publicon includes a guided, template-driven document creation system; a scrolling, WYSIWYG interface; support for the composition of structured documents in various formats; HTML, XML, and LaTeX export features; and automatic conversion to and from MathML. It is also said to offer full searchability within typeset equations for any character, including operators, bracketing characters, and radicals; automated reference management; notes and cross-reference insertion tools; style sheets that control all aspects of a document's functionality and appearance; a built-in technical dictionary; platform-independent document creation; and a searchable help browser. Publicon is available for Windows and Mac OS X.
Global Health available on Ovid and SilverPlatter |Dec|CABI Publishing's Global Health database and its corresponding archive are now available on both the Ovid and SilverPlatter platforms. Global Health is an international public health information resource for academics, researchers, non-governmental organisations, policy makers, clinicians, healthcare professionals, and students.
Global Health holds over 900,000 records, 95 per cent of which contain informative abstracts, and an additional 50,000 are added annually. CABI indexes 3,500 serials from more than 125 countries and screens an additional 6,000 for relevant material. This 'open serials cited list' allows Global Health to cite important papers from a wide range of sources. In addition, more than 50 languages are translated into English. Global Health Archive features 800,000 records from 1910 to 1973.
Swets launches link resolver |Dec|Swets Information Services has launched SwetsWise Linker as part of its e-journals management drive. SwetsWise Linker is described as an OpenURL link resolver that provides users with a cohesive search environment for over 9,000 e-journals and 500 e-journal aggregators and secondary databases.
SwetsWise Linker enables libraries to integrate all of their electronic holdings resources in one customisable interface, providing seamless linking from one article's bibliographic information to another's full text. The service is based on Openly Informatics' NISO-1.0 OpenURL resolution technology.
Books@Ovid gains core clinical texts |Dec|Ovid Technologies has enhanced its electronic books platform, Books@Ovid, to enable clinicians, researchers, students, and information managers to search core clinical texts. The enhancements include new intuitive search and browse features, such as natural language search capability, relevance ranking, and back-of-the-book index browsing. Books@Ovid has also been integrated with Journals@Ovid and Ovid's bibliographic databases. This gives users access to the entire range of Ovid tools, including Ask-a-Librarian and Personal Accounts, as well as links to full text journals, bibliographic records and external web resources. The platform is said to include a complete back-of-the-book index that provides links to the page where the indexed concept is described. Other new navigation features include subject, as well as title browsing and a fully expandable table of contents. Single repository searching of books with databases and journals, natural language searching to locate complex clinical concepts in a single step, ranked in relevance order, and heading and chapter titles searching are also possible, as well as specialised index searching of access points such as caption and reference text. Users can view full text articles found in those journals and books to which their institution subscribes, and have the option to purchase journal articles through Ovid's PayPerView service. In addition, Books@Ovid provides ongoing updates of selected titles.
In a separate development, Martindale: The complete drug reference will also be accessible on Books@Ovid platform from January 2005. Initially published by Pharmaceutical Press in 1883 under the title, Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia, Martindale: The complete drug reference is an extensive resource offering 6,000 monographs on drugs and related compounds, 640 treatment reviews, 37,500 references, 130,000 preparations from more than 33 countries, and information on more than 12,000 manufacturers. In addition to encyclopaedic information on drugs used clinically, it also includes veterinary and investigational drugs, other compounds used in medicine, pharmaceutical excipients, herbal medicines, toxic substances, and much more.
EBSCO enhances A-to-Z |Dec|EBSCO has added a holdings change report to its A-to-Z with MARC Updates (A-to-Z with MARC) add-on to EBSCO A-to-Z. A-to-Z with MARC provides a customisable file in MARC 21 format representing the library's e-resource holdings, title URLs and online coverage information. It supplies quality bibliographic records from CONSER and monthly updates to facilitate online catalogue maintenance. The enhancement enables customers to quickly see changes made to their A-to-Z account. The report lists new and removed titles as well as any resources that have had changes to the URL, coverage or embargo information. The report reflects changes made by the customer (adding or removing resources from their A-to-Z list) and changes made to the underlying A-to-Z knowledge base (titles added to or removed from an aggregated database). The company has also improved customisation options through new customer-controlled notes and icons. In addition, it is said to provide more flexibility through enhanced proxy server settings.
The notes and icons feature allows the administrator to customise notes for each library and to control where the notes display. The notes could, for example, indicate the physical location of print holdings within the library or show that a resource is new to the list. The library can specify the text that shows when the user places the mouse over an icon. The icons can be clickable so the user is taken to a library-specified URL or so that a pop-up window displays a note provided by the library.
Springer provides online access to historical scientific articles |Dec|Springer's new Online Journals Archive is described as allowing almost complete electronic access to all its English-language scientific articles published before 1997 - from volume 1, issue 1 onward. Starting in January 2005, these past issues will successively be made available in various subject area packages via the online platform SpringerLink. Scientists and researchers will be able to electronically access the complete knowledge of more than a century. As a result of the merger of Springer-Verlag and Kluwer Academic Publishers in July 2004, the online database SpringerLink, which was set up in 1996, will nearly double in size. As of January 2005, approximately 1,250 journals will be accessible. At present, SpringerLink includes 500 journals and more than 2,500 books. The Online Journals Archive will be likely to add 1.5 million articles and 13 million pages. Springer will offer the Online Journals Archive in 11 different subject area packages. Each package will contain 60 to 120 journal titles in sequential series by year and issue number. Journals may also be assigned to more than one package. Exclusions will be for journals not presently online, those not copyrighted by Springer, and those in which none of the content is in English. The archive will not contain journals that were not published on a regular basis prior to 1995 or discontinued before this date.
Works will be fully searchable by keyword or by journal or article title. They include author abstract information freely accessible to all.
Dialog Choice pricing plan expands |Dec|Dialog has added databases of global intellectual property records and business information to the content that is available through Dialog Choice, the company's fixed-fee enterprise subscription pricing plan. New content sources include 10 files offered by ProQuest Information and Learning, which creates and publishes databases for libraries and educational institutions worldwide. ProQuest is offering databases such as ABI/ INFORM (company histories, competitive intelligence and new product development research) and Business Dateline (regional perspectives reported in more than 550 local business publications across Canada and the US). International intellectual property records now available through the Dialog Choice plan include internet domain names (a database of worldwide internet domain names with more than 100 million records) and abstracts of archived and new patent records from the People's Republic of China.
More than 120 databases, provided by 62 information providers, are now available through the Dialog Choice plan.
MicroPatent adds client usage tracking and a link to the EPO Register |Dec|MicroPatent has added two new features to PatentWeb: client usage tracking and a link to the EPO Register. PatentWeb Usage Tracking allows users to view monthly document delivery and search activity, including billable matter numbers or client reference information and search queries. The information is itemised in a monthly report that lists usage, fees, and references. This information can be applied to internal departments or shared with outside clients. PatentWeb usage tracking is accessible from MicroPatent's Document Delivery area, as well as from its two searchable databases, PatSearch FullText and MPI-INPADOC Plus. In all instances, there is a field dedicated to the reference, docket or strategy matter, which will appear in the monthly report and through which the customer can properly assign the activity.
Customers that have the Usage Tracking feature activated will receive two reports each month: the Enhanced Activity Report, which details user activity, date, time, and strategy/reference, and the Document Delivery Report, which itemises document downloads by user, date/time, price, and strategy/reference. The Document Delivery report shows the 'list price' for the ordered document(s) to assist client billing.
ISI Web of Knowledge gives access to Biological Abstracts |Dec|Biological Abstracts, the index to the world's life sciences journals, is now available on Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge. Covering every life sciences discipline, Biological Abstracts has more than eight million archival records dating back to 1969. ISI Web of Knowledge now also offers new personal-isation features for authors, more sophisticated search tools for advanced researchers, a more intuitive interface for novices, streamlined integration capabilities and new journal analysis tools for libraries. When accessed on ISI Web of Knowledge, Biological Abstracts will be enhanced with value-added features and functionality such as citation alerts, times-cited information and citation navigation through links to Web of Science.
The BIOSIS indexing provides consistent term assignment to lead users directly to items of interest. The use of CAS Registry Numbers and MeSH Disease Headings offers users access to the current life sciences research literature through well-known controlled vocabularies. The assignment of both common and formal taxomonic terms, and controlled drug action terms applied in conjunction with the original author's abstract, allows users to retrieve organism data without knowing the author's original term. This is said to make Biological Abstracts the reliable source of life sciences literature that is equally accessible by new and experienced life scientists.
PsycEXTRA is available via EBSCOhost |Dec|EBSCO Publishing has added the PsycEXTRA database to its subject-specific online resources. This addition is said to enhance the existing collection of psychology and behavioural sciences databases available via EBSCOhost. Apart from access via the American Psychological Association's PsycNET platform, this database will only be available via the EBSCOhost interface.
Produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), PsycEXTRA serves as a companion database to PsycINFO, also available via EBSCOhost. PsycEXTRA consists of grey literature including technical reports, conference abstracts and papers, newsletters, magazines, newspapers and consumer brochures. This information spans publications issued by government agencies, private research institutes, psychology labs, corporations, scientific societies, and others. The database currently indexes approximately 45,000 records with full text provided for over 22,000 of these records (more than 150,000 full-text pages). APA plans to add more than 30,000 further records each year and to provide the corresponding full text for many of them.
BioMed Central launches institutional repository service |Dec|BioMed Central has launched a repository service for universities and research institutions. Open Repository helps institutions to quickly and easily build, launch, maintain, and populate their institutional repositories. The service has been designed to be flexible and cost-effective. The Open Repository service makes it possible for institutions that could not otherwise afford, or lack the infrastructure or technical capacity in-house, to set up repositories. Open Repository offers a number of different levels of service, to fit with a university or institution's requirements. For a one-off set-up fee, BioMed Central will build the repository with the open-source software D-Space, with complete customisation to the customer's requirements. Repositories built under the scheme will be able to accept a wide variety of publication types. It is then up to the institution whether they wish BioMed Central to host and run the repository or to transfer operation and maintenance to themselves. The institution remains the owner of the repository.
For an annual fee, BioMed Central offers to maintain the repository and guarantee ongoing customer support. BioMed Central's Open Repository service will include converting articles to PDF and XML. Advanced search functionality will be a part of the service, as will links to and from databases, for example PubMed, and via CrossRef to the body of scientific literature.
EBSCO adds searchable citations to CINAHL database |Dec|EBSCO Publishing has added searchable cited references for over 800 journal titles to its CINAHL database. Searchable cited references allow users to locate additional information related to an article of interest. Sometimes referred to as Reference Linking, this functionality lets users link directly from a particular article to other articles cited in the bibliography of the original article. It also allows users to link directly from a particular article to other articles in the database that cite the original article. CINAHL provides indexing for over 1,700 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. The database contains more than 961,000 records dating back to 1982.
The EBSCOhost version of CINAHL also includes PreCINAHL. This companion database provides current awareness of new journal articles, and includes a rotating file of limited bibliographic information that is available to researchers only while these articles are being indexed. This enables users to gain access to article citations that otherwise would not be available. Once the bibliographic records are complete, they are added to the CINAHL database and removed from PreCINAHL.
Wiley launches neuroscience backfiles |Dec|Wiley has launched its Neuroscience Backfile Collection. This digital journal archive is available via Wiley InterScience. The collection provides a backfile resource for core research across 14 leading journal titles in neuroscience. It includes full coverage of titles such as the Journal of Comparative Neurology, the oldest journal in the field of neuroscience, the Annals of Neurology, the Journal of Neuroscience Research, and GLIA, the journal that launched the field of glial research, which is now considered to be a mainstream area in the field of neuroscience.
All journal articles are presented in a fully searchable PDF format, with abstracts, bibliographic content, and literature citations all available in HTML, allowing for both internal linking to cited content located on Wiley InterScience, and external linking via CrossRef/DOI, PubMed, ISI Web of Science, and CAS.
IFIS launches functional foods journal |Dec|The International Food Information Service (IFIS) has launched the Food Science and Technology Bulletin: Functional Foods, which is described as the first in a new series of electronic review journals offering concise summaries of developments in key areas of food science, technology, and nutrition. Edited by Professor Glenn R. Gibson of Reading University in the UK and peer-reviewed, the journal uses the web for rapid publication and dissemination, and is hosted at the IFIS website. Subscribers can either pay per view for single minireviews or take out an annual subscription. The latter gives unlimited access to the complete journal backfile plus 10 new minireviews published during the subscription period. Access to individual minireviews costs US $32 (£20 and €30). Annual subscriptions cost US $240 (£150 and &eur;230) for an organisation and US $60 (£37.50 and €57.50) for an individual.
In 2005 the Food Science and Technology Bulletin: Functional Foods will be available as part of the ALPSP Learned Journals Collection (ALJC).
Nature Publishing Group launches new methods journal |Dec|Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has launched a laboratory techniques journal for researchers involved in biotechnology, drug discovery or chemistry and its interface within the life sciences.
Nature Methods presents techniques of immediate practical relevance, with the detail that laboratory technicians, research assistants and post doctoral fellows for example, will need to reproduce their results independently. In addition to primary reports of new methods, the content includes research highlights, step-by-step protocols (written in association with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press), application notes, technology reviews and more. Nature Methods offers a limited number of free subscriptions for individuals who qualify.
product articles in fullPAIS International joins EBSCOhostEBSCO Publishing has added the PAIS International database to its suite of subject-specific bibliographic databases on EBSCOhost. PAIS International is produced by the OCLC Public Affairs Information Service, which has provided global coverage of public affairs and world issues since 1914. Topics covered include: affirmative action, AIDS, climate change, ethnicity, environmental degradation, political persecution, war and conflict, and women's rights.
The database includes references to more than 530,000 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, policy papers, internet documents, websites, conference reports and other sources from more than 120 countries.
IEEE Enterprise gives customised accessBusinesses of any size can customise their access to research information in electrical engineering, computer science, telecommunications, imaging, robotics and related fields through a new IEEE online product called IEEE Enterprise. Subscribers to IEEE Enterprise choose from three levels of access, ranging from 350 to 1,750 full-text article downloads. Subscribers can search over one million technical documents available through the dynamic IEEE Xplore online delivery system and instantly download full-text documents from IEEE journals and conference proceedings on a per-article basis.
The new product allows businesses to have up to five simultaneous users access the collection and to renew online at any time. It also includes an online collaboration tool so that users at a subscribing company can share their downloaded articles and compare ongoing research.
New database target global metals industryDialog has released a new database to serve the global metals industry and its users. MetalBase (File 36) aggregates literature drawn internationally from publications and proceedings focused on the metals and allied industries, including aluminium, steel and iron. Its content includes articles and reports from specialised trade publications; books and monographs; proceedings from conferences, symposia and meetings; journal articles; and patent documents. The topics covered in MetalBase include forms, materials, products, processes and properties. MetalBase also includes documents related to welding and allied processes.
At its launch, MetalBase contained more than 316,000 documents dating back to 1966 and additional documents are said to be added on an ongoing basis. Dialog produced the new database by culling metals-related materials from two other databases available on its services, INSPEC (File 2) and Weldasearch (File 25).
Emerald launches research resources for managementEmerald Group Publishing will launch a resource for those that teach and research management skills. Emerald Management Xtra is said to be the largest, most comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed management journals and online support for librarians, faculty, researchers, teachers and deans. It also provides access to unpublished research, conference updates, libraries of case studies, assistance with teaching and curriculum development, and practical usage statistics. Accessed online, it is said to offer an integrated search and navigation function across not only Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Reviews, but across the added resources available through Emerald Management Xtra, facilitating 'one stop' searching.
The tool will go live in December 2004 but beta test versions are already available.
Infotrieve and ISI ResearchSoft collaborate on reference toolsThomson ISI ResearchSoft, the maker of EndNote and Reference Manager software, and Infotrieve, which provides integrated solutions for scientific, technology and medical (STM) content acquisition, distribution and management worldwide, will collaborate to deliver enhanced services to corporate researchers.
This collaboration will provide seamless connectivity between content delivered by Infotrieve and ISI ResearchSoft publishing software. Researchers will be able to navigate between content resources and their personal reference collections. This connectivity is expected to allow researchers to save time by obtaining full-text research articles from Infotrieve and easily capturing bibliographic references to cite in their own papers and reports.
Courtesy notices reduce work for librariesInnovative Interfaces has announced a new courtesy notices function in its Millennium Silver product that is said to decrease library workload and give added convenience to library patrons. The tool can be used, for example, to send automated reminders of approaching due dates and give patrons one-click access to the Millennium Web OPAC renewal page.
All notices, including courtesy notices, can run automatically. A subset can also be sent multiple times per day. Library staff can save the settings and parameters for these transmissions, which speeds up the notices process.
Access Innovations offers system for indexing chemical namesAccess Innovations is now offering its proprietary MAI-Chem chemical name indexing system for chemical research. The tool is designed for research-based organisations in the agricultural, chemical, geological, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and related fields. MAI-Chem enables researchers and chemical information specialists to find and index, or tag, documents that contain variations of chemical names and compounds buried in large collections of electronically stored information. This might be in a database of patent documents, collections of in-house technical reports or an archive of professional journal articles. MAI-Chem is based on a new taxonomy developed by Access Innovations. Concepts are compared against a proprietary knowledge domain, including variations of chemical names that might be found in a longer string of characters in a chemical compound name. The tool takes the retrieved list of tagged concepts and analyses their association with other words in the document. For example, the word 'acid' by itself does not indicate a chemical compound but would if in proximity to the word 'hydrochloric'. Words and expressions identified are further compared to a database of synonyms and related chemistry phrases. A list of targeted chemical names and compounds is then presented to the user to choose those most appropriate to the document for indexing.
MAI-Chem is available by licence from Access Innovations. It can be used in batch or real-time interactive mode, and has the versatility to work with any search software.
IP management software gets upgradeMDC (Master Data Center), a provider of IP management software and patent annuity and trademark renewal payment services, has announced the release of IPMaster 1.6. This latest version of its intellectual property software is available on an Oracle (9i+) platform with new administrative tools, and access to iManage. Soon it will also include access to IPManuals. IPMaster was previously only available with a Microsoft SQL Server (Versions 7 and 2000) database. The expansion to Oracle is said to open up many doors for clients that require this support.
The latest version of IPMaster includes a new Rules Wizard that is said to expedite and simplify rules maintenance tasks within IPMaster and a new field/tab configuration, which lets users make field and tab configuration changes from within the IPMaster record. It also has Global Change functionality, allowing clients to change field values in the database on their own; a copy/paste option, for easily replicating field values to new records; and Date Flag Indicators, with customised colour-coded dates to identify how entries in a master record were assigned.
Thomson links to hundreds of new publishersThomson has announced a major increase in the linking power of ISI Web of Knowledge, including full-text links to journals from hundreds of new publishers. The new release of ISI Web of Knowledge incorporates new features such as the use of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). ISI Web of Knowledge now supports direct, customised links to more than 300 publishers and more than 10,000 journals. This includes most of the nearly 200 open-access journals that are indexed by Web of Science, which is a key component of ISI Web of Knowledge. OpenURL linking is also being enhanced with direct links from search summary results and inbound OpenURL linking to more ISI Web of Knowledge products.
Library customers can customise their links to reflect the publishers for which they have subscriptions. There are also improved facilities for libraries to establish and update these entitlements. This customisation is available through ISI Links as well as through integration with an OpenURL server.
New tool manages movement of library materialsInnovative Interfaces has launched its Mobile Collections product as part of its Millenn-ium Silver circulation client.
The new product allows libraries to manage the progression of hundreds of item groups through routes of their choice. It is claimed to boost efficiency of resource sharing and save considerable staff time. Using Mobile Collections, library staff can independently control routes, length of stay at each destination, and collection content. This product was developed in conjunction with Delaware County Library System in Pennsylvania and HelMet-the Helsinki Metropolitan Libraries in Finland.
Database details pharmaceutical ingredientsThieme's pharmaceutical database (Pharmaceutical Substances) is now available on STN from FIZ Karlsruhe. This database provides comprehensive substance information, trade data and preparation methods for over 2,300 active pharmaceutical ingredients. It includes approximately 8,200 reaction schemes of interest to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Reactants and products are structure-searchable with a single reaction query.
Pharmaceutical Substances is designed to be a complete reference guide to every pharmaceutical compound of significance. It includes all compounds approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as commercially successful ingredients or those judged to have great commercial potential. PS is updated twice a year with approximately 50 new ingredients added each time.
Dialog adds functionality to DialogLinkDialog has upgraded its DialogLink software package for information professionals. The new version, DialogLink 4.0 includes XML output, new post-processing tools and e-linking capabilities to create reports, distribute information across an enterprise and access electronically-published scholarly articles. This version preserves the commands used in previous versions of DialogLink, but adds greater functionality. Pop-up windows, for example, streamline the searching process. The new features are said to enable users to better integrate information retrieved from the Dialog service into real-life work situations, such as in management reports and corporate intranets and portals.
DialogLink 4.0 also offers the ability to link to materials outside of the Dialog online system. The recently released Dialog eLinks service is incorporated into DialogLink 4.0, allowing users to link seamlessly to documents found on web-based services, including such content as Investext reports and scholarly journal articles and other documents in PDF format. More than 11,200 journals, conference proceedings and other research sources are available for e-linking using DialogLink 4.0.
Ovid announces service to customise portalsOvid has announced a new service for societies and publishing partners, independent journal publishers, foundations, and corporations to help them build customisable portals. The Portal Advantage Service offers full design, hosting and content selection from Ovid's rich repository of bibliographic databases, journals and book content as well as third-party data resources such as news feeds, CME and society content. The service also provides collaboration, customisation, and community features that allow publishers to enhance their customer and member relationships.
The first of these customised portals was developed for the Nestlé Foundation for the Study of Problems of Nutrition in the World, which initiates and supports research in human nutrition in low income countries. Through Ovid's Portal Service, the foundation provides researchers and doctors in low-income countries with access to scientific journals for their research, and for use in the grant application process to fund resources to help in the fight against country-specific nutritional deficiencies.
RFID label secures CDsBibliotheca RFID Library Systems has announced an RFID label that it claims guarantees optimal security for CDs, DVDs and CD-ROMs in libraries. The new BiblioChip Secure Label is said to have an exceptionally large reading range and the readability does not interfere with the metallisation of CDs, even though the label is fixed directly onto the surface of the item. In addition, the label is said to provide protection against scratches, which means that additional protection films for the CDs and DVDs are not necessary.
The inventory of CDs and DVDs in libraries is continuously increasing. Moreover, their circulation frequency is higher than the one of books. In the past, the reading range of RFID labels on these items was small because the radio transmission was substantially affected by the CD's metallisation. For this reason, labels were generally put on the CD case instead. The cases alone were then put on the shelves and all interested readers had to request the CD from the library staff.
DIMDI SmartSearch adds new functionsDIMDI's search interface has been enhanced. DIMDI SmartSearch now allows several databases to be searched simultaneously with database-specific output. The search possibilities have also been extended by allowing the search for references, referenced journals and referenced authors. References are already included in the ADIS Newsletters, AnimAlt-ZEBET, ISTPB/ISTP/ISSHP, PsycInfo, SciSearch and Social SciSearch databases. Parallel searches in databases of different types (e.g. literature and factual databases) are also now possible via a common search inte
Meanwhile, DIMDI has anounced that its databases can now be searched 24 hours a day. This move covers more than 80 databases related to medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, health care and health technology assessment.
Previously, maintenance reasons meant that database access was restricted to the daytime on weekdays. DIMDI claims that extensive technical improvements have meant that most maintenance tasks can now be performed without disrupting system operation.
Extenza adds Google indexingE-journal content held on the Extenza e-Publishing Services journal hosting platform will be indexed by Google. This should enable Google to index all content, held in either Adobe PDF or full text HTML. The company says that users who select Extenza's client publishers' content from the results list on Google will be authenticated using Extenza's standard access control mechanisms. If they have authorised rights to the article, they will be granted immediate and seamless access. If they do not have appropriate access rights, then users will be taken to the abstract for the content, where they will be able to log in and purchase access to the article on a pay-per-view or document delivery basis, or request a subscription to the relevant journal.
EBSCO's MetaPress hosts Serials
The UK Serials Group has selected EBSCO's MetaPress to host its Serials title. According to the Serials group, MetaPress offers superior user services and client administration functions. In particular, the user is allowed to control his or her own environment through alerting and other services. In addition, the reporting services allow the publisher to monitor all aspects of usage - including individual articles. This allows publishers to set editorial priorities.
French patents added to STNFIZ Karlsruhe has added the new bibliographic patent database FRANCEPAT to its product portfolio. FRANCEPAT, a private service under distribution agreement with Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI), Paris, France, contains more than one million records of French patents and patent applications with more than 400,700 images of patent drawings. It complements the existing coverage of French patents on STN. FRANCEPAT covers all French patent applications and granted French patents published by the INPI. All patents published in France since 1966, as well as special pharmaceutical patents (Brevets Spéciaux Médicaments) published between 1961 and 1978, are included as well as Complementary Protection Certificates from 1969 onwards. Records include bibliographic, administrative and legal status data for each patent. Abstracts and descriptors since 1978 are also available. Records are in French, but English descriptors are available from 1987 onwards for customers who prefer English terminology and IPC codes for subject searching. FIZ Karlsruhe plans to add a French Patent full-text file based on optical character recognition data later this year.
Dialog expands eLinks serviceDialog has expanded its Dialog eLinks service to enable access from its Dialog and Dialog DataStar services to a subscribing organisation's collection of electronic journals and other research documents. This combines previous linking tools available through Dialog and Dialog DataStar ('e-Journal Linking' on Dialog services and 'Starlinks' on Dialog DataStar) with additional functionality. The company also said that it has added 32 more databases to those enabled with Dialog eLinks, increasing the total number of Dialog databases with e-linking to 60. The number of publishers that now make their materials available for linking is 147, representing a total of more than 11,200 journals, conference proceedings and other research sources. The service is said to enable users to link seamlessly from abstracts and citations retrieved from Dialog and Dialog DataStar databases to the full text of the referenced articles and conference proceedings published in scholarly and professional journals, mostly peer-reviewed scientific, technical and medical publications. The electronic links connect from the Dialog services to libraries maintained by companies and other organisations for their in-house research, as well as to websites maintained by journal publishers or aggregators representing them. The additional functionality includes an upgraded common subscription manager interface, called the Dialog eLinks Manager. This allows e-journal administrators with both Dialog and Dialog DataStar subscriptions to easily manage access to e-journals through one interface. It is said to make it easier to search and locate journal titles, add journal subscriptions by volume and issue, accommodate partial-year subscriptions and manage multiple subscription ranges for a journal title. Dialog eLinks are provided to Dialog and Dialog DataStar users without charge.
Ovid enhances MEDLINEOvid Technologies has added an additional decade of bibliographic information from the National Library of Medicine free of charge to its online customers. Citations in Ovid OLDMEDLINE are for articles from international biomedical journals covering the fields of medicine, preclinical sciences, and allied health sciences. All were originally printed in hardcopy indexes published from 1951 through 1965. The library expects to continue converting citations from its older, printed medical indexes to machine-readable form as time and resources permit. As further records are made available to Ovid they will be added to the OLDMEDLINE database. In addition, the online version of Ovid's MEDLINE now includes new limits that are based closely on PubMed's subject subsets. The addition of these subsets is said to allow users to easily restrict a broad search to their specific area of interest. These enhancements are said to be in response to customers' requests.
Dialog releases database for aerospace industryA new database containing scientific and technical research related to the global aerospace industry has been announced by Dialog. The company said its new AeroBase database (File 104) includes references, abstracts and controlled-vocabulary indexing of scientific and technical journal articles, preprints, conference proceedings, books, theses and unpublished literature relating to the aerospace and aeronautical industries and dating back to 1999. At its launch, the database contains more than 20,000 documents, with more added monthly. Further enhancements to the database will include additional international journals and conference literature. The new AeroBase database is said to cover such topics as aircraft design and instrumentation, propellants and fuels, lasers and masers (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), structural mechanics, fluid mechanics and heat transfer, among others. This database is available for subscription through the Dialog Choice pricing option.
New tool enables clients to customise subscriptionsSwetsWise Title Bank, which will be launched this summer, is the first new tool to be developed as part of a drive to simplify the management of electronic journals for customers. This tool, from Swets Information Services, is said to allow clients to customise their entire list of electronic subscription links whether they originate from external databases, publisher websites or SwetsWise Online Content. It assists customers in maintaining optimum control of their electronic resources, providing maximum full-text access to all titles. Features will include the ability to browse title and subject lists, conduct title and subject searches and consult both title and article-level usage data.
Wiley adds biological titles to backfilesJohn Wiley & Sons has launched its latest collection of digitised journal backfiles, the Biotechnology, Biochemistry and Biophysics Backfile Collection, on its online publishing platform Wiley InterScience. Spanning more than 50 years of content across 15 leading journal titles, the collection is said to provide a backfile resource for core research across the biotechnology, biochemistry, biophysics and chemical engineering disciplines, and includes full coverage, back to inaugural issues, of seminal titles, including Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Proteins, Biopolymers, the AIChE Journal, Chemie Ingenieur Technik and Chemical Engineering & Technology. Presented in fully searchable PDF format, with abstracts, essential bibliographic content, and literature citations all available in HTML, the backfile collection provides enhanced searchablity and linking capabilities. Reference links include internal linking to cited content located on Wiley InterScience and to the content of more than 290 scientific, technical and medical publishers via CrossRef. Wiley InterScience plans to release four more Backfile Collections over the course of 2004: the Chemistry Backfile Collection, Analytical Chemistry Backfile Collection, Neuroscience Backfile Collection and the Materials Science Backfile Collection. Together with the Polymer Backfile Collection and the Angewandte Chemie Backfile, Wiley has already made available more than one million pages of digitised legacy scientific content.
Patent alert system added to DialogDerwent World Patents Index First ViewSM, a new fast-alerting companion file to Derwent World Patents Index, is available through the Dialog family of online services. DWPI First View (File 331) is a continuously updated database of recently published patents from 40 patent-issuing authorities worldwide. The rolling file is said to give details of new patent documents well in advance of their inclusion in Derwent World Patents Index (Files 351and 352). Dialog users searching DWPI First View, in combination with Derwent World Patents Index, can maximise their retrieval of important patent information and ensure they receive a comprehensive overview of global patenting activity. The two databases are produced by Thomson Derwent. Thompson describes DWPI First View as a great tool for early identification of new patents filed around the world, and an ideal complement to Derwent World Patents Index and Dialog's extensive collection of intellectual property data. Information in DWPI First View includes enhanced bibliographic data for new patents, along with original titles, abstracts, and images of technical drawings. English-language translations are available for patents from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Russia.
DIMDI SmartSearch adds toxicological databasesSearches can now be made in toxicological factual databases using the DIMDI SmartSearch search interface. This simplifies searches and enables them to be more selective. DIMDI offers five factual databases in this area, four of which are free of charge. The databases can be searched individually or in combination with other databases including literature databases. The output of the (frequently very long) documents is also said to be new. The titles of field groups and fields are displayed in different colours, and sections can be opened and closed by clicking on these titles. It is possible to define a particular field selection for the duration of a session, so that the fields will not have to be opened for each separate document when displaying several documents. It is also possible to output complete documents. The databases ChemIDplus, CCRIS, Chemikalien und Kontaktallergie, HSDB and RTECS, for which this new application was developed, provide information on chemical substances. They include data on the material toxicity, studies, standards, threshold values and applications, as well as chemicophysical characteristics and manufacturing data.
Online service brings standards and codes to engineersThe American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has selected Techstreet to distribute publication of ASCE standards online. This is said to allow ASCE members and customers to search, order and download individual ASCE standards in PDF format or sign up for a company-wide, multi-user, web-based subscription. The new ASCE digital standards store also has thousands more downloadable standards from related publishers such as the American Concrete Institute (ACI), Society for Manufacturing Engineers (SME), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO), and the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA). The multi-user, web-based subscription service has more than 15,000 engineering standards and provides online access to an entire corporate enterprise without having to manage a paper library. The ASCE/Techstreet partnership creates one of the largest and most comprehensive engineering publications databases in the world.
Active launches summarising toolUK-based Active Navigation has launched a product that it claims is capable of searching and analysing the true meaning of electronic information. Cyberwize works in conjunction with standard internet search engines as an advanced research tool, or with files on private networks and intranets, where it can give analysis and auditing with rapid location of specific knowledge within vast quantities of uncategorised information. In contrast to existing tools for content analysis, which search using key words and basic logic, Active says that Cyberwize uses a series of complex algorithms that combine semantic theories and empirical analysis at the forefront of academic linguistic research. This allows the product to extract the subject and meaning of a document or web page, closer to the way in which it would be perceived by an informed, intelligent human reader. Having extracted the meaning from each documents or web page within a target group, Cyberwize provides the user with an accurate précis of the entire document. This is said to distinguish it from basic search tools that summarise documents using the first sentence or paragraph, and can therefore miss important themes, subtexts and topics hidden deeper in the text. The dynamic link injection function can also cross reference the meaning of documents in a search to further speed navigation. Cyberwize creates hyperlinks within each document, based on core themes within the text, which take the reader through to summaries of related documents.
Web platform provides chemical structure dataMDL Information Systems (MDL), an Elsevier company, has announced a web-based research platform to the academic community. DiscoveryGate, the structure-searchable resource for scientific information that has become a first stop for corporate scientists, is now open to students, faculty, and academic researchers worldwide. Academic researchers can now access 14 databases such as CrossFire Beilstein, MDL Available Chemicals Directory, MDL Drug Data Report, and MDL Toxicity, authoritative reference works, and links to over 20,000 journal titles (although additional licences are required to access third-party content in their environments). With DiscoveryGate's integration and linking of content, researchers can quickly compare results and information not available through other systems. It gives researchers access to more than 13 million chemical structures, 10 million reactions, and over 200 million associated calculated and reported properties, including synthesis, bioactivity, metabolism, toxicology, and physical property data. Researchers can access structures and data with a simple query, perform structure-based clustering of results sets, quickly acquire a summary view of relevant data, and easily generate standardised reports. DiscoveryGate for academia has a campus-wide access model where any number of eligible faculty members, students, or researchers at the institution may use it simultaneously.
Re-launch of African Journals OnLineThe International Network for Scientific Publications (INASP) is re-launching African Journals OnLine on its own website, which continues to provide free access to tables of contents and abstracts for all titles. Originally launched in 1998 with only 14 journals, by January 2004 AJOL had more than 175 African journals covering most subject areas. AJOL offers a document delivery service, and improved searching and browsing facilities, as well as a new e-mail alert function. The service remains free, with charges only for document delivery requests from outside developing countries.
Journals included cover: agricultural sciences and resource management; arts, culture, language and literature; health; science and technology; and social sciences. Use of the service has more than doubled in the past few years (almost 4,000 people registered during 2003) and the demand for document delivery tripled (reaching more than 650 articles during 2003).
Freedom of Information made easyFretwell-Downing Informatics (FDI) has released OLIB 7.4, the latest version of its library management system, incorporating features to help organisations and agencies in the UK comply with the requirements of the Freedom Of Information Act 2000. More than 100,000 organisations are affected and, from 1 January 2005, must answer enquiries from the public within 20 days. OLIB 7.4 makes it easier to offer controlled, eGMS standards-based access to all internal, networked resources and to ensure that knowledge is available, where and when it is needed. Improvements to the existing enquiry-management module make it easier to manage incoming requests and build a knowledge base to support best practice in future. More routes for publishing information, and new methods for pushing information directly to users on a personal basis, give users more control over what information they receive and how they receive it.
According to Robin Murray, FDI's managing director: 'The Freedom of Information Act, alongside corporate governance regulations, and requirements to implement metadata standards, demands that knowledge professionals need new software tools that go beyond traditional library management functions.' OLIB 7.4 delivers more than 100 enhancements and workflow improvements, which will benefit existing OLIB customers, including libraries from all sectors.
Innovative enhances cataloguing and acquisition features of Millennium softwareUS-based Innovative Interfaces has announced a new release of its Millennium software. Millennium Silver, which is currently being tested by customers in around 40 locations, is said to offer significant enhancements to the cataloguing, circulation and acquisitions modules. New features include the wireless workstation and online patron registration. In addition, Millennium Silver has a suite of new products focused on Web-based and electronic information services. These include the Electronic Resource Management, XML Harvester, XML Server and eCommerce modules.
Patent search gets corporate hierarchy dataThomson Delphion has added European corporate hierarchy data to its existing US data, through an extension of its partnership with CHI Research. This is said to give more complete search results and more thorough analysis of key European patent data. According to Delphion, assignee searching and analysis can be problematic without corporate hierarchy, data because separate patent applications often use different forms of the company name, requiring users to identify all variations in order to get complete information. In addition, claims the company, patent documents identify the assignee that owned the patent when it was granted, but companies merge, get acquired, spin off and change names. Patents can also be sold or transferred from one company to another. Corporate hierarchy data standardises corporate names, incorporates merger and acquisition activity and compensates for misspelled names. Delphion's database is now said to include the top 1,900 patent holders, and this represents 45,000 separate entities.
STN adds more bibliographic databasesEight CSA databases will be added to the STN International online network during 2004. The CSA databases that will join STN represent biotechnology, engineering specialties, earth and environmental studies and library and information science.
STN, which is operated by the Chemical Abstracts Society (CAS) in North America, FIZ Karlsruhe in Europe, and JST in Japan, already provides access to 19 CSA databases. These focus on areas such as life sciences, environmental and aquatic sciences, computer sciences, materials science and engineering and aerospace.
New database houses medical press releasesA new database of health and medicine-related press releases is now available through the German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI). The database is searchable via the command language (DIMDI ClassicSearch), as well as the user interface (DIMDI SmartSearch), and is available free of charge. A special SmartSearch application allows customised searches, and special restrictions are possible. According to DIMDI, Pressedienste Gesundheitswesen can be searched simultaneously with the database ABDA Aktuelle Info in the superbase XNEWS. This enables users to receive the latest notifications, for example, on the subject of drug safety. The document output has been adapted to DIMDI's database standard. The database fields ENR, and MD from the previous databases are no longer available.
The Pressedienste Gesundheitswesen database contains information from Germany's former Federal Health Office, the Federal Institution for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security, the Federal Centre for Health Education, the German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI), the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute and the Robert-Koch-Institute.
New database combines chemical informationA new terminology database from NLM, available through the German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI), is said to offer extensive information on the nomenclature of chemical substances. The free English-language database, ChemID Plus, replaces the two terminology databases, ChemID and Chemline, which were previously offered by DIMDI and which will no longer be updated by their respective manufacturers. ChemID Plus presently contains around 370,000 chemicals and provides their systematic terms and commonly used synonyms. It also provides further data such as molecular formula and CAS number. Direct links can also be made to relevant substance-oriented documents in other NLM databases such as CCRIS and RTECS. These can supply further information on a particular chemical substance.
Compared with its predecessor, ChemID, which has not been updated by the manufacturer since 2000, ChemID Plus contains new information and links to further sources on the Internet. It also links to international lists (superlists), in which a particular chemical substance is registered.
DIMDI adds German Medical Science journalThe German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI) has added the full-texts of the international and interdisciplinary medical journal, German Medical Science (GMS) to its database offering. GMS is an electronically published journal of the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies and its member companies. It is intended for professionals from all fields of medical science, research and care.
The journal publishes high-ranking interdisciplinary original papers and review articles, from the entire spectrum of medicine. Electronic journals of individual societies are also published under their own title, with original papers from their respective fields of activity.
Dialog adds adverse drug events dataOnline information provider Dialog, part of the Thomson organisation, has added comprehensive data on adverse drug events to its online collection of pharmaceutical industry news and research. The Adverse Drugs Events Database contains records about patient experiences with commercially-available drugs, or combinations of drugs, as reported to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These FDA reports are generated by drug manufacturers, individuals, health professionals and distributors. Each report includes FDA numbers and receipt date, manufacturer's report number, drug name, reaction date, patient age and sex, reported reactions, outcomes, and concomitant drugs used. The new Dialog database contains records as far back as 1969, when the FDA began requiring reporting of adverse drug reactions. In 1997, the FDA changed its reporting regulations to require submission of more comprehensive information. This means that the records available through Dialog from 1997 onwards are more comprehensive.
The new adverse drug reactions content, known as Diogenes: Adverse Drug Events Database (File 181), is produced and supplied to Dialog by the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based FOI Services. FOI also provides its Diogenes: FDA Regulatory Updates database to Dialog.
Dialog enhance Biosis PreviewsDialog, part of Thomson, has enhanced the Biosis Previews database, which is available through its Dialog and Dialog DataStar online services. According to Dialog, the most significant enhancements to the Biosis Previews database available include the addition of CAS Registry Numbers to more than nine million Biosis Previews records, and the addition of more than 6,300 sequence data accession numbers. Dialog has also added Biosis Major Concepts, which is an indexing field enabling researchers to identify and retrieve targeted information by conceptual terms. This has been added to every citation since 1969.
Other improvements to the database include additional revisions to indexing fields, such as newly added taxonomical terms, revised biosystematic codes, and revised mapping of medical subject heading disease terms. In addition, the bibliographic data has been standardised, and the patent indexing feature streamlined.
Dialog launches new pricing optionEnterprise-wide access to selected content on Dialog's databases will now be available at a fixed annual price. The new enterprise pricing plan from the Thomson business is called Dialog Choice. It is available to corporations, government agencies, law firms and other enterprises that need to make critical, in-depth information resources available directly on the desktops of professionals throughout their organisations. 'The advantage of the Dialog Choice concept is that it allows enterprises to know in advance exactly how much it will cost annually to make critical information resources continually available to their people who need them most,' explained Roy Martin, Dialog's CEO and president. A Dialog Choice fixed annual fee will enable subscribing companies to offer one or more of the available databases to a specified number of professionals within their organisations. A pharmaceutical company, for example, might make databases of clinical and toxicological data available to its research and compliance departments worldwide, while a law firm might select a global collection of databases containing full text patents for its intellectual property department.
Online searching of information databases not covered by a Dialog Choice subscription will continue to be billed according to whatever pricing schedule a customer has with Dialog.
SwetsWise offers full-text access to ACS journalsSwetsWise is now an access point for the 31 journals of the American Chemical Society (ACS) including its flagship publication, the Journal of the American Chemical Society. SwetsWise will provide access to ACS Web Editions, which is the current online content of ACS journals, and which received more than a million total web views per week in 2003. 'We are delighted that ACS has agreed to participate in SwetsWise,' commented Steven Hartman, Chief Commercial Officer of Netherlands-based Swets Information Services. 'The addition of their unique content will further enhance the quality of scientific information available to users of the service.'
SwetsWise is a web-based, modular service for the procurement, access and management of subscriptions and online information. It now carries a total of 7,787 full text publications from 295 publishers
Online chromatography database available freeThe Public Chromatography Applications Database is currently offered on a free trial basis as part of ACD/Web Librarian from Canada's Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD/Labs). The database contains 1,830 structure-searchable separations by major column vendors. These include: Agilent, Alltech, Eprogen (Eichrom), GL Sciences, Hamilton, Argonaut (Jones Chromatography), Polymer Laboratories, and Regis. The database can be searched by numerous chromatographic parameters, as well as by structure, substructure, and structural similarity. For example, claims ACD, if you work with a novel compound, you will be able to retrieve chromatographic applications that were successfully used to separate compounds with similar chemical structures. This structure-based search capability is said to be an invaluable resource for chromatographers facing the challenge of new method development.
ACD/Web Librarian is a web-based analytical data delivery tool that enables users to search and retrieve structures, separations, and spectra from a virtual, centralised repository where both public and password-protected databases are posted.
HighWire opens shop for journalsStanford University's HighWire Press has launched a new feature for institutions: 'Shop for Journals'. Twenty-five learned society publishers, with content hosted on HighWire, have banded together to create an easy way to select from a list of journal titles and create custom packages. Initially, 57 journals are on offer, with more titles expected to join in 2004. In addition, these publishers have developed a standard set of Guidelines for Institutional Access (defining authorised use and users), and have agreed to use a common tiered pricing model, based on type of institution. 'Shop for Journals is the gateway to something we are calling an "Open Package". The concept grew out of our conversations with serials librarians,' says Michael Clarke, senior managing editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He added: 'They told us that they liked the idea that the Big Deal offers - holding down costs by acquiring a large number of titles at reduced prices. However, they also told us that the problem with Big Deal packages is that they may include a lot of titles that an institution does not need or want.'
The Shop for Journals Open Package is a way for institutions to pick and chose what titles they want, obtain the correct pricing for their institution, and purchase them through one simple mechanism.
Nature provides product guideNature Publishing Group (NPG) is providing readers of Nature online with the ability to click from product and company names that appear in the methods section of research papers, directly to online information about the corresponding product or company. The new service is called Natureproducts.
With the increasing complexity of experiments - and the ever-escalating reliance on sophisticated technology to perform research and analysis - this new service will enable researchers to get to the source of the equipment and reagents used in experiments.
The Natureproducts website is a partnership between NPG and Biocompare, the buyer's guide for life scientists.
New version of international dissertation database on STNSTN International has expanded its specialist databases with a new version of the dissertation database Dissabs. The database represents the work of authors from more than 1,000 graduate schools and universities and covers a variety of subject areas, including biotechnology, chemistry, engineering, environmental science, pharmaceuticals, and toxicology. The records in Dissabs are from the print journals: American Doctoral Dissertations; Comprehensive Dissertation Index; Dissertation Abstracts International; and Masters' Abstracts.
Dissabs records may include the adviser, author, institution, and subject area, as well as abstracts written by the author. The database contains 1,800,000 records from 1861 to the present. It is updated monthly. On average, 47,000 new dissertations and 12,000 new theses are added to the database each year.
Inspec announces enhancementsInspec has announced several enhancements to the Inspec database for 2004. These include: Section E: Manufacturing and Production Engineering, to be added to the database; the entire collection of science abstracts between 1898 and 1968 to be made available as an XML archival backfile; revised and updated search aids to incorporate Inspec's extended coverage; and one million full-text links (DOIs) to be added to the backfile.
The new sub-section of the database, on manufacturing and production engineering, extends Inspec's traditional coverage in these areas. It contains more than 100 new classification codes, including codes for specific industrial sectors. More than 200 additional journals will be scanned for indexing, and over 650 new manufacturing and production-oriented index terms are being added to the Thesaurus, increasing the present coverage in this area from 40,000 items per year to an anticipated 60,000.
AIP's Scitation links scholars and publishers to online servicesAIP Publishing Services has announced a new identity 'Scitation' for its online hosting platform. The new brand will replace Online Journal Publishing Service (OJPS), as the service has been known since 1996. According to Marc H. Brodsky, AIP's executive director and CEO, 'The name "Scitation" conveys three important messages. First, it stresses the platform's strength in science and engineering. Second, it reinforces AIP's leadership in citation reference linking, both forward and backward. Finally, it signals the breadth and timeliness of online products and services that we develop and host beyond journals. Scitation will better communicate our services to the broader scholarly community.' These enhancements will allow researchers to create, store, and manage individual collections of articles through a virtual filing cabinet; easily share article collections with colleagues; download properly formatted reference citations into popular reference management programs; view a list of publications to which they have access, whether through their institutional or personal subscriptions; add favourite publications to a personal start page, which includes dynamic links to the current issues and publication archives; and quickly find relevant articles through better search features. In a separate development, the AIP and the UK's Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) have announced a partnership to provide Scitation alerts powered by Inspec. The service is a current awareness tool for individual researchers and will be available in April 2004.
Scientists may subscribe to alerts from 100 physics-related subject areas. They will receive weekly e-mail updates of new research published that week in the Inspec database. Individuals may also subscribe to custom alerts based on their own search criteria.
IEEE adds new search tools to XploreIEEE has enhanced its Xplore software that deals with online subscriptions for IEEE members, as well as institutional online collections such as the IEEE/IEE Electronic Library (IEL) and the IEEE Proceedings Order Plans. The interface provides subscribers with full-text access to nearly 1,000,000 documents from IEEE and IEE periodicals and conference proceedings, as well as current IEEE standards. Xplore 1.6 went live on 1 January. Search terms are now highlighted in all search results, and a new feature allows secondary searches to be conducted within the results of primary searches. Also with IEEE Xplore 1.6, a new subscription icon instantly identifies papers to which subscribers already have full-text access, and from which papers are available outside of their subscription.
Starting with 2004-published material, IEEE will include cover-to-cover material in IEEE Xplore for selected periodicals. For the first time, users will begin to see links in issue tables of contents for such items as letters to the editor, editorial boards and calls for papers.
Electronic mathematics archiving initiative now has its own websiteThe Electronic Mathematics Archiving Network Initiative (EMANI) has set up its own website at www.emani.org. EMANI now offers free access to 100 mathematical journals from various publishing companies at this url. As well as digitally produced journals, these also include retro-digitised journals, such as Mathematische Annalen, published by Springer-Verlag since 1869. All issues of the Springer journals Inventiones Mathematicae and Mathematische Zeitschrift are also now available in electronic form. Further publications from the entire publishing group are scheduled to be digitised in the near future, including Comentarii Mathematici Helvetici published by Birkhäuser in Basel, and the mathematical publications of Teubner and Vieweg in Wiesbaden.
The libraries that have joined EMANI to date are Göttingen State and University Library in Germany, Cornell University Library in the USA, Tsinghua University Library in China, and MathDoc (an association of several French maths libraries and Cellule MathDoc in Grenoble). In addition to the publishing companies that belong to the Springer group, the European Mathematical Information Service's electronic library (ElibM in EMIS) also provides content for the initiative.
Thermophysical properties on the InternetGermany's Chemistry Information Centre (Fachinformationszentrum Chemie, FIZ Chemie Berlin) has finished its database of thermophysical data of substances, Infotherm and released it on to the Internet. The new online database makes the thermophysical properties of about 6,300 pure substances and 23,000 mixtures available on the Web. Part of this information, especially basic data for pure substances, is available to users free of charge, but more detailed data concerning the behaviour of pure substances and mixtures under specific user-defined conditions requires payment. Infotherm is available either as a subscription database or on a pay-per-view basis. 'With Infotherm, we especially want to serve small and medium-sized companies and chemical-engineering firms engaged in plant development and construction,' explained Dr Jost T. Bohlen, head of product development and Internet services at FIZ Chemie Berlin. 'Infotherm is programmed in XML and the data can be accessed with a conventional Internet browser.'
Infotherm contains basic and factual data, such as PVT properties, phase equilibria data, transport and surface properties, calorific properties, and solid-liquid equilibria data. Each property may be accessed in a number of ways, including via a substance's chemical or common name, its molecular formula or via its CAS Registry Number.
Thomson Scientific brings out enhancementsThomson Scientific has released enhancements to two of its key products for analysing both the Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) data and original patent data. Customers can now export original patent data from Delphion using a new data extract format, and then bring it into Derwent Analytics using a new import filter. In addition to the new Derwent Analytics format, Delphion has added a data extract format for EndNote, Reference Manager, and ProCite, three Thomson Scientific bibliographic management products, as well as two extensible markup language (XML) formats. Twelve new fields are now available for export, including abstract and claims. The data extract application now also gives users performance 20 times faster than before.
The enhancement to Derwent Analytics also includes the addition of thesauri for Derwent Manual Codes, IPC Codes, and Derwent Abbreviations, making analysis of patent data quicker, easier, and more complete. The Derwent Analytics suite of pre-defined analytical macros has also been enhanced, making it easier for users to create charts and graphs.
Dialog announces new web serviceDialog, part of the Thomson group and a provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, has launched an Application Programming Interface (API), a web service enabling Dialog content and its search engine to be integrated into websites, enterprise portals, corporate intranets and extranets, and other interactive services.
Dialog API is designed for web developers, programmers and enterprise information managers, to integrate parts of the 14 terabytes of information - news, business intelligence, current and archived journal articles, patents and research - along with the search engine, which allows users to pinpoint specific documents.
STN International launch French and British patent databasesFIZ Karlsruhe, the European service centre for STN International, the provider of online databases, launched several patent databases at the Online Information show in December. The new reference database, Francepat, contains abstracts of patent applications and patents published since 1966 by the French Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI). The databases FrFull and GBFull, to be launched on STN in 2004, will provide the full text of French and British patent documents.
Thomson-Derwent, the database producer and sales partner of STN, has developed an alert service with its database 'WPI First View', a complementary file to its 'World Patents Index' (WPINDEX). In WPI First View, patent information from the 16 most important industrial nations worldwide and other countries is published on STN without further processing, thus making it available as quickly as possible after publication.
Extenza helps librarians manage e-journalsExtenza, a division of Royal Swets & Zeitlinger, has announced a range of new services for librarians managing e-journals. Extenza e-Publishing Services (EPS) allows librarians to take control of journal subscriptions, access and user statistics. 'Our relationship with Swets helps us tremendously in our understanding of librarians' and users' needs,' said Peter van den Dorpel, chief executive of Extenza. 'Managing e-journal subscriptions and access can be an additional burden and a constant source of frustration when things go awry. We aim to provide services that not only reduce the administrative tasks but also let librarians take control.'
EPS now provides up-to-the-minute, online subscription details so that librarians can confirm their access entitlement, including which journals they actually subscribe to, their status and grace period. Email alerts provide warning that access to individual journals may soon expire. And real-time online usage reporting gives a complete picture of the frequency with which journals are accessed by researchers.
CAS releases new SciFinder versionIn its SciFinder 2004 Edition, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has enhanced the capabilities for chemical reaction exploration and analysis. These enhancements are integrated with CAS's weekly updated reaction database, now containing seven million reactions. SciFinder's new 'Analyze Reactions' tool lets scientists profile reactions in terms of relevant categories, such as the catalyst used, solvent involved, the number of reaction steps, or product yields. 'With SciFinder, scientists benefit from state-of-the-art exploration and analysis software capabilities, coupled with the intellectual contributions of CAS scientists who build our reaction databases,' said CAS marketing director, Suzan A. Brown. 'SciFinder's new edition does more than ever to advance synthetic chemists' productivity, efficiency and creativity.'
In addition to the reaction features, SciFinder's latest version provides structure searches of the entire CAS substance collection, or allows focus by substance classes, such as coordination compounds, mixtures, polymers, etc.
DIMDI presents new user interfaceDIMDI has released a new interface for searches in DIMDI medical databases. DIMDI SmartSearch is replacing the previous grips-WebSearch. The newly designed DIMDI ClassicSearch, as successor of grips-Open, is now available for searching with the reliable command language. The previous search interface grips-WebSearch was the starting point for the now technically, as well as graphically, optimised DIMDI SmartSearch, with which search newcomers can filter the needed information from large data quantities within seconds. The first step was the successful introduction of Medline Direct. Another step is the conversion of literature database searches to the new search interface.
The command language DIMDI ClassicSearch offers search professionals fast and comprehensive access to the databases, particularly with complex search inquiries. DIMDI ClassicSearch replaces grips-Open: The application for the command language was also rearranged according to the new layout for the user interface.
Wiley InterScience launches new interfaceWiley InterScience, the online service of John Wiley & Sons, has launched a new interface. It is the result of a comprehensive redesign of the site's underlying information architecture and its graphical interface. At its commercial launch in 1999, Wiley InterScience was primarily an online journals service, but in the last five years it has developed content beyond journals, including multi-volume reference works and libraries of OnlineBooks, to Current Protocols and a suite of chemistry databases that incorporate structure-search technology. As a result of feedback from customers, as well as scholarly and scientific society partners, the new interface provides prominent library and society branding to ensure both groups receive acknowledgement for the part they play in ensuring the service's content is accessible to the wider end-user community.
The company has developed a personal navigation bar, so once users have logged on, they have a quick and persistent access to saved titles, articles and searches.
Launch of Sentient Discover and new WebCT PowerLinkSentient Learning is building a WebCT PowerLink in time for the release of Sentient Discover v2.0 in January 2004. The Sentient Discover PowerLink for WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 will enable course designers to add library-managed learning resources directly into their WebCT course. Andrew Davidson, CEO of Sentient Learning, said: 'We are delighted to have developed a WebCT PowerLink for Sentient Discover. WebCT has thousands of customers around the world, many of whom have library-managed learning resources. WebCT, enhanced with the Sentient Discover PowerLink, will significantly improve access and utilisation of library resources, such as books and journal articles.'
Acting as a system integrator, Sentient Discover links disparate systems such as resource databases, journal providers, library systems, OpenURL resolvers and course management systems. Sentient Discover is library system independent, bringing 90 per cent of the world's OPAC-enabled library systems in to WebCT, such as ALEPH, Geoweb, Innopac, Sirsi, Talis and Voyager.
Dialog adds health and disease statistics to medical collectionDialog, part of the Thomson group, has added three files of epidemiological data to its collection of medical information available online. The three new files now available are Hospital Inpatient Profiles (File 462), Hospital Outpatient Profiles (File 463) and Emergency Room (File 454). Each is composed of data compiled in the United States. The databases are provided by Timely Data Resources, in Capitola, California, which also supplies Dialog with its Incidence and Prevalence database (File 465).
'We're delighted to be working with Timely Data Resources to bolster our collection of medical information,' said Viji Krishnan, Dialog vice president of content development. 'At a time when healthcare costs and disease control are major concerns in many countries, additional high-quality epidemiological data from Timely Data Resources will be a significant benefit for our users in the medical research arena.'
Dialog offers more content options for enterprise portalsDialog is now offering Dialog Portals, a new information service that allows business news, research and competitive intelligence to be integrated into enterprise portals. The company said that it wanted to offer a deep and rich set of content choices and information services for industry-standard portals. Content categories include news, market research, business and financial information, as well as science, technology and medical (STM) information and intellectual property records gathered from around the world.
Dialog Portals is compatible with systems offered by nine leading portals software providers. The first release enables 'plug and play' access to Dialog news and business content. The next release, available next year, will add the STM and intellectual property content.
Thomson Delphion adds German patent collectionThomson Delphion now offers searching of full-text patent specifications from the German national collection. With main claims back to 1968, this is the most comprehensive set of German patent data available. The collection includes applications, granted patents, and utility models. The integration of German data from Inpadoc with the German national collection data, and the presentation of both on the Delphion Integrated View, allows users to see legal status and family data in the same view as they see the text, claims, and other bibliographic information. The German national collection is also fully integrated into the Delphion workflow including: full text German language searching; integration into the cross-collection searching process; and inclusion in analytical and productivity tool functionality.
In addition, left-hand wildcard searching is supported, making searching for compound words quick and easy.
Content windfall continues for SwetsWiseSwets Information Services (formerly Swets Blackwell) has concluded agreements with nine additional publishers providing access to their online journal content via SwetsWise. SwetsWise is the web-based, modular service for the procurement, access and management of subscriptions and online information. SwetsWise now carries a total of 7,645 full text e-journals, with more than 90 per cent of the top STM publishers participating.
The publishers involved are the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (1 title), the American Institute of Biological Sciences (1 title), Carden Jennings Publishing (3 titles), the Chartered Institute of Building (1 title), the Hindawi Publishing Corporation (12 titles), INFORMS (10 titles), School of Social Work (1 title), Society for Personality Research (1 title), and Westburn Publishers Limited (3 titles).
EndNote 7 for Macintosh OS X now shippingISI ResearchSoft is now shipping Windows and Macintosh versions of a major upgrade to EndNote, the bibliographic software used by researchers, students and librarians. Well known for features that search online bibliographic databases, organise references and create instant bibliographies, EndNote 7 provides new types of bibliographies, flexible image handling, and connectivity to explore and mobilise reference collections. David Kochalko, President, said: 'We are pleased to provide our customers with new technologies that extend the value of their EndNote libraries, including letting them go mobile on Palm handhelds.'
sciPROOF's new tool for proofreading manuscriptssciPROOF is a software package designed to streamline the scientific writing process. Developed by the Oregon-based US company sciPROOF LLC, it integrates with Microsoft Word, to verify spelling, style, acronyms and Greek symbols - expanding the native spell-checker with more than 250,000 terms from databases of scientific, biomedical, and chemical terms from the US National Library of Medicine and the National Centre for Biotechnology Information. Terms can be customised and added to the sciPROOF custom database, which can be constantly updated as new terms are invented and users provide feedback. Such updates will be available free to registered users when released. The spell checker is compatible with Microsoft Office and works with Word, Outlook, Outlook Express, Power Point, Front Page, Excel, Access and Microsoft Project. The sciPROOF Style Checker proofreads and suggests possible term styles and formats. For example, italics or underlining , sub- and super-scripts required in chemical nomenclature (e.g. C6H12O6, 32P), upper case characters for acronyms such as DNA, PCR, PAGE, and Greek symbols. The sciPROOF Symbol Checker will flag unique characters such as Greek words or letters, often preceded or followed by a hyphen, and suggest the corresponding Greek symbol. If the user types 'beta' '-b' or 'b-', sciPROOF will suggest the appropriate Greek symbol. sciPROOF is also equipped with a glossary and a direct link to the US National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, allowing the writer to instantly access definitions and references without leaving the Word document. These definitions can be conveniently displayed while sciPROOF proofreads documents and the web links can be indexed, allowing for easy access and modification. Additionally, definitions can be added or customised to suit each individual user.
sciPROOF is available from Adept Scientific in the UK and Ireland, and also in the USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland.
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