The National Information Standards Organization (NISO), in partnership with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), has published the Recommended Practice Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group (NISO-RP-8-2008). The publication is designed to provide a simple, practical way of describing the versions of scholarly journal articles that appear online before, during, and after formal journal publication.

The US Department of Energy has launched the DOE Data Explorer (DDE), a tool to find scientific research data generated in the course of DOE-sponsored research in various science disciplines. The data that can be found thus include computer simulations, numeric data files, figures and plots, interactive maps, multimedia and scientific images.

Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) is working with software development and consulting enterprise Index Data to extend the discovery capabilities of WorldCat Local to include all licensed and full-text resources of a library. Index Data will help OCLC incorporate metasearch into WorldCat Local for searching databases that are not indexed in WorldCat.org.

Reprints Desk, Inc., a US-based content re-purposing company focused on medical and scientific publishing, Inc., has announced a cooperation agreement with scientific information services provider FIZ Karlsruhe. The deal will integrate Reprints Desk as a document supplier in FIZ Karlsruhe’s full-text broker service FIZ AutoDoc.

Neuroscientist Nikos Logothetis of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, has reportedly charged two of his former research students with pilfering data from his laboratory. The students then published scientifically incorrect interpretations of the data against his advice, it has been reported. Logothetis further claimed that the journal Human Brain Mapping acted incorrectly by publishing the paper even after it was informed that the data were inappropriate. According to Logothetis, the journal has denied him the right to a timely reply.

Thieme Publishers, part of STM publisher Thieme Publishing Group, recently announced the launch of WinkingSkull.com PLUS, an ancillary component to the anatomy study aid, WinkingSkull.com. While the website remains publicly accessible, PLUS is available exclusively to buyers of the Atlas of Anatomy.

Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced that it has received confirmation from Thomson Reuters of official 2007 Impact Factors for Biology Direct (3.29) and Algorithms for Molecular Biology (1.63). Impact factors are a metric that reflect the frequency that peer-reviewed journals are cited by researchers, making them one tool for evaluating a journal’s quality.

Knowledgespeak is planning to atomise its content. A preliminary but significant initiative has already been taken in this direction. For an internationally esteemed association, we have repackaged and categorised our news under various topics to suit the information needs of its members. We are exploring other possibilities of bringing a granular dimension to our content that we believe can help us reach a wider audience, such as providing RSS feeds categorised into various topics of interest.

Readers are invited to discuss mutually beneficial methods and possibilities of atomising such content, as we firmly believe this can help all of us in serving a better value proposition to our users. Please contact us at scope@scopeknowledge.com with your thoughts and for further discussions in this direction.