JSTOR, an online archive of scholarly publications, has announced its merger with Ithaka, a provider of research, strategic and administrative services to non-profit projects. The move is seen to unite two pioneering entities focused on helping the scholarly community take advantage of rapidly advancing information technologies. The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing system-wide costs through collective action.

  Medical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health) has announced a new partnership with biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb. The multi-year contract calls for WK Health to provide HIPAA-compliant prescription sales data to help Bristol-Myers Squibb measure business efficiency, control costs and determine sales force effectiveness.

  Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. has announced a new agreement with YBP Library Services, a leading provider of materials to academic libraries. The partnership was formed to address the growing need of libraries to discover and order book content in the format of their choice using one consolidated book-purchasing channel.

  Health information services provider Healthline Networks has announced that AOL Health, dLife, iVillage, Organized Wisdom, tudiabetes.com and WrongDiagnosis.com have joined the Healthline Media Network. With the addition of these new partners, the Healthline Media Network has quickly grown to become the largest condition-specific health marketing platform, with a potential reach of over 30 million quality health seekers a month.

  Greenwood, a publishing imprint of ABC-CLIO, recently announced an agreement with YBP Library Services, a leading provider of materials to academic libraries. Under the deal, YBP Library Services will act as the non-exclusive agent for the sale of Greenwood's online databases in the US.

  Academic publisher SAGE has announced an agreement with e-Healthcare Solutions (e-HS) to sell, deliver and manage all online advertising sales for its specialty medical journals. Under the deal, e-HS will sell online advertising space to pharmaceutical and device advertisers as well as advertising agencies for more than 45 of SAGE's medical specialty journals with one easy media buy.

  Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing, a division of EBSCO Industries, Inc., has announced the acquisition of US-based publisher Salem Press. The deal is the result of a natural synergy that exists with book content & database subjects. Salem Press is a publisher of material in areas where EBSCOhost provides leading resources, including literature, history and consumer health.

  Publisher Taylor & Francis Group (T&F) has announced that it will be co-publishing academic research journals with India-based Anamaya Publishers under the ‘Taylor & Francis’ and ‘Routledge’ imprints. The incorporation of Anamaya’s five journals in the T&F portfolio brings the total number of journals available to subscribers to 1,405 in 2009.

  Books enquiry and ordering services provider PubEasy has announced that academic publisher SAGE has joined the PubEasy community of booksellers and suppliers. As a new PubEasy member, SAGE’s catalogue of 11,000 titles will now be available to retail booksellers for purposes of checking price and availability on various book titles and tracking the status of book orders.

  Academic publisher SAGE has announced the launch of a new journal Emotion Review. James A. Russell and Lisa Feldman Barrett of Boston College will serve as Editors-in-chief of the journal.

  Distribution services provider Turpin Distribution is set to launch a new comprehensive and fully integrated e-commerce service for journal subscriptions. The service will be open to all of the company’s journal publishers and customers. Customers will be able to search for titles across all Turpin’s publisher clients and view prices, by geographic region, type and currency.

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced that more than 600 medical, veterinary medicine, and health professions book titles will be launched in Health Science eBook Collections on ScienceDirect, in April 2009. Elsevier’s health science books are published under the imprints W.B. Saunders, Mosby, Churchill Livingstone, and Hanley & Belfus.

  STM publisher Elsevier has introduced Reaxys, a new workflow solution for synthetic chemists. Reaxys is based on data from Elsevier’s chemistry databases merged together to provide harmonised content, additional functionalities and a redesigned interface to help improve R&D efficiency. The databases include CrossFire Beilstein, CrossFire Gmelin and Patent Chemistry Database. Reaxys also contains new features including a synthesis planner and advanced results handling to help scientists gather relevant information more efficiently.

  The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has released a guide titled Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A guide to critical issues, by Raym Crow. The guide is the core of a new website, the Campus-based Publishing Resource Center, designed by a panel of advisors from the library and university press communities to support successful publishing partnerships.

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced the launch of SciTopics, a free online expert-generated knowledge sharing service for the research community. Designed as a starting point for scientific research, the website integrates a content publishing platform with search functionalities and community features. The service includes a continually growing number of pages with over 650 SciTopics pages from more than 800 scientists.

  Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) have announced the launch of two new services to help authors comply with funder and institutional mandates for public access. Under the initiative, Molecular Therapy, the official journal of the ASGT, will now offer authors the option of immediate open access on publication, including deposition in PubMed Central, subject to the payment of a publication fee. In addition, as a further author benefit to aid compliance with several funding body mandates, NPG will deposit all Molecular Therapy articles to PubMed Central upon final publication, to be made public after 12 months.

  Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has launched a pilot programme to make collections from libraries visible through mobile devices. The WorldCat Mobile pilot allows users to search for and find books and other materials available in libraries near them through a Web application they can access from a PDA or smartphone.

  Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has announced that it will work together with HathiTrust to increase visibility of and access to items in the HathiTrust’s shared digital repository. HathiTrust is a group of some of the largest research libraries in the US collaborating to create a repository of their vast digital collections.

  Library solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced that based on its experience in the development of digital preservation systems for libraries, the Company was invited to become a member of the PrestoPrime consortium. PrestoPrime is a European Union project, funded by the Seventh Framework Program (FP7) to research and develop means of ensuring the permanence of digital audiovisual objects in archives, libraries, museums, and collections.

  The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has commissioned a new research project to study the economic and social implications of new models for scholarly publishing. According to the findings of the research, sharing research information via a more open access (OA) publishing model would bring millions of pounds worth of savings to the higher education sector apart from benefiting corporate UK. Prof. John Houghton from the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Melbourne’s Victoria University and Prof. Charles Oppenheim at Loughborough University were asked to lead the research.

  Publishing Technology, a UK-based provider of software and services for the publishing industry, has announced the publication of two case studies exploring the benefits of digitising backfiles. Two scholarly publishers – Netherlands-based Brill and US-based OceanSide Publications – recently took their journal archives online. The Publishing Technology case studies outline these projects and the benefits realised.

  Market research and data services provider Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "The Brave New World of Scientific Publishing" report to their offering. The report is based on responses to a 37-question online survey conducted by BioInformatics, LLC. More than 1,500 scientists participated in this survey between May 27 and May 30, 2008.

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced the European availability of illumin8, a web-based natural language processing solution designed to help corporate research professionals answer complex R&D questions with greater speed and effectiveness. illumin8 extracts key relationships across Elsevier’s premium scientific content, millions of patents and 8 billion web pages and fuses them into an organised view.

  STM publisher Springer has announced a publishing partnership with the Education Research Institute of Seoul National University in Korea. Under the deal, Springer will publish the latter’s journal, Asia Pacific Education Review (APER), from 2009. In a related announcement, Springer recently renewed its publishing cooperation with the National Science Council, Taiwan, to continue co-publishing the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education.

  Academic publisher Cambridge University Press (CUP) has announced plans to reorganise its printing business, Cambridge Printing Services, Ltd (CPSL), as a printer to the European part of CUP’s publishing operation. The move follows a strategic review of the company’s printing business over the past nine months. The review has shown that CPSL is unlikely to make a profit in its current form. This would mean that the scale of CPSL will need to be reduced by roughly two-thirds.

  STM publisher Springer Science+Business Media has reached a milestone by publishing its 30,000th eBook in January 2009. Originally launched in 1996, SpringerLink provides students and researchers with electronic access to the largest collection of eBooks; more than 1,500 peer-reviewed Springer journals; as well as 18,000 protocols for laboratories. The eBook Collection comprises more than 140 reference works and over one thousand book series.

  The IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office has made available two new electronic copyright form (eCF) tools for volunteers who are responsible for collecting, submitting and monitoring IEEE Copyright Forms. To help volunteers track eCF submissions, the IPR Office and the IEEE Publishing Technology Group have developed the eCF Report Tool. The second, the eCF Upload Tool, will provide editors whose publications are not using a manuscript submission system with a simple process to enter metadata on all currently submitted manuscripts into the eCF system.

  Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced that it is expanding open access choices for authors in 2009, through both ‘green’ self-archiving and ‘gold’ (authors-pays) open access publication routes. Eleven more journals published by NPG are offering an open access option from January 2009. NPG has also expanded its Manuscript Deposition Service to include 32 further titles.

  Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced that Hereditary Cancer in Clinical Practice has recently joined the growing number of journals opting to transfer to BioMed Central’s open access platform. The move will complement the exposure generated from the journal’s recent acceptance for tracking by Thomson Reuters (Impact Factor due 2010).

  The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters has announced that it has enhanced the Journal Citation Reports, available to subscribers of the JCR Web. The recognised authority for evaluating journals, JCR presents quantitative data that supports a systematic, objective review of the world's leading journals and their impact and influence in the global research community.

  Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced that Nature Network, free online networking website for scientists worldwide, has launched a 'hub' dedicated to New York City at http://network.nature.com/hubs/nyc/. New York City (NYC) joins London and Boston as the third Nature Network city hub, and is the first new hub since the global launch of Nature Network in March 2007.

  Library solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced a new Web 2.0 recommender service - Ex Libris bX. A first-of-its-kind, the service will provide library users with article-level recommendations based on collective usage data amassed from research communities around the world. Sixteen institutions in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia have begun testing bX and are working with Ex Libris on ongoing development before the service’s public launch.

  ProQuest, part of Cambridge Information Group, has launched free search widgets for products on its CSA Illumina platform, including a widget for its CSA Illustrata product line. The CSA Illumina and CSA Illustrata Search Widgets - portable search boxes - allow instant searching of these acclaimed research databases from any page of a library or university web site. The widgets are part of ProQuest's larger initiative to help libraries market their collections by embedding them into the users' workflow.

  Publisher Reed Elsevier has announced that Jan Hommen will step down as Chairman and as a Board member of Reed Elsevier PLC and of Reed Elsevier NV at the companies’ Annual General Meetings on 21 and 22 April 2009 respectively. This follows his appointment as Chief Executive Officer of ING Group from April 27, 2009 on confirmation at the ING Group Annual General Meeting.

  Medical information publisher BMJ Group has announced the appointment of Professor Ruth Malone as the new editor of the journal Tobacco Control. She succeeds Professor Simon Chapman, who edited the journal for 10 years. Professor Chapman will continue to contribute to Tobacco Control by acting as commissioning editor for new journal content relating to tobacco control, advocacy, and policy in low and middle income countries.

  Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, published by IOP publishing, recently announced the appointment of Professor Murray T Batchelor of the Australian National University, Canberra, as the new Editor-in-Chief, effective January 2009. He succeeds Professor Carl M Bender.