Publishers Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Palgrave Macmillan Journals (PMJ) have announced that upgraded usage statistic reporting is now available for all online publications. With immediate effect, NPG and PMJ statistic reports now include the additional reports and services required by the new COUNTER Release 3, including SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative). The enhanced statistics reporting is provided by MPS Insight, a new service for publishers from Macmillan’s sister company, MPS Technologies.

  The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced that ISI Web of Knowledge now includes Global Health and the Global Health Archive from CABI. The comprehensive database of public health information will provide users with global and regional public health coverage.

  The University of Aberdeen has announced a partnership with STM publisher Elsevier to obtain expanded access to Elsevier’s complete back catalogue of e-journals, e-books and other reference works. As part of the deal, Elsevier will showcase the university and its new library through creating a case study illustrating the university’s professed commitment to flexible, modern learning, and the role of e-resources in the mission of a global university.

  The Taiwan Library Consortium, in conjunction with the government of Taiwan, has announced a three-year agreement with digital content services provider Ingram Digital. Under the deal, Ingram Digital will supply 250,000 users with access to 5,000 digital titles covering a wide spectrum of subject matter. E-book titles will be accessible to member libraries via Ingram Digital’s e-content aggregation platform, MyiLibrary.

  Online submission system provider Aries Systems Corporation has announced an agreement with EMH Swiss Medical Publisher Ltd. (Schweizerische Ärzteverlag AG). Under the deal, Aries’ Editorial Manager online peer-review system will be deployed to journals published by EMH.

  The European Academy of Paediatrics (EAP) has announced that specialist international title Archives of Disease in Childhood (ADC) has been named its official journal. This is the second time the title has acquired this status – it is already the official journal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which co-owns ADC with the BMJ Group. The latest move will mean that EAP members will automatically receive a copy of the journal and its sister titles, Fetal and Neonatal Edition and Education in Practice, as part of their subscription. EAP will also be able to appoint a deputy editor from one of its EU member countries and additional associate editors to sit on the journal's editorial board.

  STM publisher Springer has announced that it will, from henceforth, publish Neurotoxicity Research, the official journal of the Neurotoxicity Society. The publication is an international, interdisciplinary broad-based journal reporting on both basic and clinical research on classical neurotoxicity effects and mechanisms associated with neurodegeneration, necrosis, neuronal apoptosis, nerve regeneration and other related topics. Published eight times a year and aimed at neuroscience researchers and neurologists, the journal features original papers, reviews and society news.

  McGraw-Hill Professional, a provider of information resources for the scientific and medical communities, has launched AccessAnesthesiology (http://www.accessanesthesiology.com), an online resource dedicated solely to pain management, critical care and perioperative medicine. The learning website seeks to give anesthesiology residents a suite of detailed reference materials and multimedia, educators a powerful tool for managing workflows, and professionals an in-depth resource for maintaining certification.

  The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has launched its first e-book, titled The e-Revolution and Post-Compulsory Education: Using e-business models to deliver quality education. The book seeks to offer senior managers in further and higher education best-practice guidance for applying e-business approaches to their institutions.

  Information technology (IT) media company TechTarget, Inc. has announced the launch of a web portal, SearchCompliance.com. The site seeks to give strategic technology and business professionals the resources they need to better understand Federal regulations and bring their organisation into compliance. The expert editorial for the site is lead by Mark Schlack, TechTarget’s vice president of editorial and a 20-year veteran of IT publishing.

  Scientific publisher RSC Publishing, the publishing arm of the Royal Society of Chemistry, can now provide customers with COUNTER 3 compliant journal usage statistics, as the result of a new service delivered by MPS Technologies. RSC Publishing claims to be the first chemistry publisher to announce the availability of COUNTER 3 statistics for its journal customers.

  Healthcare services provider Health Service Executive (HSE) has launched LENUS, a comprehensive online repository of health-related reports, research and official publications. Built on BioMed Central’s ‘Open Repository’ system, LENUS makes available a wealth of material from former Irish health boards, the Health Service Executive, the Department of Health and Children and many other organisations active in Irish healthcare.

  Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing has announced the addition of a new feature to its clinical reference tool, DynaMed. The feature is aimed to help DynaMed users immediately go to content updates in topics. When significant new content is added to a DynaMed topic, the update reason will contain a link to the new content in the topic. The new feature can be viewed by clicking on any of the topics shown on the Recently Updated page.

  RPS Publishing, the publishing arm of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, has announced that Drug Administration via Enteral Feeding Tubes is now available on the MedicinesComplete platform. The move further strengthens the platform's position in offering online access to world-leading drug and healthcare resources.

  STM publisher Elsevier has published a special issue of Behavioural Processes, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin on February 12, 2009. Guest edited by Karen Hollis, the issue features 16 papers. These include original research articles as well as theoretical reviews by researchers in the field of comparative cognition, demonstrating how animals perceive, learn about and understand their physical and social worlds.

  Library solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced the release of version 20.0 of its Aleph integrated library system. More than 85 enhancements, the majority of which have been garnered from the Aleph user community, focus on further streamlining staff workflows to maximise efficiency and reduce total cost of ownership. New functionality in this release enables library staff to be even more responsive to the special requests of their users.

  Expert-driven article evaluation services Faculty of 1000 Biology and Faculty of 1000 Medicine are each launching a journal to complement their service. Most of the content in the new journals, called F1000 Reports, are already filtered for importance by Faculty of 1000’s community of over 5,000 of the world’s top scientists and clinicians.

  The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced the launch of InCitesT - a web-based solution that provides users with the tools needed to demonstrate the impact and importance of their institution's research. Through InCites, Thomson Reuters seeks to provide its customers with a one-stop system to quantitatively evaluate productivity and influence in order to make strategic decisions.

  Non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP) has announced that librarians with subscriptions to IOP Publishing titles can now access COUNTER Release 3 results, via a new interface called MPS Insight, ahead of the compulsory deadline of August 2009. MPS Insight is a new service that has passed an independent COUNTER audit to provide the new reports required by COUNTER Release 3.

  The Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters has been selected by VHA, Inc., the national healthcare alliance, as its preferred vendor for mobile clinical quality improvement solutions. With this preferred vendor designation, Thomson Reuters is authorised to sell its Clinical Xpert suite of products to VHA members across the US.

  Subscription services provider Swets has announced that SwetsWise Online Content can be accessed through the Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch. Powered by SwetsWise Subscriptions, SwetsWise Online Content is a single point of contact to one of the most extensive collections of electronic journals currently available in the scholarly information market.

  GenomeQuest, a provider of biological sequence search, content and analysis services, has announced the release of two new functionalities for sequence data management. The new functionalities - GQ Rapid Annotation Pipeline (RAP) and GQ Gene - are both part of the latest 5.2 version of GenomeQuest, the company’s sequence data management solution.

  Non-profit electronic archiving service provider Portico has announced an agreement with Medknow Publications. Under the deal, Portico will preserve the latter’s entire online journals collection of 77 titles. Medknow is a publisher of academic and scientific peer-reviewed open access journals.

  The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society, has created a Board-Presidential Task Force on Education to identify a unique role for the society in transforming education in the US. The task force’s charter calls upon it to review recommendations contained in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) reports released in the last five years. Created in late 2008, the task force is slated to report its findings at the ACS National Meeting in Washington in late August.

  E-research and educational publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, has announced that six of its resources have been selected as finalists in the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 24th annual CODiE Awards. The awards celebrate achievement and vision in software, education technology and digital content, and are claimed to be the only peer-reviewed honour in the industry. Winners will be announced in May at the Annual CODiE Awards Gala.

  GlobalSpec (www.globalspec.com), the US-based provider of a specialised search engine, information resource and e-publishing services for the engineering, industrial and technical communities, has announced that it has exceeded five million registered users. On registration, visitors to the site gain access to more than 180 million parts in 2,300,000 searchable product families from over 24,000 supplier catalogues, all searchable by specification. This is projected to offer users the ability to easily locate products, components and services from manufacturers, distributors and service providers.

  STM publisher Hindawi Publishing Corporation has announced that it has received more than 1,000 monthly submitted manuscripts in its Open Access journal collection for the first time in February 2009. Hindawi's monthly submissions exceeded 500 for the first time in May 2007, less than two years ago.

  Scientific Publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) have announced that authors publishing research in the European Journal of Human Genetics (EJHG) can now opt to make their articles open access. The EJHG Open option, introduced by NPG and ESHG, gives authors the choice of immediate open access on publication. This includes deposition of the final published version in PubMed Central.

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced that its journal Molecular Oncology (Molonc) has been accepted by Thomson Reuters for inclusion in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch), Biosis Previews and Biological Abstracts. Elsevier publishes the journal on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS). The inclusion in the SciSearch index is claimed to be an exceptional achievement for a journal that is just 18 months old in a fast-moving and highly competitive field. The 2009 Impact Factor will be the first for MOLONC. Coverage starts from Volume 1, 2007.

  Informa Pharmaceutical Science, the pharmaceutical science division of Informa Healthcare, has announced the appointment of Prof. Vladimir Torchilin as the new Co-Editor of its journal, Drug Delivery. Prof. Torchilin is currently a Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Director at the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

  The Board of Directors of the Association of American Publishers has announced the appointment of Tom Allen as President and CEO. He succeeds former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, who served in that position since June 1997. The Association of American Publishers advocates on issues of paramount importance ranging from free speech and education to the protection of intellectual property rights and international freedom to publish.

  Technical professional society IEEE has announced the appointment of Dr. E. James Prendergast as its new executive director. He succeeds former IEEE Executive Director Jeffry W. Raynes, who resigned in June 2008. Dr. Prendergast will serve as chief operating officer and will manage the more than 1,000 IEEE staff members at seven US and overseas locations.

  Medical information publisher BMJ Group has announced the appointment of Professor Dana Loomis as the new editor of international specialist title Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Professor Loomis succeeds Professor Keith Palmer, who has edited the title for the past five years.