Information research solutions provider Ovid, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, has announced an agreement with the UK Department of Health. Under the deal, students and faculty of all medical schools throughout England that have an associated transplant unit will obtain electronic access to the Transplant Library via OvidSP, beginning April 1, 2009. The Transplant Library database, produced by the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation, is an electronic evidence-based resource for organ transplantation.

  STM publisher Springer has announced that it has been selected by the Japanese Association of Anatomists to publish the latter’s official journal, Anatomical Science International. The first Springer issue will be published in April 2009. Dr. Kiyotaka Toshimori, Professor and Chairman in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at Chiba University School of Medicine, will take over from Dr. Shohei Yamashina as editor-in-chief in April 2009.

  E-book technology firm ebrary has announced that it is partnering with three book distributors to make its e-books and other digital materials available to academic libraries in Europe and Israel under various subscription and purchase models. The company’s new representatives are Massmann Internationale Buchhandlung in northern Germany; Dietmar Dreier Wissenschaftliche Versandbuchhandlung in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and Ziur Information Systems Ltd. in Israel.

  STM publisher Springer has announced that it will publish the Journal of Computing in Higher Education: Research and Integration of Instructional Technology, starting April 2009. Founded in 1989 by the New England Regional Computing Program, the journal focuses on the established field of instructional technology in higher education. Gary R. Morrison of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, will serve as the new editor-in-chief of the journal.

  The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has announced a three-year contract with The Charlesworth Group and the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL), a consortia headed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. With this move, the Society seeks to increase international exposure to its journals Radiology and RadioGraphics.

  Information provider Thomson Reuters hCarenotes provides more than 6,000 customisable documents covering general care, pre- and after- care, inpatient care, drug notes and hospital discharge instructions. The documents are available in English and Spanish and are written for a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level.

  Data solutions provider DataSalon Ltd. has announced a strategic partnership with Ringgold for enhanced analysis of publishers’ customer data. Ringgold creates and maintains a hierarchic database of identifiers for institutions to support publishers and other parties in the delivery of e-content within the information supply chain. Under the deal, Ringgold and DataSalon will combine the former’s Identify database and the latter’s MasterVision platform to provide publishers with a complete solution. The combined solution can be used by clients for the analysis of their existing customer base and for targeting the most appropriate new sales prospects.

  EMpact Sales (EMpact), the publisher representation group of EBSCO Information Services, has announced an agreement with non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing to serve as sales agent. The agreement grants EMpact the rights to sell IOP’s print and electronic journals in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad, Central America, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Aruba and the Caribbean, including the Bahamas.

  E-research and educational publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, has entered into a long-term agreement with YBP Library Services, Inc., a provider of materials to academic libraries. The deal is to expand the distribution of Gale’s Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) e-book collection, Literature Criticism Online; and the CODiE-finalist Gale Directory Library. YBP will distribute GVRL into the academic library market, where it claims to have a leadership position.

  Library solutions provider Ex Libris Group and Bibliographical Center for Research (BCR) have signed an agreement to offer libraries, archives, and other information organisations foundation training and consulting services in the field of digital preservation. The training will include an overview of digital preservation as well as courses on policy and planning for digital preservation, and risk assessment planning and implementation.

  E-research and educational publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, has announced the June 2009 launch of a new electronic resource, GREENR (Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources). A one-stop site, GREENR will provide authoritative reference content in the area of the environment, energy and natural resources.

  Academic publisher SAGE is set to launch the SAGE Reference Online Handbook Collection, a set of 80 of its highest rated handbooks, digitised and hosted on the SAGE Reference Online platform. The Handbook Collection was developed following extensive consultation with librarians about how researchers are actually using reference collections in today’s libraries.

  STM and business publisher Inderscience has published the first issues of four new titles. The journals are: International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing; International Journal of Immunological Studies; International Journal of Power and Energy Conversion; and International Journal of Strategic Business Alliances.

  ScienceBlogs.com, part of science media company Seed Media Group, has announced the launch of its latest international site, ScienceBlogs Brazil (scienceblogs.com.br). The site seeks to bring together original and influential voices within the Brazilian science community, some of whom have already won accolades for their blogging. Edited from São Paulo by Carlos Hotta and Atila Iamarino, ScienceBlogs Brazil launches with 23 Portuguese-language blogs on topics ranging from genetics to the environment.

  ASM Press, the publishing arm of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has announced the latest edition of Clinical Virology, an essential reference volume in one of the most rapidly changing fields of clinical medicine. Covering novel viruses, pathogenesis, epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, Clinical Virology informs scientists and health care professionals about all the medically relevant aspects of this rapidly evolving field.

  The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has released a white paper titled ‘The Five Myths of Generic Competition.’ The whitepaper highlights what originator pharmaceutical and biotech companies can do to improve their forecasting of the likely timing, source and intensity of competition from generic drugs. The findings in the white paper are based on an independent survey of commercial professionals in pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

  e-communication and clinical information solutions developer EPG Health Media, UK, has announced the launch of a new interactive contraception knowledge centre within the web-based physician resource www.epgonline.org. Sanctioned by the European Medical Association (EMA), EPG Online is a free educational service dedicated to providing healthcare professionals (HCPs) with access to best practice diagnosis and patient management guidance.

  Software vendor Microsoft Corp and Creative Commons, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, have announced the release of a semantic Ontology Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007. The web tool is projected to enable authors to easily add scientific hyperlinks as semantic annotations, drawn from ontologies, to their documents and research papers. The add-in was announced before an industry panel at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

  Scientific and medical information resources provider McGraw-Hill Professional has announced the launch of AccessEngineering (www.AccessEngineeringLibrary.com), a comprehensive aggregation of the best engineering content published in the past decade. Derived from a selection of more than 250 engineering handbooks, monographs, and textbooks, AccessEngineering supports multiple levels of scientific and technical research in the academic, corporate, industrial, and government sectors.

  Publishing sales resource provider Burgundy Information Services Ltd. has announced that it will be showcasing a variety of products at the forthcoming UKSG Conference and Exhibition. The event, to be held from March 30 - April 1, in Torquay, UK, is projected as a key conference in the library calendar. The company has invited six of its publisher clients and contacts to exhibit their products at its booth at the conference.

  RSuite CMS, a content management system for publishers, has been selected as a finalist in the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 24th annual CODiE awards in the Best Content Management Solution category. RSuite is a content management system built for book, journal, newsletter, magazine, online, technical, and other publishers. Thousands of users perform complex editorial tasks and collaborative workflow routines, harnessing the power of RSuite to drive content creation, management, enrichment, transformation, and delivery.

  The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced the results of its annual roundup of the "hottest" researchers and research papers. In its March/April issue of Science Watch, Thomson Reuters identified the top 13 authors who fielded the highest numbers of Hot Papers in 2007-2008 as well as the most-cited research papers of 2008.

  Information management company Infotrieve, Inc., has announced that software solution Content SCM has been selected as a finalist in the Best Online Science or Technology Service category of the 2009 CODiE Awards presented by the Software & Information Industry Association. The CODiE 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.

  Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced that its journal BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making has recently hit the 250 publications landmark. The journal has known considerable developments since its launch back in 2001. It is attracting more submissions than ever before and publications have climbed by 50 percent in the last three years.

  Health information provider MEDai, Inc. has announced that several of its clients will be presenting the benefits and successes they have realised from utilising MEDai's suite of predictive analytic solutions. The presentations will take place during World Research Group's 6th Annual New Innovations & Applications in Predictive Modeling Conference in Las Vegas, March 25-26, 2009. These presentations are expected to provide insight on how payors can maximise and improve resource allocation, improve the impact of care management efforts, and more effectively engage members and physicians in the healthcare delivery process.

  Non-profit copyright licensing solution provider Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) has added more than 9 million rights to its licensing services for academic institutions. The company added more than 1 million rights for leading foreign and domestic books, scholarly journals, newspapers and magazines under its Annual Copyright License for Academic Institutions and photocopy rights for more than 8 million foreign works under its Pay-per-use service.

  Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced that nine of its journals have recently been accepted for tracking by Thomson Reuters and are set to receive their first Impact Factors in June 2009 and June 2011. These journals bring to a total of 83 BioMed Central journals that are now indexed in Thomson Reuters.

  Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced that its journals Chinese Medicine and Patient Safety in Surgery have been accepted for indexing by Cinahl. Cinahl indexes titles relevant to nursing and allied healthcare. Neural Development, another journal published by BioMed Central, has been added to the indexing service PsycINFO. PsycINFO is an abstract database of psychological literature from the 1800s to the present.

  TERI Press, the publishing arm of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), recently organised an event, Pathways to Green Publishing: a stakeholders’ dialogue on ecological and sustainable publishing practices. The event brought together stakeholders involved in the process of publishing, including paper manufacturers and printers, on a common platform to discuss the environmental issues plaguing the publishing industry as a whole.

  Medialab Solutions, a US-based provider of library software, has announced that the Harvard University Library is to implement AquaBrowser Library, its search and discovery platform, in spring 2009. The implementation will include faceted navigation, word cloud discovery, relevancy ranking, an integrated Authority File, real-time availability information for items, and integration with the ILS for patron services. The patron services include placing holds, making requests, viewing checkouts and renewing items.

  Information services provider McGraw-Hill Companies has announced the appointment of Lawrence P. Neal as president of Platts. Part of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Platts is a leading global provider of energy and commodities information. Neal succeeds Victoria Chu Pao, who is leaving the Corporation later this month after a successful four-year tenure.

  Information services provider McGraw-Hill Companies has announced the appointment of Charles L. Teschner, Jr. as executive vice president for Global Strategy effective March 23, 2009. Teschner succeeds Peter C. Davis, who recently began serving as president of McGraw-Hill Education.

  Digital Media Services Company LibreDigital Inc has announced key executive appointments to support the growing demand for the company’s Digital Media solutions and services. In their primary roles, the new executives will help LibreDigital expand the solutions offered to publishers while providing services to help customers exceed their business objectives.