STM publisher Elsevier has announced the acquisition of the assets of Professional Development Software, Inc. (PDS), the provider of Softwarefornurses.com online learning education products. Under the deal, PDS will be integrated into Elsevier’s Evolve Testing and Remediation product suite (which includes the ‘HESI Test’), bringing additional content to Elsevier’s total curriculum solution for nursing.

  Lab Manager Magazine, a publication for the scientific research market, has entered into a collaboration with ALMA, the Association of Laboratory Managers. Through this collaboration ALMA and Lab Manager Magazine will mutually support the missions of their organisation and readership - to deliver learning opportunities and the latest news and information important to laboratory management professionals.

  STM publisher IOS Press and the National Science and Technology Library (NSTL) have signed a 3 year contract for the access to all of IOS electronic publications. The deal follows an extensive review of actual usage by the Chinese library users, which showed that the IOS collection was frequently accessed and became increasingly popular over time. Subscription services provider Swets has been actively involved in bringing both parties together and supporting the process throughout.

  Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) and electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), recently signed an agreement. The new deal makes it possible for libraries that subscribe to both WorldCat Local and EBSCOhost services to provide their users with easy online access to the full text of a wide range of authoritative electronic content through the web.

  Books enquiry and ordering services provider PubEasy has announced that Oxford University Press in the US, which is affiliated with the largest scholarly press in the world, has joined the growing PubEasy community of booksellers and suppliers. OUP USA joins a growing number of academic publishers who are making their catalogues available on PubEasy, including McGraw-Hill, SAGE, Bedford, Freeman & Worth, and Chicago Distribution Services, which includes the University of Chicago Press among its 70 academic press distribution clients.

  EMpact Sales (EMpact), the publisher representation group of EBSCO Information Services, has announced an agreement with East View Information Services (East View), a leading provider of information products and services in foreign languages and English translation. Under the deal, EMpact will boost East View’s print and electronic journal sales in select global regions.

  Academic publisher SAGE recently announced a partnership with two industry-leading, online education applications - Blackboard and CourseSmart. The synergy created from this partnership provides both students and education professionals with an innovative new mode of education.

  EMpact Sales (EMpact), the publisher representation group of EBSCO Information Services, and e-libro, an international partner of e-content services and technology provider ebrary, have entered into a three-year partnership agreement. Under the agreement, EMpact will promote all Spanish language content in the e-libro database - 30,000 titles comprising e-books, e-journals, articles and theses - in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.

  Swets Gateway, the special publisher services division of Swets, has announced an agreement with UK-based MA Healthcare. Under the deal, Swets Gateway will act as the exclusive sales and marketing representative for MA Healthcare in the Asia/Pacific region. The agreement covers Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan and Brunei.

  Aspen Publishers, part of the Wolters Kluwer Law & Business group, has announced the availability of the 2009 Medicare and Medicaid Reimbursement Update. Healthcare professionals can now have a one-stop resource to help them navigate through the complex legal arena surrounding Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. 2009 Medicare and Medicaid Reimbursement Update covers all of today’s most critical Medicare and Medicaid topics, explains how these topics have become as important as they are and offers tips on how to work through the uncertainties to protect reimbursement while remaining compliant.

  Enterprise software vendor Design Science, Inc. has announced the release of MathDaisy 1.0. MathDaisy enhances Microsoft's Save As DAISY add-in for Microsoft Word to convert Word documents containing math notation to DAISY Digital Talking Books, ready to be read by students, teachers, engineers, and scientists with vision and learning disabilities, including blindness, low vision, and dyslexia.

  Online publishing solutions provider Semantico Ltd. has announced a redesign of its service offering around the introduction of rapid versions of its online publishing platform, Semantico Information Publishing Platform (SIPP), and its identity and access management system, Semantico Access Management System (SAMS). The new rapid offering is projected to enable dramatically shortened implementation times and lower cost without sacrifice of quality. The move is expected to better meet the needs of publishers struggling to fund the development of their online offerings in the current financial climate. The company is also introducing a number of crunch-buster service additions alongside its core offering.

  Information services company Baker & Taylor, Inc. has announced a long-term agreement with LibreDigital to empower publishers to manage content distribution in multiple formats, to numerous digital devices and merchandising channels worldwide. LibreDigital is the leading provider of conversion, storage and secure distribution for digital content through digital stores and eBook devices.

  Academic publisher SAGE has announced that commencing this month, Promotion & Education, the official journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE), will change its name to Global Health Promotion. The name change is one of a number of developments following the journal’s transition to SAGE in 2008.

  The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published a white paper, Strategic Directions for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). The paper calls for a reframing of the FDLP to ensure a robust and effective program for the future. It provides an environmental context for the FDLP and discusses the current opportunity to reframe the programme, presents selected regional cooperative initiatives that demonstrate new directions, and suggests that reframing the FDLP presents a unique opportunity to explore cooperative print-management strategies.

  The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced that Manuscript Central, the flagship application of its ScholarOne product line, is now available in Simplified Chinese globally. The release of the leading global peer review system with full Chinese interface enhances usability and information sharing for Chinese-speaking users and completes the Thomson Reuters research workflow solution suite for the rapidly growing Chinese scientific community.

  Medical information and clinical content solutions provider Lexi-Comp, Inc. has partnered with RPS Publishing to deliver the international pharmacology data found in Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference within Lexi-Comp ONLINE, Lexi-Comp's web-based application for hospitals and health-systems. RPS Publishing is the publishing arm of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

  The American Heart Association has announced a partnership with Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, to publish a new series of medical references. The new series called the American Heart Association Clinical Series is designed to help physicians translate scientific and technological advances into better patient care.

  SAE International has announced the launch of new compilations comprising the best SAE technical papers written each year, in partnership with HighWire Press, a division of Stanford University Libraries. The compilations, called SAE International Journals, are projected to give the authors and the content greater visibility within the academic community.

  STM and business publisher Inderscience, Switzerland, has announced the inaugural issues of four new titles. The new titles are: International Journal of Autonomic Computing; International Journal of Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology; International Journal of Information and Coding Theory; and International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation.

  While the number of times a scientific article is cited by other articles is currently the gold standard for ranking its impact, online publishing offers another measure: the number of unique downloads. A recent analysis in the online Journal of Vision (JOV) finds that downloads are a good predictor of citations - and they are available significantly faster. The analysis was published in an editorial by JOV Editor-in-Chief Andrew Watson.

  Media industry-focused research and advisory firm Outsell, Inc. has issued reduced growth projections for the information industry owing to the global recession. The new report, titled What is Good Performance in 2009?, presents revised projections for eight sectors. It is believed that the industry may further decline in 2010 because of lower renewal rates and contract values catching up in ratable revenue streams.

  ProQuest, part of Cambridge Information Group, is celebrating National Library Week by encouraging libraries to take advantage of the company's popular advocacy programme. The programme includes tools and services that help librarians connect with their user communities, free database access and scholarship support for library students, and awards to recognise outstanding library school educators and those who protect intellectual freedom.

  The National Academies has announced the completion of the first phase of a partnership with internet search services provider Google. The deal is to digitise the library's collection of reports from 1863 to 1997, making them available – free, searchable, and in full text – through Google Book Search. The Academies plan to have their entire collection of nearly 11,000 reports digitised by 2011.

  Life sciences company Helicos BioSciences has announced the release of transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) datasets on the HeliSphere Technology Center (http://open.helicosbio.com), the company's open access website for sharing Helicos datasets and bioinformatics software tools. Helicos' amplification and ligation-free approach is projected to virtually eliminate the creation of false-positive splicing and fusion events, frequently observed in other RNA-Seq datasets.

  ProQuest, part of Cambridge Information Group, has announced that it is extending its freeze on Continuing Service Fees, ongoing product support and access fees for perpetual archive agreements, through 2011. In addition, ProQuest is offering discounts on Continuing Service Fees to libraries that make new purchases within a product family.

  Informa Pharmaceutical Science, a division of Informa Business Information, has announced the inclusion of two of its titles in the US National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE Index. Informa’s Journal of Medical Economics (JME) and Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents are joining the company’s related titles on the prestigious bibliographic database that contains more than 16 million references to journal articles in life sciences and biomedicine.

  Professional Engineering Publishing (PE Publishing), the publishing arm of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), has announced that the International Journal of Engine Research has been selected for inclusion in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded, Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, and Current Contents/Engineering Computing and Technology databases. Coverage in the databases will begin with Issue 8, 2007.

  The Fourth edition of blogspeak is now online. Featured are Colin Smith (Concern about accepted manuscripts and the possibility of open access publishing); Gavin Baker (NIH Open-Access Policy Turns 1 Year Old); Kent Anderson (Are e-Books Already Mainstream?); David Clover (Online Research Papers Database – ORO); and Roddy MacLeod (Top 100 journals in ticTOCs tables of contents service). A service of Knowledgespeak.com, Blogspeak includes blog posts relevant to the publishing industry, particularly STM publishing. Subscribers are invited to participate in the latest edition of blogspeak at http://www.knowledgespeak.com/
Blog/Blog_Index_More.asp?MID=1#41.

  Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. has announced that it is presenting its eBook series collections – the Business, Management and Economics collection and the Social Sciences Collection - at the forthcoming CONSAL XIV General Conference, Hanoi, Vietnam, April 20-24. Both these collections offer international content from a worldwide author base, with new content to be added each year.

  Serials Solutions, the e-resource access and management services arm of ProQuest, has announced the release of enhanced Full-Text and Peer Review features for the Serials Solutions 360 Search federated search service. Using a combination of data supplied by the Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks knowledgebase and Ulrich's Global Serials Intelligence knowledgebase, these search filters enable users to limit the results of queries to full-text or peer-reviewed sources reliably.

  Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has been awarded a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a public information campaign. The campaign will help public library leaders heighten awareness of the needs of local libraries and increase support for the services they provide during these challenging times. OCLC will pilot the campaign in select areas of Georgia and Iowa starting this summer as well as a limited number of other communities which will be selected later this spring.

  Scientific publisher CRC Press, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group, has formed its first Library Advisory Board. The Board will spearhead discussion between librarians and CRC about the rapidly changing trends of the 21st century library. The outcome of these discussions will fuel the future development of digital products and specifically, the CRCnetBASE eBook Libraries.