Medical information publisher BMJ Group has announced a partnership with the Open University Business School (OUBS) to provide accredited online courses in Clinical Leadership. BMJ Learning, the medical education division of BMJ Group, and OUBS’ Centre for Professional Learning and Development (CPLD) have collaborated to provide postgraduate qualifications in Clinical Leadership for healthcare professionals. The new courses have been developed following the recommendations of Lord Darzi’s NHS Next Stage Review that require all NHS organisations to have formal leadership development plans in place.

  Online reference library Credo Reference has signed an agreement with SAGE Publications to provide titles from SAGE’ Key Concepts and Key Thinkers Series on the Credo Reference platform. Written by experienced and respected academics and with a focus on the higher education market, these new titles provide Credo Reference users with information on key concepts in a variety of disciplines.

  STM publisher Springer has signed a co-publishing agreement with the Indian Association of Surgical Oncology (IASO) to launch the society’s official publication, the Indian Journal of Surgical Oncology (IJSO). The journal aims to serve as a medium of publication for original scientific work from India, as well as from around the world. Original articles, review articles and other special articles of importance and interest dealing with basic and clinical research will be considered for publication.

  STM publisher Springer has signed a cooperation agreement with the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI). Under the deal, the global publisher will publish the latter’s The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology of India (JOGI). The journal will be published both electronically and in print.

  Books enquiry and ordering services provider PubEasy has announced that Pearson Education UK, the global leader in educational publishing, will join the growing e-community of booksellers and their suppliers in the UK and International market. When Pearson Education goes live (scheduled for autumn 2009), titles serviced via their UK distribution facilities will be available to registered booksellers with a PubEasy password for ordering and enquiry needs.

  CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and the European Commission have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which aims to enhance the long-standing partnership between the two organisations. The MoU will provide a structured framework for cooperation across a broad range of issues of common interest, with emphasis on consolidating and further developing the European Research Area and facilitating the implementation of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, as defined by the CERN Council.

  STM publisher Springer has signed a co-publishing agreement with the Association of Food Scientists and Technologists, India (AFST(I)). Under the deal, Springer will publish the latter’s journal - Journal of Food Science and Technology (JFST). The journal has been published by AFST(I) for the last 46 years and is increasing in importance as reflected in its rising impact factor.

  The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has announced an agreement with the Canadian Dental Association (CDA). Under the deal, the former’s Canadian Health magazine, which ranked first in Canada in terms of readers per copy in a recent Print Management Bureau (PMB) study, will be sent to 11,000 dentists' offices across the country.

  Business information company Thomson Reuters has announced a partnership agreement with Sagient Research, a leading provider of biopharmaceutical institutional research. Under the deal, Thomson Reuters will incorporate Sagient’s assessments, forecasts and approval timelines on clinical-stage drugs into the upcoming Forecast Module of Thomson Pharma Partnering.

  Academic publisher SAGE has announced a new partnership with the International Association of Sociological Methodology (AIMS) to publish their journal, Bulletin of Sociological Methodology (BMS), starting January 2010. The BMS is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal specialising in all aspects of sociological methodology, publishing in both English and French.

  Business and technical information provider TechInsights, a division of United Business Media, has announced that its EE Times, the daily source of essential business and technical information for the electronics industry's decision makers, will launch a special all digital-only edition focused on Apollo in celebration of the 40th anniversary event that launched an entire generation of engineers.

  Non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing has announced a special issue of Measurement Science and Technology. This special issue provides an overview of current developments in the field of nanoscale metrology. It presents selected contributions from the Nanoscale 2008 seminar held at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM), Turin, in September 2008.

  Scientific information services provider FIZ Karlsruhe has announced that FIZ AutoDoc will now provide FIZ AutoDoc and STN Customers with new additional services. Under the initiative, Future Science Group is available as a new pay-per-view supplier offering download option of articles from 41 e-journals at present. Additionally, FIZ AutoDoc will offer the option of requesting an offer and subsequently ordering e-prints. It is also providing a new and convenient way of ordering documents from PubMed via the order option ‘From other Search Result’.

  The InChI Trust, a not-for-profit organisation to expand and develop the InChI open source chemical structure representation algorithm, is formally launched this week. Originally developed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) is an alpha-numeric character string generated by an algorithm. The Trust aims to develop and improve on the current InChI standard, further enabling the interlinking of chemistry and chemical structures on the web. Nature Publishing Group is a charter member of the Trust.

  E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) provider Serials Solutions has announced Single Sign-On (SSO) access control for the Serials Solutions 360 Link OpenURL link resolver service and 360 Core E-Journal Portal A-to-Z list. The SSO authentication capability ensures that librarians can serve their remote users with the same level of consideration and access as they do local users.

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced the ‘Article of the Future’ project, an ongoing collaboration with the scientific community to redefine how a scientific article is presented online. The project takes full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualised entry points and routes through content, while exploiting the latest advances in visualization techniques.

  The American Association of Medical Review Officers (AAMRO) has announced the availability of the ninth edition of the Medical Review Officer’s Handbook. The handbook, published by AAMRO, is expected to benefit medical review officers (MROs), physicians, toxicologists, drug testing administrators and human resource executives involved in drug testing. The expanded 9th edition seeks to serve as both an essential reference text and a practical guide to drug testing. It is claimed to present a concise integration of the science, technology, medicine, law, policy and cultural issues relevant to drug testing.

  Healthcare publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, has announced the launch of HealthJobPlus.com, a single portal site offering jobs for health professionals via three career specific job sites: NursingJobsPlus.com, PhysiciansJobsPlus.com, and HealthProfessionsJobsPlus.com. HealthJobsPlus offers recruiters a wide yet highly focused career and recruitment network, reaching up to 500,000 health professionals. Promotion opportunities include single, multiple and unlimited job posting packages, spotlight ads, employer profiles and posting upgrades.

  Web-based information services provider Knovel has announced the immediate availability of its Transportation Engineering collection. This new subject area includes technical information engineers need for the design, construction and upgrade of transportation systems and infrastructure for air, rail, coastal areas, offshore and on the road.

  Medhand International, a supplier of Doctors reference libraries for mobile platforms, has announced the forthcoming launch of their intuitive iPhone reference book application. The first launch consists of four titles from the Oxford University Press Medical Handbook series and from the Oxford American Handbooks series. More than 25 Oxford Medical Handbook titles are expected to be launched before year-end.

  Health-information provider Healthy Advice Networks has announced the launch of PracticeWire, a wireless broadband technology solution that delivers real-time health content to physicians all day via wall-mounted flat-screen monitors. Strategically located in the back office, medical news and information is sourced from over 40 peer-reviewed medical journals and news feeds.

  Non-profit electronic archiving service provider Portico has announced an agreement with academic publisher Brill. Under the deal, Portico will preserve the latter’s entire online journals collection of 130 titles. With this inclusion, over 10,000 e-journals and 27,000 e-books from 74 publishers on behalf of 2,000 societies and associations have now been entrusted to the Portico archive.

  The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that a JISC-funded repository based at Warwick University has uploaded its 1,000th item, just under a year after its launch. The Warwick Research Archive Project (WRAP) continues to add articles and PhD theses to the free online resource, following funding from JISC's £14 million repositories and preservation programme. The programme aimed to start up and interlink repositories in universities and colleges across the UK.

  The American Chemical Society (ACS) Publications Division is pursuing a series of product, platform and pricing initiatives in 2009-2010 designed to meet the information demands of scientific readers and the research libraries that support them. Key among the changes is an immediate shift from traditional size print to a novel ‘rotated and condensed’ print format that will be used for most of the Society’s publications. In addition, effective 2010, ACS will end two discount programmes, one for libraries and one for its members, applicable solely to its print-format journals.

  Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. and The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), in association with the International Network for the Availability of Science Publications (INASP) and the African Engineering Education Association (AEEA), are offering a research grant to fund an African project in the field of engineering research. The funding grant of up to £2,500, will address the dissemination of knowledge for social good with a specific focus towards the benefit of Africa.

  Medialab Solutions, a provider of library software, has announced that in a single year, more than 400 libraries have chosen the AquaBrowser Library, its search and discovery system for libraries. AquaBrowser is designed to harness the power of common search behaviours to deliver immediate results and relevant content from a variety of sources. Its ‘search, discover, refine’ methodology is projected to provide visualisation and faceting features that help users quickly and easily uncover relevant results and encourage them to explore more of a library’s resources.

  A report prepared under the auspices of the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) stresses the continuing and increasingly valuable economic contributions of various copyright industries to the US economy. Called ‘Copyright Industries in the US Economy: The 2003-2007 Report’, the report was prepared by economist Stephen E. Siwek with data from official government sources, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

  The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced that the historic January 30, 1970 edition of the journal Science, featuring analysis of the first geological samples from the moon, is now freely available to the public. This is to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing on July 20, 1969. Members of the public may log on to the journal's website and register to access the special first lunar edition, which is now part of the Science Classic archive that is maintained by AAAS.

  STM publisher Springer Science+Business Media is offering all journal articles which deal with the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, free of charge on its online information platform www.springerlink.com. The articles can be found by using the search term ‘H1N1.’ A total of 318 scientific articles will be available to print out or download from now until December 31, 2009.

  Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that three of its journals have been accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE. The journals are: BMC Medical Genomics; BMC Oral Health; and Microbial Cell Factories. The journals were selected based on the recommendation of the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), an NIH-chartered advisory committee of external experts.

  The latest edition of blogspeak is now online. Featured are Kent Anderson (Positioned to Fail the Future); Lauryn Oates (Scholarly publishing in Africa: the online potential, the online challenge); Andrew Spong (Charting a course for STM through the many constellations of social media); and Philip Davis (Challenging Assumptions on Open Access Cost Savings). 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 Here

  Open access (OA) publisher BioMed Central has announced that presentations from its workshop for publishing consultants are now available online. To ensure that societies have the facts to hand when making their decisions, BioMed recently hosted a workshop for a group of consultants who advise societies. The presentations from the day are now available, covering the history and current workings of OA at BioMed, with a focus on how it works with societies and the scenarios in which an OA business model is working well.

  Copyright licensing solutions provider Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) has announced the appointment of Diane L. Pierson as Vice President of Marketing. As a member of the senior executive team, Pierson will help guide the company's overall business strategy and will be responsible for CCC's marketing and product management operations.