Information research solutions provider Ovid, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, has announced an expansion of its publishing agreement with CABI. Under the deal, it will offer its global customer base more than 420 e-books in agriculture, food science, environmental science, veterinary science and related disciplines. The books will be available on the Books@Ovid platform as part of seven collections.

  Digital content products and technologies provider ebrary has announced that it is offering InfoSci-Books, a selection of all books and reference works published since the year 2000 by IGI Global, a publisher of advanced computer science and information technology research. InfoSci-Books features over 25,000 chapters from more than 900 scholarly titles spanning all areas of information/computer science and technology applied to business and public administration, engineering, education, medical and healthcare and social science.

  Physicians Interactive LLC (PI), the leading digital sales and health marketing partner for life sciences companies, has announced the acquisition of mobile medical references provider Skyscape. Skyscape is now a wholly owned subsidiary of PI. Under the acquisition agreement, Skyscape will continue to be led by Sandeep Shah, who will report to Donato Tramuto, vice chairman and CEO of Physicians Interactive Holdings LLC. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

  Digital course materials supplier CourseSmart LLC has announced partnerships with publishers Elsevier Science and Technology, F.A. Davis, Jones & Bartlett, SAGE, Sinauer Associates, Taylor & Francis and Wolters Kluwer Health (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins). The partnerships are aimed at expanding the breadth and specialty of CourseSmart’s higher education e-textbooks available to students and instructors across the country. With the addition of these publishers, CourseSmart now offers more than 7,000 e-textbooks, representing most of the higher education textbooks on the market.

  The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and knowledge management and discovery software developer Collexis Holdings, Inc. have announced a new technology partnership. The innovative collaboration will allow AIP to leverage Collexis' proprietary technology within the physics market. Collexis develops applications that range from search tools for users' websites to highly sophisticated discovery applications that are utilised by the intelligence community and R&D organisations worldwide.

  Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. has announced the recent acquisition of the Journal of Advances in Management Research. Emerald will publish the journal in association with the Indian Institute of Technology from Volume 6, issue 1. Two sample papers from previous volumes are currently available online at www.emeraldinsight.com/jamr.htm.

  Subscription services provider Swets has announced the launch of its eDeal Renewal Service. The eDeal Renewal Service, integrated in SwetsWise Subscriptions, has been developed to assist both publishers and customers in the complicated processes involved in renewing eDeals. The tool enables customers to view current title and licence information, see clearly which titles they have options on and instantly calculate the cost impact of desired changes to their collection.

  Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has released the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway, a new service that helps libraries and other institutions maximise the visibility of unique primary source materials, such as digital photos, newspapers, letters and diaries, through WorldCat on the Web. The service is available to all users of OCLC CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software at no additional charge.

  Medical information publisher BMJ Group and the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) have launched a new neuroscience journal - Journal of Neurointerventional Surgery (JNIS). BMJ will publish the journal on behalf of the SNIS, formerly the American Society of Interventional and Therapeutic Neuroradiology, through its Affinity brand.

  Reprints Desk, a US-based content re-purposing company focused on medical and scientific publishing, and FIZ Karlsruhe, a European-based provider of information delivery services, have announced the immediate availability of Reprints Desk's article ePrint procurement service within the FIZ AutoDoc full-text brokerage routing system for document delivery. The new service enables FIZ AutoDoc customers, including dozens of major life science and other research-intensive companies, to simplify the content retrieval workflow for individual buyers and to improve internal visibility into electronic content spending and regulatory compliance.

  Enterprise software vendor Design Science, Inc. has announced the release of MathFlow Components and SDK, for editing, display, and accessibility of mathematical notation for websites, applications and services. MathFlow Components and SDK replace the company's WebEQ product and are an addition to its MathFlow product line that includes MathFlow for Arbortext and XMetaL.

  Integrated media firms Ziff Davis Enterprise has announced the launch of the Smarter Technology Virtual Conference Center, a 3D interactive environment that offers users two ways to engage with presenters, network with peers, and interact with tools and demos that illustrate specific topics, technology and issues tied to their Smarter Technology content initiative. Smarter Technology Virtual Conference Center is part of Smarter Technology, an editorial website and online community formed to drive high-level discussions surrounding the rapid change and evolution of technology in today’s complex world.

  B2B media company Schofield Media Group has announced a partnership with Nxtbook Media, LLC to produce digital editions of its business-to-business titles, including Construction Today, U.S. Business Review and Exploration + Processing. The new digital editions are expected to offer an enhanced interactive experience for readers, profiled companies and advertisers.

  Thomson Reuters has announced the availability of the 2009 edition of the CMR International Pharmaceutical R&D Factbook. The publication is projected as a key reference and business planning tool for decision makers in pharmaceutical R&D, corporate finance, business strategy, marketing planning and corporate communications.

  Symyx Technologies, Inc., a US-based provider of technologies for R&D, has announced that its ChemMobi application is now available for free on the App Store. ChemMobi gives on-the-go scientists access to over 30 million chemical structures, chemical properties, suppliers and other information in the Symyx databases directly on their iPhone or iPod touch.

  Academic publisher SAGE has announced that the journal Foot & Ankle Specialist (FAS) has been accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE. Maintained by the US National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is a premier bibliographic database containing more than 16 million journal article citations.

  The Ninth Annual Forbes/Gartner C-Level Executive Study has revealed that the Internet is viewed as the most important source for business information, followed by daily newspapers, trade publications, magazines, TV and radio, respectively. More than 650 C-Level and senior management executives participated in the study, ‘Preparing for Growth in the Current Economy,’ conducted between April 21 and May 6 this year. According to the study, the Internet was again by far the most important business information source, picked by six out of 10 (60 percent) executives.

  Bibliographic information provider Bowker has announced the launch of its US Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report. The report is projected to offer members of the US book publishing industry access to a complete consumer-based research report with detailed analysis of who is buying books and what motivates them to make their purchases. The report claims to include in-depth book data, demographics, psychographics, genre category breakdowns and distribution channel analysis.

  A new report authored by academics at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) proposes using Semantic Web Technologies to link higher and further education learning and teaching repositories in the UK. The “Semantic Technologies in Learning and Teaching Report” also calls for the technology to be used now. It was written for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

  A new reporting guideline for systematic reviews and meta-analyses - the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement - has been published and is endorsed in open access publisher BioMed Central's instructions to authors. The PRISMA statement is a revised and updated version of the QUOROM Statement, which was published in 1999 to address deficiencies in the reporting of meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials. All of BioMed Central's relevant journals' instructions to authors and peer review guidelines have therefore been updated to reflect the evolution of QUOROM to PRISMA.

  Pharmaceutical and healthcare information provider IMS Health plans to trim 850 jobs globally over the next 12-15 months, media reports have indicated. The move follows a worse than expected decline in quarterly revenues. Second-quarter revenue was $522.8 million, down 13 percent. IMS plans to continue to build and invest in high-value, strategic growth areas, which include extending the company’s capabilities in specialty and patient-centered insights; in serving payers and governments; and in emerging markets where its operations are currently growing at a double-digit pace.

  The American Chemical Society (ACS) has expressed praise for the House of Representatives move to support a $5 million increase in funding for the Education Department's Math and Science Partnership programme. ACS has been advocating a funding increase for the partnership programme, which it has termed a ‘critical educational programme.’ The $5 million increase in funding came after extensive efforts by some Congress representatives to persuade House Appropriations Committee members to provide additional funding for the programme.

  The International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) has announced that its new moderated wiki site for anesthesia residents, OpenAnesthesia, attained over 10,000 unique visitors in the first month of operation. Dr. Edward Nemergut, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia’s Department of Anesthesiology, the moderator of OpenAnesthesia, disclosed that there are already over 500 registered users on the website, which allows anesthesia residents to add, edit and interact with anesthesiology specialists and residents worldwide.

  Thieme Publishers, part of STM publisher Thieme Publishing Group, has announced that the Cerefy Atlas of Cerebral Vasculature has received the Magna Cum Laude Scientific Exhibition Award from the American Society of Neuroradiology. The Cerefy Atlas of Cerebral Vasculature CD-ROM is an interactive electronic atlas correlating 3D vasculature with surface and sectional anatomy of the human brain.

  CERN Courier, an international magazine on high energy physics published for CERN by IOP Publishing, is commemorating its 50th anniversary with the publication of a special issue. The special issue is available to view online now. Highlights in the issue include CERN Courier's first editor Roger Anthoine looking back at how the publication first started; a reproduction of the original edition in its entirety; and a selection of highlights from the past 50 years including dramatic discoveries and breakthroughs, such as the start-up and inauguration of the Large Hadron Collider.

  Online publishing services provider Semantico Ltd. has completed an upgrade of SAMS, its industry-leading access management system, on sites created for its client Koninklijke Brill NV, to provide the Shibboleth access mechanism for scholarly publishing. This is one of a number of Shibboleth implementations that Semantico has undertaken for leading global publishers in recent months. These deployments signal a growing mainstream acceptance of the Shibboleth protocol.

  The United Nations has partnered with the scientific publishing industry to provide research institutions in least developed countries free access to online journals. This was announced by the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) at the launch of the scheme in Geneva. The new UN-brokered programme, Access to Research for Development and Innovation (aRDi), will allow industrial property offices, universities and research institutes to subscribe free of charge to prominent science and technology publications.

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced that the Journal of Foot & Ankle Surgery (JFAS) has been accepted for coverage by multiple Thomson Reuters abstracting and indexing services, including Journal Citation Reports. Abstracting and indexing will begin with Volume 47:1 (2008) in Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch), Current Contents/Clinical Medicine and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition.

  The American Foundry Society (AFS) has announced that its journal, International Journal of Metalcasting (IJMC), has been accepted as an accredited source of technical information by Thomson Reuters. In addition, the journal is now included in the Thomson Reuters research and citation database. The database provides a platform for finding scholarly peer-reviewed materials and is also used to evaluate the scientific performance of authors.

  STM publisher IOS Press and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (JAD) have announced significant increase in the Journal’s Impact Factor, from 4.081 to 5.101 for 2008, according to Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports 2009. With an Impact Factor of over 5, JAD is now at par with or exceeds the ranking of some of the most established and highly regarded journals in the neurosciences, pathology and biochemistry.

  The latest edition of blogspeak is now online. Featured are Kent Anderson (Service or Content? Another False Choice); Jordan J Ballor (Academic Journals in the ‘Network’ Economy); Philip Davis (Horns of a Dilemma: Open Access or Academic Freedom); and David Wiley (Giving Away Academic Books Online Can Actually Help Print Sales). 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

  Energy publisher Hart Energy Publishing has announced the launch of The Carbon Challenge webinar series designed to aid the global energy industry and policy-makers in understanding the impact of carbon-related issues on their businesses and constituents. Leading international experts will inform participants of the latest strategies, investment challenges and technologies needed to remain competitive in an increasingly carbon-constrained global economy.

  Federated search services provider Deep Web Technologies has announced that its federated search product, Explorit Research Accelerator, now includes seamless integration with RefWorks, a web-based solution for citations management. Deep Web Technologies has added RefWorks Direct Export support to Explorit, allowing users to select specific results, and have their citations import directly into RefWorks. The company partnered with Scitopia.org, a scientific federated search portal, to debut this new feature.

  TechWeb's Light Reading Communications Network, a research-led media company serving the global communications marketplace, has announced the appointment of Susan Odell to the newly created position of Vice President of Sales and Marketing. In her new position, she will ensure that Light Reading's online sales, marketing, and product strategy meet the demands of the worldwide communications industry.