The US’ National Science Foundation (NSF) is in the process of reducing its support for digital libraries, according to reports from the Science Magazine. The NSF’s National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) programme was launched in 2000 to help scientists and science educators tap into the rapidly expanding online world. Because NSDL serves several different purposes, the payoff from NSF’s investment, which has averaged almost $18 million a year, has been hard to quantify. Its biggest advocates admit that relatively few educators and researchers have even heard of NSDL, much less visited the website or contributed material.

eMJA, the online edition of the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA), is retreating from open access (OA). Starting with the first issue in January 2009, access to general content excluding research papers will become limited to subscribed users only. Much information, including all previously published articles, current editions of In This Issue, plus guidelines, position statements and supplements, will remain on open access.

Bioinformatics firm Ariadne Genomics, Inc. has announced the completion of a key partner programme with Illumina Inc. to provide advanced integration and interpretation capabilities for data generated from their iScan and BeadArray Reader platforms. The coupling of Ariadne’s Pathway Studio to Illumina’s next generation software, GenomeStudio Data Analysis Software, provides researchers with a toolset to quickly analyse expression data for physiological changes, cell signaling and other significant biological changes.

Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., has announced that handling editor of the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology, Professor Jianhua Zhang, has been named one of five crop researchers who could change the world. The Journal of Integrative Plant Biology is an international journal of plant sciences that publishes peer-reviewed papers in three categories - invited reviews, research articles and new technologies.

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