The Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced a substantial enhancement to Thomson Reuters EndNote, the reference management solution used by millions of researchers and students worldwide. EndNote X6 keeps its users in step with the constantly evolving world of scholarly research and publishing by providing the ability to search, organise and share reference materials, as well as automatically format bibliographies, cutting down on the time spent collecting research and writing manuscripts, patent applications and grant proposals.
EndNote X6 gives researchers the ability to enhance the efficiency of their authorship activities by providing sync capabilities between EndNote and EndNote Web. This allows users to access research from any computer and offers secure storage for reference and PDF libraries. The new functionality - in addition to EndNote's capabilities to automatically download full text PDFs and update references - enables users to be more productive and manage their research libraries more effectively.
With this release, EndNote X6 users can update and synchronize references in EndNote desktop and EndNote Web with one click. Users will also have the ability to maintain and synchronize references in their EndNote library across multiple computers. This is a significant improvement to EndNote, as users increasingly access numerous platforms to gather data and information. The upgrade also includes increased storage in EndNote Web.
Through EndNote X6, researchers can now edit footnote citations, move or copy the contents of one field to another with text formatting, and use more layout options, including an improved PDF Viewer for annotating files.
In addition to allowing for tagging solutions to indicate which references have or have not been reviewed, EndNote X6 allows users to set personal rating preferences. Users can then refine their library searches with these ratings.
The latest version of EndNote also enables users to set sophisticated customisation preferences, more effectively manage medical journal names, and use the PubMed direct export feature to import records more quickly.
EndNoteX6 is currently available in Windows. The Mac version of EndNoteX6 is expected to release later this year.
Academic publisher SAGE and the University of California, Berkeley, through its Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII), have announced a partnership designed to encourage social science and humanities faculty and students at the university to make their work available to all by publishing in SAGE Open. Launched by SAGE in 2011, SAGE Open claims to be the first peer-reviewed, broad-based, 'Gold' open access social science and humanities journal.
UC Berkeley will subsidise the author fee for 30 accepted papers to SAGE Open at a discounted rate. SAGE will reach out to UC Berkeley faculty and students to let them know about the subsidised fees. Additionally, SAGE will handle the billing and accounting for the fees so that it is a seamless transaction for UC Berkeley authors.
The goals of the BRII are to provide support to new and emerging publisher options that both enhance the impact of Berkeley authors' research and show promise in helping research institutions create affordable and sustainable models for scholarly communication.
SAGE Open has had more than 1,100 submissions across a range of disciplines, including education, psychology, political science, management and communication. Papers are from universities around the globe and include authors from leading institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, NYU, and others. SAGE Open is the winner of the 2012 APEX Award for Publishing Excellence and recently published its 100th article.
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG), a US-based book industry trade association, has announced the publication of a new Policy Statement endorsing EPUB 3 as the accepted and preferred standard for representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced Web content - including XHTML, CSS, SVG, images, and other resources - for distribution in a single-file format. BISG member companies, and other industry stakeholders, can visit http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-4-155-pol-1201-endorsement-of-epub-3.php to download a copy.
Reviewed and approved by BISG's 36-member Board of Directors, BISG Policy Statement POL-1201: Endorsement of EPUB 3 addresses the critical need for the global book publishing industry to rally around a single standard for the creation of digital content in order to impede recent instances of fragmentation beginning to seep into the supply chain.
BISG Policy Statement POL-1201: Endorsement of EPUB 3 encourages all member companies and other industry stakeholders to work toward adopting the full range of functionality within EPUB 3. It is understood that a period of transition is necessary for full implementation of the EPUB 3 standard. To guide industry stake holders through the transition, BISG published an EPUB 3 Support Grid in June 2012.
The Grid is a comprehensive reference tool for understanding what enhancements and features of EPUB 3 are currently usable on which devices, apps, and reading systems. Due to the rapidly changing nature of EPUB 3 support, the Grid will be frequently updated in the first year of publication. The current version is available at http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-12-152-epub-30-support-grid.php.
Various academic institutions in North America, Europe and Asia have signed up to Institutional Edition, a new data dashboard from Mendeley, a UK-based startup. The dashboard analyses the research activity and impact on the global research community in real time - down from the 3-5 year time lag of the "Impact Factor", the current gold standard for such evaluations.
This reportedly allows academic institutions to react faster to their faculty’s research needs and provide them with quicker, more personalised support during the research process. This in turn is seen to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.
The Impact Factor, a measure of the number of citations an academic journal receives, is a pivotal metric of science: Academics have to publish in high-Impact Factor journals to receive promotions, tenure, or grant funding, and universities allocate their million-dollar library budgets to those same high-Impact Factor journals. This is despite the Impact Factor's many known flaws - the most limiting of which is that the citations it is based on take 3-5 years to accumulate.
The latest release of Mendeley's Institutional Edition, distributed by Dutch library subscriptions agent Swets, seeks to bring research impact measurement to real-time speed, while also providing more granular and social metrics of how academic research is consumed, discussed and annotated. It allows research institutions to see detailed analytics of the journals their academics are reading, the journals they are publishing in, and how many readers those publications have. This data is built on Mendeley's global research community of more than 1.8 million academics who are using the startup's tools for document management, discovery and collaboration.
In a bid to develop alternatives to the Impact Factor, new research metrics startups such as altmetric.com and total-impact.org have already turned to Mendeley's readership data, and several peer-reviewed studies have recently highlighted its positive correlation with the Impact Factor.
Professional association IEEE, US, has announced the launch of the IEEE 802.11 Patent Pool Exploratory Forum. Through the forum, owners of patents essential to IEEE 802.11 standards will discuss licensing practices, options for licensing administration and other issues related to launching a patent pool for IEEE 802.11-2012 and appropriate extensions to the standard.
The IEEE 802.11 Patent Pool Exploratory Forum was formed at the request of IEEE members in order to foster one or more patent pools covering IEEE 802.11-2012 technologies. In May 2012, IEEE had announced the publication of IEEE 802.11-2012, which seeks to define the technology for the world’s premier wireless LAN products.
IEEE 802.11-based products are often branded as "Wi-Fi" in the market. IEEE 802.11 standards underpin wireless networking applications around the world, such as wireless access to the Internet from offices, homes, airports, hotels, restaurants, trains and aircraft. IEEE 802.11's relevance continues to expand with the emergence of new applications, such as the smart grid and the "Internet of Things."
The IEEE 802.11 Patent Pool Exploratory Forum is designed to promote the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory availability of licences essential to IEEE 802.11 through patent pools. The forum intends also to examine how to streamline the process of pool formation in order to make such joint licensing programmes feasible for participation by a wider scope of industry members and for a wider selection of standards.
Thirteen companies are participating in the forum. Companies that have submitted or intend to submit Letters of Assurance covering IEEE 802.11 technologies are encouraged to participate in the IEEE 802.11 Patent Pool Exploratory Forum. To participate or learn more about the forum, contact Edward Rashba or Carter Eltzroth. The forum's next meeting is scheduled to be a teleconference at 6 pm Eastern August 29, 2012.
OCLC, a US-based nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organisation, is recommending the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) for member institutions that would like to release their library catalogue data on the Web.
This open data license provides the means for users to share WorldCat-derived data in a manner that is consistent with the cooperative's community norms defined in the 'WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities.' Data can be freely shared subject only to attribution and OCLC's request that those making use of WorldCat derived data conform to the community norms.
The recommendation follows passage of a resolution by OCLC Global Council in April 2012 that endorsed the ODC-BY, and recommended that OCLC staff consult with opinion leaders and stakeholders for further input. After researching and experimenting with different data licenses on OCLC and WorldCat data projects, and in close consultation with the library and developer communities, the recommendation was adopted by the OCLC Board of Trustees.
Best practices in the Web environment include making data available along with a license that clearly sets out the terms under which the data is being made available. Without such a license, users can never be sure of their rights to use the data, which can impede innovation. The VIAF project and the recent addition of Schema.org linked data to WorldCat.org records were both made available under the ODC-BY license.
The ODC-BY license will also be used by OCLC as additional sets of WorldCat data are released, including future linked data projects. Going forward, OCLC will modify related processes and policies in order to make the cooperative's data sharing efforts more consistent with this recommendation.
Online books retailer Amazon.com, Inc., US, has announced the launch of Amazon Textbook Rental. College students can now choose from thousands of textbooks to rent for the semester and save up to 70 percent.
All textbook rentals are fulfilled by Amazon and are eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25, and Prime Free Two-Day Shipping. At the end of the rental period, returns are free and simple with a prepaid, printable label.
Textbook rentals and millions of other items including books, backpacks, electronics, video games and other college essentials are eligible for Free Two-Day Shipping with an Amazon Prime membership. By signing up for Amazon Student, a free membership programme exclusively for college students, students can get six months of Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, plus exclusive offers, and then up to four years of Amazon Prime at 50% off.
Learning solutions provider Delmar, part of Cengage Learning, US, and the International Code Council (ICC), the publisher of the family of International Codes, have announced the Code Basics series, a new series of publications that break down the language within the 2012 International Codes (I-Codes) and makes the content more user-friendly for building professionals.
The series consists of four titles focusing on the new commercial, green, residential and energy codes recently released by the ICC. With two currently available, and two to be released by the end of 2012, these new books will feature illustrations highlighting key updates and changes in the 2012 codes, practical on-the-job scenarios for real-world applications and straight-forward explanations. These features help to facilitate the learning of technical terms and clarify the meaning behind important vocabulary.
The books in the series include Building Code Basics Residential: Based on the 2012 International Residential Code; Building Code Basics Commercial: Based on the 2012 International Building Code; Building Code Basics Green: Based on the 2012 International Green Construction Code; and Building Code Basics Energy: Based on the 2012 International Energy Code.
This series is expected to benefit both new and experienced users of the 2012 I-Codes. The publications focus on critical sections of the code by emphasising need-to-know information and pairing it with non-technical explanations, therefore providing added value and understanding for the reader.
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), a publication of Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., has launched a microsite called Biotech Boulevard. Biotech Boulevard features entrepreneurial biotechnology firms that are already making their mark on the global bio-industry.
Many of these promising young companies are engaged in the discovery of novel therapeutics, while others are developing new tools and technologies to support biotech activities ranging from early-stage R&D to biomanufacturing. Each Biotech Boulevard listing includes a company name, website, logo, and short description of the company’s field of focus. Company listings will be updated regularly.
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News is published 21 times a year and claims to be the most widely read biotechnology news magazine worldwide. It includes articles on drug discovery, bio-processing, OMICS, bio-business and translational medicine.
EndNote enhancement enables users to sync Web libraries, track references and import records at each stage of the research process
Universities adopting Mendeley’s data dashboard to accelerate research analytics