FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany, has begun to offer RUSSIAPAT, a file of Russian patent information, through its online science and technology service, STN International. STN offers the content in English. It also offers advanced tools that users can employ to search RUSSIAPAT for separate or logically grouped terms and truncated words. The file contains International Patent Classification codes, details on patented item, inventor and assignee, 300,000 records and 245,000 pictures and titles and abstracts. RUSSIAPAT, created by the Russian Agency for Patents and Trademarks (ROSPATENT), covers patented inventions in Russia created from 1994 onwards. FIZ Karlsruhe also plans to offer RUSSIAPAT through the STN Easy platform for users not used to the STN language.

The open access journals of BioMed Central (BMC), UK, have received high impact factors, thereby proving that they are widely cited and read. The public access journals and titles have received the ranks equivalent to subscribed journals in 2004. While five titles published by BMC were leading in their respective areas, five new journals received their first impact ranking. Many BMC journals, such as BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics, BMC Molecular Biology, BMC Genetics and Critical Care, were in the top rungs of the impact ranking. Articles published and cited between 2002 and 2003 were taken into account for the ranking.
Another open access journal, PLoS Biology, has also received the highest impact factor among life science journals. The ranking was done by Thomson ISI, a division of Thomson Scientific, US.

FIZ Karlsruhe has introduced a database through its STN International electronic, scientific and technical information service, containing German Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC) issued from 1992. The database, titled PATDPASPC, has been created in association with the German Patent Trademark Office to protect products, such as drugs or plants, that are approved for consumption but whose patent is pending. It contains 695 SPCs (50-60 SPCs added annually), which are searchable once they have been submitted to the German Patent and Trademark Office.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), US, has launched StandardsWire, a free monthly online newsletter that offers information on IEEE standards and affiliated products. The newsletter caters primarily to trade associations, government agencies, companies and academic institutions, offering information on new standards and recent revisions of existing standards. StandardsWire is also accessible in a website that offers links to IEEE standards products and services, press releases and Board activities.

Thomson Scientific, US, has announced the release of JCR (Journal Citation Reports) 4.0, the latest version of its framework to gauge the performance of scholarly journals. The product offers analytical capacities to provide data at the category level. The latest version is empowered with enhanced performance metrics that help users understand the article and analyse the citation levels of subject-related articles and journals. Librarians and information scholars can use the framework to evaluate the performance of a scholarly journal, identify widely covered subjects by journals and organise the collection. In addition, JCR 4.0 will introduce a Related Journals list that compares the citation levels of two journals or a journal and its related category.

Infotrieve, US, has introduced the Infotrieve/ELN 2.4, the latest version of its electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) software that allows life sciences professionals to collect, analyse, store and share research data. The product is targeted at chemists, regulatory authorities, biologists, records managers and quality assurance personnel. It has a cross-function capability, which allows it to work on various technology platforms for small- to large-scale pharmaceutical firms. The first ELN to be endorsed by the Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association (CENSA), the software can provide a more enhanced research environment when combined with Life Science Research Center (LSRC), the online search service of Infotrieve. Infotrieve acquired this software package from GenSys/ELN and formed Infotrieve/ELN in December 2004.

Taylor & Francis Group, a division of T&F Informa, UK, has consolidated the imprints of its publications. Accordingly, the scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing unit will function under Taylor & Francis with CRC Press as its intermediating imprint. Sub-imprints of the STM publishing unit include Garland Science, Chapman & Hall/CRC and Auerbach. Phased out imprints of this unit are Marcel Dekker, Parthenon, Martin Duntiz, Lewis and St. Lucie Press.

Liquent, part of Thomson Scientific, US, has announced the release of InSight Publisher, a regulatory solution for pharmaceutical and biotechnology electronic publishing. The solution, slated for launch at the DIA 2005 conference in Washington, D.C., operates on the electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) platform.
The solution offers absolute eCTD submission publishing and lifecycle management. The company is planning to extend the functionalities of the software to allow print eCTD submission from an eCTD along with complete paper submitting facilities. Liquent offers this software for free to the existing clients of its publisher software solutions, CoreDossier and EZsubs.

PennWell, US, has selected Texterity, Inc, US, to publish its four technological magazines from July 2005. The magazines - Laser Focus World, Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Industrial Laser Solutions and Vision Systems Design - will be published on the Published Web Format of Texterity. Existing subscribers of the electronic version of the magazines will be now able to work with additional online features such as thumbnail views of all pages, access to archived articles and links to advertisements and PennWell's Web content.

A research titled Open Access (OA) Impact Survey done by Chawki Hajjem, Candidat Doctoral, Université du Québec à Montréal, has concluded that the quality or self selection (by user) factor is not the largest determinant of the OA advantage. The study was carried out to support the author's research on the advantage of OA in biology and social science. To study the OA advantage, citation counts of self-archived and publisher/institution archived articles were compared. The study showed that there is no uniform method to decide the number of OA articles or the disciplines in which OA is implemented.

Elsevier, The Netherlands, has appended seven Handbook Series to ScienceDirect, its electronic database, covering subjects such as chemistry, physics, mathematics and economics. The database offers text and bibliography search options, linking facilities from and to an external database and better usage data. Based on feedback from libraries, the company has priced the Handbook Series at two levels - annual subscription and one-time payment.
The ScienceDirect database has, within a short period after launch, reached a mark of over seven million articles.

Elsevier, The Netherlands, has announced plans to launch an academic version of its ScienceDirect electronic database at the annual American Library Association (ALA) meet to be held in June. ScienceDirect College Edition targets colleges that require peer-reviewed researches and original science literature for teaching. Elsevier's move follows research that concluded that there is increasing demand for online scientific, technical and medical (STM) information from academic circles.
The company recently forged an academic alliance with the Dutch association of university libraries, the Royal Library and the Royal Dutch Academy of Science.

Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier, The Netherlands, has introduced an Affiliated Subscription Program. Under this scheme, to go on stream in July, an individual associated with any American or Canadian institution that has licensed electronic Cell content through ScienceDirect gets a free print subscription as well. Cell Online content is primarily targeted at biology researchers.

Thomson ISI, the information service of Thomson Scientific, US, has gauged the impact factor of PLoS Biology to be the highest amongst life science journals. PLoS Biology, an open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science, was assessed to have an impact factor of 13.9. This achievement has placed the journal, launched less than two years ago, higher than other reputed journals such as Current Biology, National Academy of Science and EMBO Journal. The impact was measured by counting the citations in 2004 to the studies published in 2002 and 2003, and dividing that by the total number of articles published in 2002 and 2003.
Science Watch, the newsletter of Thomson Scientific, had earlier named the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Northern Ireland (DARDNI) as having the highest impact for its studies.

Blackwell Publishing, UK, has recorded a profit of £31.7m (US$ 57.8 million) for the year 2004, representing an increase of 27%. Sales during the period rose 10% to £191 m (US$ 348 million). The growth was attributed to increased journal titles, electronic marketing activities and customised content. The publisher had acquired BMJ Books and US Food and Nutrition Press in 2004, increasing the total number of journals to 755. Sales in the US grew 25%, earning $172m (£95m) for the publisher.

iAdvantage,US, a software solutions provider for science studies, has announced the launch of e-Study Manager for life science researches. The Web-based tool, to be released at the IOPC Electronic Laboratory Notebook conference on July 26-27, combines the functions of data gathering and reporting, e-notebook design and study design. It allows scientists to aggregate studies and supporting data from various sources in a shorter duration. The patent-pending technology delivers real-time business intelligence on demand.

ProQuest, UK, will distribute the medical, business and legal newsletters of NewsRx, US, to health and academic libraries. ProQuest will also add titles including Vaccine Weekly, Women's Health Weekly and Cancer Weekly to its Health and Medical Complete database. This database contains 800 journals targeting medical and academic libraries. NewsRx publishes 102 newsletters that focus on drug development, health regulations, therapies, diseases and commercial information.

ProQuest Information and Learning, US, has named Jane Burke as its Vice President. She has also been appointed General Manager of the company's unit, Serial Solutions, US. Burke co-founded Endeavour Information Systems and was its President until it was sold to publisher Reed Elsevier, The Netherlands. She was the director of new business development at Cadmus Communications, a US-based STM service provider, before joining ProQuest.

The Breast Journal, published by Blackwell Publishing, UK, will commemorate the 10th year of its publishing at the 10th Annual Multidisciplinary Symposium to be held in Paris. The event, from June 30 to July 3, will be attended by scientists, specialists, researchers, academics and clinicians relating to breast care from all over the world. The symposium is organised by the Department of Pathology at the University of Florida Health Science Center.

CABI Publishing, UK, has included Forest Science Database, the forestry abstracting and indexing database, on its CAB Direct platform. The database covers articles published from 1939 onwards, with elaborate summaries and complete bibliographic details. The platform allows flexible search functions, powered search management tools and linking facilities to the abstracts. Customers can view the full text content through Ingenta, PubMedCentral and CrossRef; get linked to the content through Google, Yahoo and PubMed; or have the document delivered via CISTI, Infotrieve and British Library. The platform is complaint with OpenURL to allow libraries to customise the content for their users.

Scopus, the abstract and indexing (A&I) database of Elsevier, US, has been integrated with RefWorks, the online bibliographic organiser, to provide simultaneous real-time services for researchers. The integrated product, called RefWorks: Scopus Edition, allows scientists to search and organise research literature seamlessly. Scopus users can search for information, check if they are already saved and compile them directly using RefWorks. Similarly, using Scopus, RefWorks users can search for articles and collect previous citations and their publishers.
Scopus, formed in association with librarians and scholars from 20 leading institutions, has secured a clientele of over 500 universities and corporate libraries within six months of its commercial launch in November 2004.

Elsevier, The Netherlands, has signed an agreement with the American Optometric Association (AOA) to publish and distribute Optometry-Journal of the American Optometric Association from July 2005. The partnership will host a website for members and subscribers at www.optometryjaoa.com. The portal will offer the full text of the monthly, a searchable archive, customised content and e-mail alerts. Additionally, the journal will be available to subscribers of ScienceDirect, Elsevier's subscription management provider. The partners also plan to introduce digital submission and review of manuscripts from 2006.

Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that the number of full-text articles in ScienceDirect, its electronic database, now stands at 7 million. It has added complete texts of reference journals, handbooks and book series to its collection of 2,000 journals. ScienceDirect, a pioneer in networked searchable texts of STM publishing, has created backfiles of over 4 million articles that date back to as early as 1823. It is one of the founding members of CrossRef, a reference linking provider launched in 2001. Earlier this month, Elsevier partnered with the Pakistan government to provide STM content through ScienceDirect to 30 universities in that country.

CABI Publishing, UK, has restructured its Internet resources with bibliographic databases and enhanced navigation facilities. The AgBiotechNet database has already been launched in the new format. Other databases, on animal science, nutrition and food science and leisure and tourism, are expected to be redesigned soon. These databases, comprising elaborate as well as brief articles, can be accessed from the home page of CABI Publishing.

SciDev.net has released a section of its website in Chinese, offering the latest science news and articles related to that country and translated versions of certain articles from the main website. The site's activities will be guided by a committee comprising senior scientists and scientific policy experts in China. SciDev.net's target groups include the general scientific community as well as policy makers of key scientific issues, including genetically modified crops, climatic conditions and biodiversity. The Chinese content can be viewed at http://www.scidev.net/chinese/gateway.

Scope e-Knowledge Center, India, has received the 'Service Provider of the Year-2005' award at the annual conference of the Data Publishers Association (DPA), UK. The DPA award recognises the best directory and database publishing services each year. This year's event, held in London, awarded Scope e-Knowledge center for its value-adding services for the databases of Reed Business Information (RBI), US. Scope offers intellectual property, research and database services for companies relating to healthcare, chemicals, engineering and pharmaceutical and life sciences.

Cadmus Communications, US, has announced a significant investment to upgrade the equipments of its Publisher Services and Specialty Packaging divisions. Part of the equipments will be ready for use this year and the rest will be upgraded next year. This will increase the company's capital expenditure by US$ 25 million during the fiscal years 2005-07. The equipments are being upgraded to accelerate growth in the STM and academic publishing markets, maintain growth in the global operations of the Specialty Packaging division and replace worn-out machines. The replacement is projected to generate additional annual revenues of US$12-15 million from fiscal 2007 onwards.

Elsevier MDL, US, has partnered with Spotfire, US, to link its Isentris platform with the latter's DecisionSite for Lead Discovery interactive application. The association will enable biopharmaceutical researchers to work on high quality data integrating systems with visual-based interaction. The agreement includes Spotfire creating a visual environment for MDL's Isentris services by 2005 as well as Elsevier MDL providing value-added software for the DecisionSite interface. The partnership has enabled Elsevier MDL and Spotfire to join each other's alliance programmes and share developer licences and training for mutual development.

Thomson ResearchSoft, US, has released EndNote 9, an upgrade of its bibliographic management software, which speeds data connectivity and offers easy access to personalised libraries. The software, deployed for academic and research purposes, can be used to exchange information and develop bibliographies and citations. Users can access information from any library in the world using regional language support from EndNote 9.

Online information service provider ECNext, US, has appointed Marty Kahn to its board. The company offers content sale and subscription services to market research companies, business publishers and financial analysts. Kahn has been with McGraw-Hill, CBS, Ovid Technologies, OneSource Information Services and BRS Information Services.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), US, has been given a report by House Appropriations Subcommittee, which directs the institute, to reevaluate its chemical database, PubChem. The American Chemical Society (ACS) had earlier contended that PubChem was a duplication of its own database, Chemical Abstracts Society (CAS). Following ACS' concerns, the subcommittee has added language based on inputs received from both ACS and NIH supporters. It has directed NIH to check with the private companies for any duplication of chemical data in PubChem.

A study, titled PRIVIREAL, carried out by European researchers has revealed that a few member states do not adequately follow the data protection guidelines of the European Union (EU). The EU directives were only partially adopted by those member states. The guidelines relating to the legal and ethical aspects of medical researches were not uniformly perceived. The 42-month study, sponsored by the EU, analysed ethical issues such as disclosing personal details of people involved in medical studies.

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), US, has announced a four-month project that enables libraries and their customers to conveniently search and use complete e-journals from the library databases. OCLC has initiated this project to increase the use of electronic journals by making them more visible. The content will be hosted on OCLC's online union catalogue through the WorldCat platform. The pilot project covers 20 libraries and associates with information service companies TDNet, EBSCO, Serials Solutions and Ex Librisa. The libraries will register with OCLC for OpenURL to offer customers the latest, accurate and complete access to content.

Addison-Wesley Professional, a unit of Pearson Technology Group, US, has announced the release of the 'Spring Into' series of books for technology professionals. The series aims to meet the need of technology professionals for sophisticated books. Information is presented as a series of chunks, supported with examples, and simplified technologies to help readers grasp the text more quickly. The books cover topics such as Linux, PHP5, HTML & CSS, technical writing and Windows XP package.

J. T. Stephens, President and CEO of EBSCO Information Services, US, steps down on July 1, 2005 after a 35-year tenure. He will continue as the Chairman of EBSCO Industries, Inc. He is succeeded by F. Dixon Brooke, Jr., Chief Operating Officer of the company. Brooke, the third President of the company, was also in charge of subscription services for Publisher Services, Information Systems and Services and Title Information Department at EBSCO.

A study conducted by Key Perspectives, Inc., UK, has revealed that 49% of the scientists have self-archived their studies at least once in the past three years. The study was conducted on 1,296 scientists by Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown. Institutional repositories have been used twice the normal level for self-archiving. Although 71% of the scientists are not aware of this model, 49% of them have used self-archiving without purposeful efforts.
The major hindrances to authors in archiving their works are technical difficulties and time-consumption in loading the papers. In addition, many authors fear copyright infringement in publishing their papers. Only 10% of the authors know the SHERPA/RoMEO guidelines for authors, which prescribe the quantity of content that can be self-archived without violating copyright agreements.

Peter Rigby, Chief Executive of publishing company T&F Informa, UK, has asserted that recent acquisitions by the company were made only to build the businesses. The publisher had acquired IIR Holdings, UK, early this month, for a sum of $1.4 billion (£770m). Prior to that, Taylor & Francis purchased Informa Group, a b2b publisher, and merged it with its science publishing business. The publisher is speculated to bid for German scientific publisher Springer and UK academic publisher Blackwell next year. Mr. Rigby has said that Springer could be a powerful combination with T&F Informa. Analysts estimate the deal at around £1 billion.

The House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee has approved the annual budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US. The US Congress has thereby turned down the American Chemical Society's (ACS) request to restrict the services of NIH's PubChem (a small organic molecules database). The ACS had earlier contended that PubChemduplicates its own similar offering. The Committee, however, has reproved any kind of disagreements between the two federal-funded institutions and suggested that the NIH target its services at private companies to avoid any overlap.

The Institute for Linguistics at the University of Salzburg and the University of Veterinary Medicine at Vienna, Austria, have translated a document on horse treatment written in Armenia between 1295 and 1298. The prime objective of this translation was to learn about early veterinary medicine, as well as to identify special terminologies used in the Armenian manual.
The 184-page manual, the oldest in veterinary medicine, has been translated for the first time into German by Dr. Jasmine Dum-Tragut from the institute and the university scientists. It comes with a supplementary that elaborates on animal treatment practised during that period in the Near East. The project, supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, took two-and-a-half years to complete.

The national union of scientific research workers in France has appealed against plans to appoint eight British and German health researchers to the research evaluation board at the Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). The French scientists have approached an independent tribunal set up at Paris, for resolving administrative disputes, to voice their protest against a feared shift in authority from the scientists to the management. As the constitution of INSERM does not allow foreigners on its board, the tribunal may reject the appointment of British and German scientists. Moreover, there is uncertainty about the knowledge a foreigner will posses about the institute's policies and management issues.

CAB Abstracts Archive, the database of CABI Publishing, UK, is scheduled for launch by August 2005. The electronic archive will contain science literature from 17 abstract print journals that were published from 1910-72. Nearly 1.8 million rare scientific records, which were only in print and inaccessible to the public until now, will be appended to the archive. The outdated terminologies are replaced with current equivalents. Research institutions and libraries can avail the full-text and searchable content that covers subjects such as biodiversity, environmental issues, veterinary diseases and nutrition. The complete archive will be accessible in the CAB Direct database of CABI Publishing, Ovid, SilverPlatter and other services by the end of this year.

Blackwell Publishing, UK, and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) have signed an agreement, under which Blackwell will publish The Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. The monthly, with a current circulation of 19,000 copies, covers the latest in clinical practice, research and management apart from other current and general topics. Blackwell also releases other journals such as the Journal of Nursing Scholarship and the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Life scientists consider print catalogues and supplier websites to be the most useful marketing mediums among the various sources for research products, according to a research conducted by BioInformatics, LLC, US. The research consulting company has released a report titled 'Life Science Product Catalogs: A Key Component of Multi-Channel Marketing'. The survey, carried on more than 2,300 researchers, revealed that other forms of product communication have not surpassed the conventional forms such as catalogues. While 61% of the scientists have shown preference for both online and print catalogues, only 3% strictly prefer print catalogues. The survey also suggests that catalogues can be delivered to scientists after identifying their specific needs to avoid over-circulation.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS), US, has announced the launch of PLoS Genetics, a refereed open access journal, on July 25, 2005. Dr. Wayne N. Frankel is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, which specialises in global genetics and genomics studies. PLoS has invited readers to view the two papers that are reviewed for the first issue, at www.plosgenetics.org.

STM publisher Elsevier, The Netherlands, has agreed to publish Pharmacy Today and the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association (JAPhA) for the American Pharmacists Association. Pharmacy Today, the association's monthly, has a current circulation of more than 120,000 copies. JAPhA is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on subjects such as pharmaceutical care, general health issues and drug therapy.

The American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry (AADMD) has named the Exceptional Parent magazine, a publication of EP Global Communications, US, as its official publication. The academy and the magazine will accredit refereed articles under the 'Continuing Medical Education' Category I. The articles may include topics such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, Parkinson's and learning disabilities. The academy was formed in 2002 with the aim of improving the health conditions of continually disabled persons. Exceptional Parent caters to healthcare physicians, professionals and scholars, as well as the families of people with developmental disabilities.

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has expressed its support to the Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) code of practice. COUNTER is an initiative of UK-based publishers and librarians to calculate online usage statistics in a reliable way.
STM has termed the initiative an opportunity for publishers and librarians to develop international standards for measuring online usage information. Users can check this international code when buying and selling online content. In April 2005, COUNTER launched Release 2 of the code of practice for publications and databases.

Research Information, a magazine published by Europa Science Ltd., has reached its fifth year of publication. The bimonthly aims to keep scientists, engineers, information professionals and librarians updated with essential data relating to online information products. The information published ranges from recent evolutions in scientific databases to e-journal publishing, legal issues of intellectual property and the open access movement. This year, the magazine announced its focus on engineering, chemistry, medicine, physics and biology. Other periodicals from Europa Science's stable are Scientific Computing World, Electro Optics, Imaging and Machine Vision Europe, Life Science IT and Display Solutions.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced its support for free access to scientific data. It has put forth its policy in a document titled 'Continuing CERN action on Open Access', wherein it has approved unfettered access to all the results of the laboratory's experiments. The organisation, which has been extending indirect support to open access since the idea evolved, has previously announced its policy for electronic information and signed the Berlin Declaration.

CABI Publishing has formed the Library Advisory Board in China to act as a consulting platform to develop its publishing programme in the country. The board will communicate and co-ordinate between the publisher and the libraries, information organisations and customers in that country. In addition, it will promote publications and other products of CABI Publishing. The publisher plans a full board meet in 2005 coinciding with the Annual Conference of the Chinese Agricultural Library and Information Societies.

John Wiley & Sons, US, has reported revenues of US$974 million for fiscal 2004-05, an increase of 6 percent from last year, primarily attributed to the publisher's scientific, technical and medical division. Revenues from STM publishing grew 7 percent to US$190.5, contributing 3 percent of the total profit. Electronic and print publications maintained their growth rates in the European and Asian markets. In Europe, the good performance of Cochrane Collaboration, the success of For Dummies and the acquisition of local publishers paved way for increased income.

Various accolades and recognitions, such as 'most cited paper', 'hottest journal of the millennium' and 'most requested article', have enabled the publisher to extend the qualitative growth. Wiley's shift to digital content via the Wiley Interscience and Enhanced Access License (EAL) policy for institutions earned it more customers from the research community. The demand for STM content from research institutions and libraries in India, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia strengthened the company's growth in Asia. The publisher increased marketing activities and adapted to the changing pricing model to ensure a strong global presence.

Elsevier has entered into a five-year partnership with the UKB, comprising the Dutch Association of 13 University Libraries, the Royal Library and the Library of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science, to provide free scientific and medical content to The Netherlands' academic market. The agreement allows students, research members, faculty and staff of the Dutch University to view scientific and medical content from more than 2,000 journals including The Lancet and Tetrahedron. The education community can also view the archives of these journals containing 7 million complete articles through ScienceDirect, the database of Elsevier, in any library.
Earlier this month, Elsevier had partnered with the Pakistan Government to provide STM content through ScienceDirect to 30 universities in that country.

ebrary, a US-based provider of technology solutions, has launched an improved version of its ebrary Reader, a free software to convert static PDF documents into researchable files. The latest version supports the Mozilla Firefox browser. It also offers bibliographical reference formats and enhanced search tools that make a combination of search details, such as authors, titles and subjects, possible. The citation formats of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Alliance for Computers and Writing (ACW) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) can be used, apart from the default ebrary format.

Atypon Systems, US, has introduced an online subscription module in its Literatum and Extenza digital publishing platforms that allows instant access to the content. Publishers can utilise the platforms to license their content in various packages to the online purchasers. The Literatum platform is used by publishers such as Annual Reviews, Blackwell Synergy and CrossRef. Extenza provides economical e-publishing services to 45 international publishers.
Atypon purchased Extenza from Swets Information Services, a Dutch subscription and information management services provider, in February 2005.

The Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) has established an OpenURL link with TDNet, an online data management solution based in the US, to enhance its document delivery service. The link allows TDNet users to purchase CISTI articles that are not available with TDNet. The OpenURL and outbound links allow global users to obtain scientific, technical and medical content from CISTI through online information services, library systems and link resolvers.

The American Chemical Society has urged policy makers to put a check on the database developed by the National Institutes of Health, as it might block the society's revenue from the sale of such data. The society has expressed fears that PubChem, the public accessible molecular structure database of NIH, might duplicate its Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). It suggests that a technical group be formed to devise a measure to monitor PubChem activities.

Earlier, NIH officials had asserted that a small-scale database like PubChem containing 8,500 structures could not compete with the CAS that has over 25 million structures. NIH's efforts have been received optimistically by scholars and associations who support public access to scientific content.

The Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT), situated at Texas Medical Center, has released a special issue of its American Journal of Medical Genetics. The journal, titled Neural Tube Defects, was conceived at the third International Neural Tube Defects Symposium held in 2003. Richard H Finnell, Director of IBT, and Helga Toriello are the issue's guest editor and co-editor, respectively. The bimonthly American Journal of Medical Genetics' target readers include physicians, medical geneticists and associated professionals.

The New York Botanical Garden has chosen Archivas Cluster (ArC) of Archivas Inc., US, as the storage solution for its collection. Initially, the Botanical Garden's International Plant Science Center will use the ArC digital archiving solution at its William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. The solution will also assimilate online scientific content and pictures that are stored in numerous disks, DVDs and CDs. The Botanical Garden also plans to incorporate ArC in its evolving e-commerce activities.

Scopus, Elsevier's STM research database, has secured a clientele of over five hundred universities and corporate libraries within first six months of its commercial launch in November 2004. Now, more than predicted number of 7 million researchers will be able to access the database that specializes in scientific stream of topics. Scopus, formed in association with librarians and scholars in 20 leading institutions, has aggregated content from 4000 STM publishers.
Scirus, the repository search service of Scopus, recently launched an institutional repository search service in T-Space, the repository of University of Canada. This has helped in enhancing search capabilities and faster content retrieval in T-Space.

The Indian Government has eased the 74 percent limit on foreign investment in domestic non-news periodicals published by private Indian media organisations. Foreign scientific, technical and specialty magazines can now wholly own their Indian editions. However, industry observers have noted that the latest move does not make a difference to the existing domestic science journals, since most of them are published by the Government. Apart from the recently launched Scientific American India, there are not too many foreign or non-government science publications in the country.

The 2005 Liquent Regulatory Affairs Trends Survey, conducted by Thomson Scientific and Healthcare, US, has revealed that around 76 percent of pharmaceutical and medical companies will use both electronic and paper documents for regulatory approval for the next two years. The survey identifies the current and future use of technology by regulatory affairs departments, which oversee the introduction of pharmaceutical products in the market. The annual survey, in its third year now, covered trends in technology usage, document management systems, outsourcing of regulatory affairs and the current and future usage of electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD).

Elsevier MDL has released an improved version of DiscoveryGate, its content portal for chemistry and life science studies. The version, supported by MDL Isentris technology, allows faster retrieval of scientific data from various sources. It provides search results with links to the primary sources aggregated from 25 chemistry and pharmacology databases. This apart, the xPharm and MDL Patent Chemistry databases are also available on the site.

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, US, has licensed Questia Media, a US-based online academic library, to offer content from over 1,300 of its books and 30 of its journals to students and education professionals. Wiley offers its content, published from 1997 onwards, as part of its Professional/Trade and Scientific, Technical and Medial publishing programmes. Other commercial publishers, including Palgrave Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor & Francis, already offer content on Questia's site.

Dialog, an online information service of Thomson Corporation, US, has forged a new deal to source additional content from CSA, a research publishing unit of Cambridge Information Group, US, for its website. The three CSA databases being added to Dialog's portfolio are the CSA Technology Research Database, the CSA Aerospace and High Technology Database and the METADEX (covers metals and alloys). Over 30 new files of science and technology research will be available through subscription to Dialog's corporate and government customers.. The latest pact has almost doubled the size of CSA content offered through Dialog. Dialog customers can use the customisable templates and links to process, manage and deliver the content to their readers.

The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, UK, is inviting organic chemists to submit their research papers for publication. The new online public access journal covers topics such as organic synthesis, organic reactions and mechanisms, natural products chemistry, and chemical biology. It accepts original works online, which are not under perusal by other science journals and allow the authors to hold the copyright.

Techstreet, an online information resource hosted by Thomson Corporation, US, has introduced an unrestricted standards tracking service covering over 150,000 standards institutions such as the ASME, API, ISO, IEC, NFPA, and IEEE. The service targets engineers, technical professionals, and librarians who would require updated policies related to product design, testing, and quality control.A user can create a customized list of organizations whose standards modifications he or she wishes to be intimated about, free of cost. The website www.techstreet.com also provides indefinite access to a database of global engineering standards and related codes.

British Library Direct, an online searchable database launched by the British Library, contains over nine million research titles. Articles collated from 20,000 leading research journals from all over the world published over the past five years can be accessed. The study topics include medicine, pharmacy, engineering, science, and food and agriculture, and articles can be purchased online.

Mark Logic Corporation, US, has released the MarkLogic Server 3.0, the latest version of its XML content server. The server can convert Microsoft Office, HTML, and PDF documents into XML format with search facilities. It uses various standards, such as XML and the language Xquery, to assist the user organization in saving time and cost while loading content. The clients can add value to the available content by using XQuery and external web applications for custom publishing and integrating the content. For instance, a medical article in Word document is instantly altered to XML and sent to an external application to identify medical terms. These terms are sent to the MarkLogic server to be tagged in XML format, and then integrated with the content. This content, with highlighted medical terms linked to their respective definitions, can be loaded on to a searchable web page.

A project developed by the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has received a grant of US$ 1.5 million from the Gordon and Betty Foundation. The project aims to formulate a standard process to create and maintain taxonomic codes that help in developing information about global biodiversity. It facilitates installation of online tools by TDWG work organizations, international workshops on biodiversity information, and long time support for the organization.

Tony McSean, new Director of Library Relations at Elsevier, has emphasised the need for cordial relationships with information professionals and sought an era of co-operation. Since 2003-04 there exists a hostile situation between academic institutions and the commercial STM publisher Elsevier owing to disagreements in journal pricing. American universities like Harvard, Cornell and the University of California have protested the high subscription cost of journals, especially in the light of low library budgets. Pointing out that publishing a scientific paper costs about US$3000-4000, McSean (ex-director of British Medical Association Library) has suggested that federal financial aid be provided to libraries.

IMS Health, US, a provider of information services to the healthcare industry, has acquired PharMetrics, US. With the acquisition, IMS expects to provide integrated medical and pharmaceutical knowledge services for healthcare professionals. PharMetrics offers business intelligence for government and significant players (companies and organisations) in the pharmaceutical industry. The terms and financial details were not disclosed.

Non-profit organisation JSTOR, US, will introduce a collection of backfiles of over 100 biological science journals in collaboration with the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and BioOne. The collection includes topics such as zoology and cell biology, which are new to the JSTOR archive. Ecology and bBotany, existing subject in the archive, will be expanded by including fields such as biodiversity, conservation, paleontology and plant science. The collection, adding more than 70 new topics, is expected to be completed by the end of 2007.

Peter Gölitz, founding editor of European journal Chemistry, has bagged the Medal of the French Chemical Society for bringing the journal to the top rung of chemistry periodicals. Chemistry was launched in 1995 by publishers GDCh (German Chemical Society) and Wiley-VCH as a part of the journal Angewandte Chemie (published by Wiley-VCH). Since 1997, the journal has been published independently. Presently, the journal is owned by the Editorial Union of Chemical Societies (an association of 13 chemical societies in Europe). The current impact factor (number of times the journal is cited by scientists) of this journal is 4.353.

ProQuest Information and Learning, US, an academic publisher of business and economics, general reference, humanities, social sciences and STM, has named Jane Burke as its Vice President. She will also assume the role of General Manager of ProQuest division, Serial Solutions. Burke was a co-founder of Endeavor Information Systems, which was later sold to Reed Elsevier, US. She was also the Director of New Business development at Cadmus Professional Communication, a US-based STM publishing service company.

Neurobiology of Lipids, an open access peer-review journal, has invited STM (scientific, technical and Medical) journal editors to enlist in its new mailing list. This list, created by the journal, is oriented to the open access movement and informs editors about issues pertaining to free access to scholarly content. The list also works to develop scholars or editors who need not be dependent on commercial publishers.

Elsevier, The Netherlands, has introduced the Scirus Repository Search, a service to assist institutional repositories. The service has first partnered with T-Space, the repository of the University of Toronto, to index its content (articles and technical data) in in Scirus' database. Scirus denotes the university content indexed for better identification by the users. The association also allows free search facilities in T-Space for enhanced content retrieval. Institutional repositories that maintain valuable and original content get an opportunity to be excessively read.

Nature Publishing Group, UK, has revamped its publications to expand its its geographical presence. The publisher has identified China as the most important international market. A research conducted by the publisher showed that readers, irrespective of their countries, preferred articles outside their specific areas of interest, rather than in original research articles. To meet readers' expectations, the publisher has been investing substantially to increase its staff strength and introduce additional content (business news and editorial).

EDN, published by Elsevier (The Netherlands), has introduced alterations to its periodicals and online journal EDN.com to be more regulated and broad in its content. The magazine will hold its mainstay, i.e. technical features and design ideas for engineers, while taking steps to innovate and simplify the content. The publisher has modified the journal after studying the gap between its services and readers' requirements. Accordingly, more information about global technological trends and elaborate technical articles with appropriate quotes from industry experts are added. The magazine is re-launched with a tag line 'Voice of the Engineer'.

Publisher Wolters Kluwer, The Netherlands, has seen its target value increase from EUR15 to EUR18, and has been signalled positive for share purchase. Fortis, a European financial analyst, has forecasted that restructuring activities from 2006 would benefit the publisher. The analyst also contemplates a possible collaboration with US publisher Thomson.

Nature Publishing Group, UK, has announced its support to its authors submitting the original version of accepted papers to the archives of funding institutions. Authors of the paper can also publish the original copies in their institution or personal website. The publisher allows the release of the original paper six months after publication in its journal. It has embraced the policy to widen scientific communication, assist funding bodies/authors/institutions to archive the papers they deal with, and secure reliable and credible scientific information.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released Bridges, a public health magazine launched by professionals from Israel and Palestine. For the first issue, 3,500 copies were printed and distributed to select people free of charge. This issue, focused on poverty and health disparity, is available at www.healthinforum.net/files/who/bridges.pdf. A news team (comprising Israeli and Palestinian health professionals) and an advisory board of 22 members (equally chosen from the countries) run the magazine. Additional funds from global NGOs and governments may increase the frequency of the magazine, now a bimonthly.

Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has launched Nature Chemical Biology, a research journal of chemistry and biology. The online journal includes essential details of the study published, reviews, views and news to provide a wider understanding of the topic. A unique feature is the direct linking of the chemical compounds mentioned in the paper to related documents and researches archived in three US databases - PubChem, ChemPort and Bind (Biomolecular Interaction Network Database). The compound data in the papers accepted for publication will be submitted to PubChem for developing links between the data and the published paper.

Scientific American, the oldest science and technology magazine, has begun publication in India. The India Today Group has been given the rights for the Indian edition of the magazine titled Scientific American India. The magazine aims to identify the trends of science and technology that affect the day-to-day lives of the people. It caters to opinion leaders in the industry and government and gives special offers to scientists, students and academics. Raj Chengappa will be the editor and Pavan Varshnei will be the Publishing Director of this magazine.

Taylor & Francis (T&F), UK, has purchased the publishing services of the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), UK. T&F will be responsible for the editorial, customer service, storage and warehousing, sales and order processing of nearly 600 titles. The new titles printed after July 1, 2005 will have a Taylor & Francis imprint.

The Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP), US, has appointed Edward W. Colleran, Director of Publisher Relations at Copyright Clearance Centre (US), to its Board of Directors. The appointment took place at the annual meeting of SSP on June 1. Colleran has been with SSP since 2000 in the Education Committee. He will be organising an SSP annual session titled 'The Year is 2015. What Will Intellectual Property Look Like 10 Years from Now?'

OR-Live.com, which casts surgical video from hospitals and medical schools, has partnered with healthcare publisher Advanstar Medical Economics, US, to create the OR-Library for healthcare professionals. The content, available on the home page of OR-Live.com, offers articles from various medical journals to physicians, nurses, medical technologists and other healthcare professionals.

The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has postponed publishing a research paper scheduled for May 30, 2005 after a request from the US Health and Human Services (HHS) Department. The paper that describes the potential risk of bioterrorism through the dairy industry was stopped from release due to underlying harm. Scientific publications have been scrutinised by federal bodies to avoid any unintended information leading to a bioterrorist attack. Any research details that can be misused by terrorists are not published. Lawrence Wein, one of the authors of the NAS paper, has pointed out a similar publication in The New York Times and stressed for rigid rules for scientific publications.

Research and Markets, Ireland, has announced a new service, 'Creating the Digital Medical Library', that features medical libraries of institutions such as The University of Iowa, Columbia University, The University of Texas, and The Medical College of Georgia. The library contains policies relating to electronic content (journals, books, directories and other resources), archiving, databases, virtual references and e-document supply among matters concerning medical libraries.

In a survey carried out among 600 companies by research firm Outsell, Inc, US, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) has topped the category for overall satisfaction in document delivery service. The report suggests that buyers count in-depth content, fast turnaround, user-friendly platform, and customer service among the satisfying factors. Except for factors like in-depth content and pricing, CISTI leads in most of the customer-oriented attributes.

The Alliance Communications Group (ACG), a division of Allen Press, US, has announced the release of its journals and books for 2005. The publications include Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, Phycologia, Biofeedback and Photosynthesis: Fundamental Aspects to Global Perspectives. ACG offers its services to more than 300 STM (scientific, technical and medical) organisations.

FDC Reports Inc, a division of Elsevier, US, has launched Research Policy Alert, an online health and science publication. The website, updated daily, has resulted from the merger of The Blue Sheet, a weekly periodical for biomedical studies and health regulatory issues, and Washington Fax, a daily publisher of scientific issues. ResearchPolicyAlert.com broadens its reach by including technology transfer news. Additional sections in the site include Point of View, Policy in Perspective and a web forum for discussions and reader opinion.

Elsevier, The Netherlands, and Ovid Technologies, US, have partnered to introduce EMBiology, an online bioscience bibliographic database. The database serves academic institutions, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that work in bioscience research. Studies on subjects including biochemistry, microbiology and molecular biology, cell and developmental, agriculture and food science and toxicology are updated in the resource. Over four million international bibliographic documents published since 1980 are available and above 250,000 such documents are included in the database every year.

CMP Media, US, has appointed Lawrence M. Walsh as the Editor of its VARBusiness Magazine. The bi-weekly specialises in technology integration, publishing technology-related researches and detailed editorials. Walsh was previously Managing Editor of Information Security magazine published by Tech Target, US.

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has joined the CrossRef Search Pilot project to allow its users to search from over 3,000 scientific journals. The project that includes complete articles from over 40 publishers gives AIP customers access to more than 4 million articles. Readers can choose the CrossRef search box available in the website of AIP or any other publisher involved in the project. CrossRef's agreement with Google enables it to produce search results that are filtered for scholarly relevance. Google has equipped AIP and other participating websites with all the scientific articles so that search results are ranked using Google's procedure.

Alliance Communications Group (ACG), part of scientific publisher Allen Press, US, has bagged an award from the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP) for its Strength and Conditioning Journal. The journal, published in association with the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), was awarded for its new design. Representatives from ACG and NSCA will attend the award ceremony on June 29 at Washington, D.C. The partnership, formed in 1999, publishes 25 journals for not-for-profit scientific or medical societies.

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has affirmed that data available at its Scitation Usage Report Service (SURS) meet with the standards of COUNTER. COUNTER is a set of guidelines to measure online data usage and provide them to registered institutions. Users of SURS will be informed about online usage statistics in a monthly report that is downloadable in various file formats. Reports, such as number of complete articles requested, total searches queries and number of requests for an item, are provided to the subscribers. The COUNTER practice is applied to publishers such as American Association of Physics Teachers, SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering and American Society of Civil Engineers.

Beginning June 2005, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) will start a project to develop tools and prototypes for digital data creation and storage for scientific laboratories. Titled R4L (Repository for Laboratory), the project aims to assist in the exchange of digitised data from primary research centres to repositories of research publishers. In addition, the project works to obtain reports from diverse sources for publishers. R4L is being carried out in collaboration with Southampton University and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).

The Canada Institute of Scientific and Technical information (CISTI) and Sirsi Canada, Inc have completed the first phase of their Competitive Technical Intelligence (CTI) project. CTI is a web-powered management assistance system to support STM (scientific, technical and medical) research of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Canada. The first phase focused on automating the six-step CTI process. After the second phase, expected to be completed by 2005, CTI will be implemented at the National Research Council of Canadainformation centres.

Elsevier, The Netherlands, has released a new book series for dermatologists about the latest technologies in cosmetic treatment. This marks the world's first series of seven titles providing basic information about cosmetic dermatology. Experts have contributed to the series with procedure instructions and case studies. The publisher is likely to bring the next series in early 2006 with additional titles relating to dermatology.

Publisher Taylor & Francis (T&F) Informa, UK, has acquired trade conference and exhibitions organiser IIR Holdings, US, for £768 million. T&F Informa seeks to gain a greater market share in North America through the deal. The operating profits of IIR Holdings were £48 million in 2003. Peter Rigby, Chief Executive of T&F Informa, has expressed interest in taking over or merging with significant publishing companies. Analysts have considered Springer, the German scientific and medical publisher worth £1.4 billion, to be the next target of T&F Informa.

The US Society of Nuclear Medicine has launched a supplement periodical to its Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) that emphasises the present and potential effect of radionuclide therapy. The supplement, launched in January 2005, targets nuclear medicine professionals and practitioners. Steven M. Larson, Chief of Nuclear Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Eric P. Krenning, Erasmus University Medical Center, were the guest editors for the first issue. JNM, a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal, publishes clinical tests and essential scientific papers.

Publishing software developer Atypon Systems, US, is offering faster connectivity to content for Chinese academics following an agreement with China Education and Research Network (CERNET). The company's publisher clients can experience broadband service while delivering their products to educational institutions in China. Chinese libraries can easily download significant reports that meet with the standards of COUNTER (guidelines to distribution of online content). Atypon's software publishing services allow scholarly publishers to deliver electronic content. The company's clients include Annual Reviews, Blackwell Synergy and CrossRef amongst commercial and non-profit publishers.

Pharmaceutical business intelligence provider IMS Health, US, has introduced the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform to deliver personalised information to the end users of drug companies. The interface allows analysis of large quantities of data that are accessible to IMS' client portfolio of pharmaceutical sales representatives and field sales personnel. The service offers sales insights and online and e-mail applications that simplify the data into comprehensible details. IMS sends e-mail notifications of events to mobile field representatives by combining MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server with related technologies.

BioMed Central (BMC), UK, has launched BMC Veterinary Research, an open access journal focused on veterinary science and medicine. The peer-reviewed journal will update published researches in the open access medical portal of PubMed Central, US, and other renowned open access repositories. The UK Joint Information Systems Committee, which has encouraged the use of open access journals, is to fund free access for UK universities to view BMC journals. This has boosted BMC's rate of submission (180 percent) and publication (210 percent) from July 2003.

Information services and solutions firm Dialog, part of Thomson, US, will be a primary partner in the annual conference held by Special Libraries Association (SLA). The conference, to be held in June, will be attended by about 4,000 information professionals. Dialog will sponsor and organise a few speeches, meetings and workshops. The company will give its yearly Quantum 2 InfoStar award to information services that are innovative and creative.

Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has chosen Apelon Inc, US to provide terminology services to its customers. Using Apelon's Distributed Terminology System (DTS), Kluwer's customers can get accurate vocabulary mapping to the clinical tools of Kluwer. The DTS will be implemented in the content development (for browsing and editing) and electronic services of Kluwer to create credible medical information. The mapping tool can work with recognised medical vocabularies (such as SNOMED) that can integrate medical databases and reference records to WKHealth programs.

A new report published by Outsell Inc (U.S), has concluded that recent remarkable revenue inflows to Google Inc and Yahoo Inc has in fact been drawn from the kitties of popular information companies and traditional publishing houses. This is evident from the annual revenue growth of $4 billion (2003-04) garnered by these two online companies, when compared with that of the top 10 information companies each. The report suggests that the established traditional players, who find organizational or implementation level difficulties in embracing online business models, could try acquiring suitable online companies. Some of the prominent names of publishers that have been allegedly losing advertising revenues to Google & Yahoo are Elsevier, Thomson, McGraw-hill, Wolters Kluwer, and Pearson.

McGraw-Hill Medical Publishing, US, has released an online version of Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, a pharmacology reference for physicians, researchers and students. It is integrated with AccessMedicine.com along with the latest edition of the reference source. The viewers are given useful and balanced drug prescriptions and therapy ideas.

The American Physiological Society (APS) has implemented Cadmus Communications Corporation's Rapid Production Manager (RPM) system to organise the workflow of the editorial publication. By integrating RPM in the publication of all its 14 journals, APS expects the publishing workflow to have enhanced quality control, effective article tracking, additional tools for statistical analysis and a clear view of the production cycle. RPM is a content management solution that facilitates better online publishing workflow

Elsevier has appointed Youngsuk Y.S. Chi as the Vice Chairman to head the company's global academic and customer relations operations. His primary responsibility will be to fasten the existing relationship between the company and its worldwide stakeholders. With Youngsuk's experience in international publishing, Elsevier aims to strengthen its presence in the Asian STM market. He has held significant positions with Ingram Distribution Holding and Lightning Source Inc.

Six publishers have set September 2005 as the deadline for the beta release of the Scientific and Technical Information exchange (STIX) Fonts. The fonts, developed by MicroPress, Inc, US, are slated for commercial release in November 2005. The STIX Fonts include characters that are necessary (such as mathematical) for scientific publishing. Publishers can rely on this for all symbols related to online scholarly publishing. Users can view a document installed with STIX on any system. The fonts will be available free of charge to enable development of web applications that can use them.

British Library Direct, an online platform for Document Supply Service (DSS) from British Library, is scheduled for launch in June 2005. The service augments access to the library's content and online document delivery capabilities. The website offers a search engine to find relevant articles from 9 million records sourced from 20,000 journals. As the use of the Internet to gather information is on the rise, the online service is projected to identify a new market for the library. The portal gives emphasis to scientific, technical and medical content and competes against content management service provider such as Infotrieve, US.

IBM and Bycast Inc, US, have developed a grid-powered storage system that allows Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) applications in records such as medical files, documents and images. The companies offer IBM Healthcare and Life Science's Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) solutions for suitable storage facilities at hospital networks and healthcare organisations. GMAS allows healthcare institutions and hospitals to share and access medical images across distributed networks.

John Wiley & Sons, US, has launched the backfiles of its journal Analytical Sciences with titles published during 1968-98. The collection contains the complete text of 24,942 articles across 13 journal titles. The publisher plans to release backfiles of Genetics and Evolution and Journal of Pathology later during the year. The Genetics and Evolution collection will have 24,858 articles published in 12 journal titles spanning from 1904-95. Journal of Pathology will collect around 8,700 articles from journals published in 103 years.

Oxford University Press, UK, has announced plans for an open access publishing system for its Oxford Journals. Beginning July 2005, the press will offer an author-pays-model, named Oxford Open, as an alternate to the current system. Under the new system, a researcher whose paper is accepted by the press will have to pay £1500 ($2800) to publish the paper for free access in all the journals of the press.
Existing subscribers of Oxford Journals and scientists from developing nations will be given concessions to publish the paper in this system. Similarly, University of California's Berkeley Press has drawn up plans for wider access of its members' studies. It will allow the author to maintain the intellectual property rights of the work while submitting it to journals for an affordable price. Berkeley has also consented to develop tools for an alternative publishing system.

The open access policy of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has earned negative remarks from the American Society of Hematology and the American Association for Cancer Research. The associations have stressed that the institute is requesting - and not making it compulsory - for authors to submit the papers. The American Society of Hematology has termed the NIH initiative a replication of previous efforts, a distraction for research funds, and a potential harm to professional journals.

Bio-IT, a unit of IDG, US, has redesigned its website with simple content, additional content space and enhanced site control facilities. The restructuring of the life sciences and drug discovery website was based on internal planning and a survey among readers of Bio-IT. Though the website renovation was primarily aimed to give a brighter design, Bio-IT also plans to alter its high-end services. For this, the website's news content has been divided into Business + Strategy, Science + Technology and IT + Informatics sections. Data from Life Science Insights, IDG group, with a statistical chart and a summary on its home page, have also been added.

Complete texts of Science Abstracts Journals have been converted to electronic format and made available in Inspec, the bibliographic database of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), UK. Over 873,700 scientific and technical records published from 1898-1968 (70 years) are indexed in a searchable format. The records deal with physics, electrical and electronic engineering and computing and control engineering. An XML archive of the data has been created with tables, graphs, figures and other indexed and classified data.

John Wiley & Sons, US, has announced the release of eight journals in PDF, HTML and print versions during 2005. The subjects covered include chemistry, information science, engineering and psychology. Three journals were acquired from IOS Press, BC Decker Inc, and Springer Kluwer and two journals evolved from a partnership with Mergent, Inc, US.

Healthcare publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), US, has been conferred 20 awards by the American Society of Healthcare Publication Editors (ASHPE). The awards recognise the best healthcare periodicals with high- quality editorials and readers' satisfaction. Among the journals that bagged the awards were eight nursing journals and allied health journals.

Five journals of Wiley, US, have been named among the 'Top 10' list of the Hottest Journals of the Millennium. Journals published without an interval in the past six years (1999-2004) were ranked using Essential Science Indicators (ESI), a web product of Thomson Scientific, US. The ESI measured the amount of scientific articles, review articles, proceeding papers and research notes published and cited in journals indexed by Thomson.

eScholarship Repository, hosted in the University of California's digital collection along with Berkeley Electronic Press, US, has completed downloading one million full-text resources. The repository contains scholarly literature gathered by the university's research division. Berkeley Electronic Press offers its Internet and search tool to facilitate content loading and searching processes in the repository. The press blends publishing category and lapses by editorial or administrative departments and provides customised workflow for the users.

Elsevier has signed a three-year partnership with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina library in Egypt to provide unrestricted access to the publisher's electronic journals, more than six million articles through ScienceDirect, its online database, and eight backfiles packages. This marks the publisher's foray into the Egyptian market for the first time, offering free information to around 12,000 annual subscribers and visiting readers of the library. The agreement enables the library to obtain 1,800 new titles from peer-reviewed and influential journals.

The Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) has installed full-fledged operations of ENCompass for Journals OnSite (EJOS) after successful beta testing. The EJOS software is a single point interface for multiple content accesses developed by Endeavor Information Systems, a subsidiary of Elsevier, US. With the installation, employees of National Research Council of Canada can view the content of publishers Elsevier, Springer, Kluwer, NRC Research Press, Karger and the Institute of Physics Publishing. The software controls and stores content of commercial publishers for large research institutions and libraries while allowing them to maintain a permanent repository of the content.

CMP Media, US, has launched DSO.com, an online platform that guides corporate and technical managers in selecting software for smart devices. Leaping technology has inter-connected consumers and special devices (such as value-added cars, pacemakers and cell phones) in various ways. Device Software Optimization (DSO) will assist in meeting difficulties in developing software for these devices. The portal will provide essential information such as key strategies, current practices and methodologies to managers, strategists and engineers. In addition, the website contains case studies, analyses, web casts, blogs and industry white papers.

The Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) has decided to append 135 medial journals this year to its current 10,000 medical serial titles and 340 pharmaceutical journals. The additions were recommended by the Committee on Health Science Information after conducting a collection gap analysis to identify the demanded but unavailable titles in CISTI. The new titles cover widely available health portals such as MEDLINE, CINAHL and PubMed.

Elsevier has agreed to provide its iCONSULT service in the Clinical Agent EHR (Electronic Health Record) system of Medappz, US. Electronic health records are used by physicians to mechanise medical treatments. iCONSULT provides proven clinical information and reference for physicians through EHRs. FIRST Consult, a medical reference tool of Elsevier, will be the first product to work through the iCONSULT service.

Elsevier, US has partnered with the Pakistan Government's Higher Education Commission to offer complete STM text and bibliographic information through its ScienceDirect online database. Accordingly, 30 Pakistani universities will be powered with digital content access to Elsevier titles. The Commission organised a workshop to promote ScienceDirect, including its features and functionalities, as well as Elsevier publications. The publisher has also decided to train librarians and researchers in Pakistan in the optimum use of ScienceDirect.