Information industry research and advisory firm Outsell, Inc, US, has released I-Market , a market survey of the STM industry segment. Outsell has projected a 5.8 percent growth for the segment from 2004 to reach $15.6 billion in 2008. Company analysts tracked over 4,000 publishers and content providers from the information industry and took into consideration the buying patterns of over 40,000 knowledge workers to arrive at the figures. I-Market provides data on market size and share, apart from information on growth trends, financial performance and leading players. The organisations cited by the report include Chemical Abstracts Service and GlobalSpec, which develop, collate and distribute technical reports, medical data, etc. Among the key findings of the report is that the present size of the STM sector is $12.4 billion, up 8.4 percent against 2004 levels. However, it lags the 9.8% growth of the overall publishing industry.

Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, part of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., plans to modify its site licence policy to offer its customers post-cancellation rights to content from licensed publications on the nature.com platform. The publisher is also modifying the period of content linked to site licences. At present, the content available through a site licence covers all content published in the span of the licence period as well as archives that date back to 1997 or the first issue of the journal. This norm will be followed for licences beginning in 2006. The new licences starting in 2007 will offer access to the content published throughout the license period, as well as a pre-specified quantity of archives. Typically, the archive will include a minimum four years of content published before the licence start date. For those acquiring a new licence from 2007, the publisher will grant post-cancellation rights to all material published during the specific period. The move is projected to help customers decide how best to handle their respective archive collections. Post-cancellation rights will not apply to those journals that offer open archives after 12 months.

Cann Copy & Printing and Tan Tien Publications, US, are facing a copyright violation suit from six top publishers over alleged copyright violation. The two companies are charged with selling illegally produced photocopies of textbooks and academic monographs to students in the San Jose area at a considerably lower cost. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by Oxford University Press, Elsevier Inc., Pearson Education, Thomson Learning, John Wiley & Sons Inc. and Houghton Mifflin Co. The complaint seeks to stop Cann Copy and Tan Tien from any further breach and demands compensation for the damages.

Elsevier MDL has launched a new reagent purchase and inventory management solution called MDL Logistics, targeted at research organisations. The product facilitates the efficient location, purchase and tracking of key chemical materials, thereby controlling costs. It also helps organisations manage and track controlled substances.
MDL Logistics allows access to the chemical suppliers database, MDL Available Chemicals Directory, and in-house inventory. It also works with various commercial purchasing systems and laboratory hardware, such as scanners and balances, and supports multiple workflows. The tool has been built on the MDL Isentris technology, which allows organisations to add new data sources.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has launched Proto: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Medicine, a quarterly magazine that covers healthcare and medical research across the US. The magazine, published by Time Inc. Strategic Communcations, a publishing unit of Time Warner, features interviews and articles related to MGH. The first issue covers medical concerns like emergency training programmes, the mortality rate among stroke victims and the avian flu in Asia. The issue is distributed for free to 100,000 people in the US, apart from the staff of MGH. The non-profit hospital may opt to sell the magazine in the future, though no plans are definite yet. Similarly, MGH has not yet spelt out its advertising guidelines.

The Wikimedia Foundation has launched an initiative, called Wikibooks, to distribute textbooks - from the kindergarten level up to the college level - for free on an open source development model. The project enables anyone to create or edit an article, on the lines of the Wikipedia project. At present, Wikibooks contains 11,426 submissions and 747,000 entries in English alone. The subjects range from biology to New Zealand economics. Still in a nascent stage, Wikibooks lets content written for the project to be easily manipulated, read and edited. Therefore, it could pose a major challenge to the publishing industry's hold on the world of textbooks. Projects like Wikibooks are projected to give academics new areas for their research and introduce traditional textbook publishers to new technologies. Wikibooks opens up an innovative type of learning prospect for students, as it influences the power of digital information that can be instantly modified and seamlessly researched upon.

Dutch national library Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) has forged an agreement with Japan's National Diet Library, under which the two will cooperate in various arenas including long-term digital preservation. The libraries will use exchange programmes to impart knowledge and training to their respective employees. Collections of letters, drawings and books exchanged between the Netherlands and Japan between the 17th and 19th centuries will now be digitised and broadcast over the Internet as part of the cooperation pact.
KB already plays the role of digital archive for STM publishers like Elsevier, Springer and Blackwell. It will join the Japanese library in developing innovative techniques that allow the accessibility of digital publication on a long-term basis.

A project aimed at protecting the study results of research institutions in developing countries has reached its half-way point. The project, Research Networks and Intellectual Property: A Model for Supporting Developing Country Researchers in Creating, Owning and Exploiting Health Research Results, is funded by the Geneva International Academic Network RUIG-GIAN). It was launched in September 2004, coordinated by the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO.
The project has attracted participation from over 30 research bodies from six Central African nations as well as Colombia. Several of these institutions are currently engaged in battling malaria and various other tropical diseases. The project has trained over 90 scientists and lawyers in techniques such as the drafting of patent applications and licensing agreements.
The WIPO-GIAN project is intended to tackle the critical infrastructural and resource challenges faced by health research institutions in many emerging countries. The project is setting up two R&D networks, each of which is handled by an "IP hub" to control costs and resources. Eleven associate institutions and a team of professionals and scholars from various developing and developed countries have been roped in for the project.

Search engine and online engineering community operator GlobalSpec, US, has announced an expansion of its search services through partnerships with technical publishers. This is projected to significantly improve The Engineering Web, the company's vertical search engine that provides access to technical information from over 200 million pages.
Under the new alliances, GlobalSpec will index content from organisations including the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Knovel and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This will allow engineers and technical professionals to access key resources and conduct searches of reference materials, study papers, journal articles and conference proceedings at the GlobalSpec site.
The agreement between GlobalSpec and STM publisher Wiley provides for the indexing of journals and key reference works. Technical books may be added to the list in the future. With non-profit association IEEE, GlobalSpec is at present indexing more than 1 million technical documents. The agreement between GlobalSpec and Knovel will assist in indexing over 700 engineering reference books that are interactive and keyword-rich.

Graphic communications services provider Cadmus Communications Corporation, US, has announced the release of QLU, a new content delivery solution that will offer access control, delivery and search functionalities for reference book and directory publishers. QLU enables publishers to offer trial subscriptions, which can be converted to a paid model by deploying an embedded e-commerce system. Apart from this, QLU provides publishers with vital information to deliver content in a cost-efficient manner. For end users, the product allows speedy access to information either with hotkeys in Office applications or through a desktop application. Other content delivery products of Cadmus include 3Path, ArticleWorks and dPub.

Greenbranch Publishing, US, has launched its first book for physicians titled The Prescription for Financial Health: An Authoritative Guide for Physicians, written by Joel M. Blau and Ronald J. Paprocki. The book provides guidelines to physicians of all age groups to build a successful financial future in a proactive manner. The book focuses mainly on the financial issues faced by physicians, like achieving fiscal commitments at times of waning practice and protection of current assets from lawsuits. The book is projected to help physicians plan and implement the right strategies for a sound financial future. It also provides practical information on retirement plans, insurance and other complex monetary concerns.

A redesigned version of science magazine Seed has been launched by a newly formed scientific media and entertainment firm, Seed Media Group. The magazine had earlier made headlines with its unique coverage of the emerging science culture across the world. In its new avatar, the bimonthly will initially have a paid circulation of 150,000. The company is targeting a circulation of 250,000 in 2006. The October-November issue offers a new column by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, an article on how China is emerging a scientific superpower, and essays by the Dalai Lama and physicist Lisa Randall.
After hitting newsstands in New York immediately, Seed will be available across the US and Canada in the first week of October. Seed Media Group, as a part of its growth strategy, will develop original science content for books, magazines, online, newspapers, digital, film and television.

The Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI), formed by the International Energy Forum Secretariat (IEFS), other energy organisations and about 95 oil producing and consuming countries, is set to launch a new oil database called the JODI World Database. The resource is projected to promote data sharing and market transparency in the global oil market. Following a general release by the end of this year, the database will be published periodically.
Organisations participating in the programme, apart from IEFS, include the Statistics Office of the European Union (Eurostat), the UN Statistical Division (UNSD), the Asian Pacific Energy Research Center (APEC), the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Latin-American Energy Organization (OLADE) and the OPEC.

Among Canadian research universities, the University of Toronto has emerged a topper, based on impact and total citations, according to the September/October issue of Science Watch, a bimonthly newsletter from Thomson Scientific. The university topped in 15 fields including chemistry, materials science, engineering, clinical medicine, immunology, biology and biochemistry. It produced 25,883 papers published in journals indexed by Thomson Scientific between 2000 and 2004. The University of British Columbia came second, with 14,819 papers, while McGill University stood third with 13,996.
Thomson Scientific is part of Thomson Corporation, Canada, a provider of integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. The company provides value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in various fields.

TechWatch has published a report on advanced display technologies in its latest edition. The report seeks to help readers get a glimse of what the future has in store for the Further and Higher Education (F&HE) community. The report is divided into two sections. The first part details how the human visual system (HVS) processes information and the second section deals with emerging technologies such as flexible displays and e-paper, emissive displays, high-definition TV and video, immersive and collaborative display environments, 3D systems and near-to-eye systems. The report also looks at how large-scale visualisation environments allow researchers to visualise huge datasets.
Technology and Standards Watch (TechWatch), launched in 2000, is overseen by the JCIEL subcommittee of the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). It keeps track of developments in information and communication technologies that can have a significant impact on the core business of the F&HE community over the next five to 10 years.

AZojomo, part of AzoNetwork, has adopted the Open Access Reward System (OARS), under which it will remunerate authors and peer reviewers with a portion of advertising income linked to their work. This marks the first time in the world for scientists to be directly rewarded for the publication of their research papers. AZojomo, a materials science site, offers free viewing as well as free publishing services for authors.
The company has developed the patent-pending OARS business model, which facilitates an impartial allocation of rewards to both authors and reviewers via a revenue sharing deal. The system is projected to promote express publication of the latest scientific concepts with much wider accessibility.
AzoNetwork operates various niche science and technology portals. The subjects covered include materials science, nanotechnology, medical science and building technology.

The Apple Developer Connection (ADC), in association with Safari Books Online, has launched the ADC Bookshelf Service. Subscription to the new facility requires a monthly payment of US$17.99 for ADC Premier and Select members and $19.99 for ADC Online members. Members can access nearly 1,000 titles. They can file a maximum of 10 books at a time on the customised ADC Bookshelf, which allows search, bookmarking and note-making functions. Users can also download a few chapters in PDF format.
Safari Books Online, which facilitates web-based technical documentation, is a joint venture between The Pearson Technology Group and technical book publisher O'Reilly.

The University of Illinois Libraryhas joined the LOCKSS (lots of copies keep stuff safe) Alliance, as part of an extensive plan to digitally preserve select e-journals. Based at Stanford University, LOCKSS is an association of more than 80 institutions located across the world. It offers an open-source archiving solution for its members to preserve key e-content. The association also gets consent from publishers to file Web versions of their e-journals. It has already gained permission from 60 subscription publishers as well as numerous open access journals publishers to archive their e-journals. The association is funded by various grants and in-kind assistance. As part of LOCKSS, the University of Illinois Library will deploy the software and routinely archive select web journals.

Sioux Valley Hospitals & Health System, US, is using management aids provided by Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP), part of Harvard University, to develop leadership in its organisation. Sioux Valley, a four-state integrated system of over 300 physicians, selected HBSP on the basis of the high level of quality content. It has deployed the Harvard ManageMentor modules at its Center for Learning & Innovation for an interdisciplinary leadership development programme. The interdisciplinary teams comprise physicians, nurses, executives, directors, finance officers and other healthcare professionals.
HBSP, a wholly owned non-profit subsidiary of Harvard University, seeks to act as a link between academia and enterprises across the world.

MetaPress has improved its publisher content aggregation site, www.metapress.com, with detailed information on the competences and functionality of the MetaPress system. Previously, the site offered only content aggregation and a user login page. MetaPress is a web hosting platform service of EBSCO, Inc. The refurbished site allows users to perform searches within all publisher content that are hosted by MetaPress, which represents 2,989 titles from over 60 publishers. The new site allows end users to create user profiles and customise their account. Publishers can view the site for a full description of the content management tools available and the latest news regarding MetaPress services. The revised site also offers MetaPress Admin, using which library staff can define users and monitor activity. They can also request COUNTER-compliant usage reports and establish links between MetaPress and various other e-content and related services providers.

NetLibrary, part of global library cooperative OCLC, Inc, US, has chosen enterprise infrastructure software provider Autonomy Corporation plc, US, for a technological partnership to offer location and information access services to libraries. The partnership will cater to public, corporate, academic and special libraries. Autonomy's technology will allow NetLibrary to index e-books, e-journals and other popular digital content regardless of the format and location. Autonomy will pool in content from these sources, which can be searched and accessed via a single platform. NetLibrary also expects to deploy various other features, such as content suggestions and summarisation, spell check, foreign language support and cross-linking of files.

STM publisher Springer, Germany, has launched "Collegiate Packages", which are online journal packages offered at discounted rates to academic institutions in North America. The four packages on offer include one each for human sciences, hard sciences and life sciences, and a combination of the three. With this offer, Springer expects to target smaller and junior colleges that can now gain access to over 1,200 journals. The offering is available through the company's online information service, SpringerLink. Springer releases over 1,250 journals and 3,500 new books a year, operating from 13 locations worldwide.

Facet Publishing has released a book titled Setting up a Library and Information Service from Scratch, which offers guidelines to beginners on establishing a library or information service. The book, authored by Sheila Pantry and Peter Griffiths, caters to those with qualifications but little experience and training. It comes with sample documents that include a press release and an information centre brochure. The book also offers a supply list that includes periodicals and basic reference books, suppliers, popular search engines and a pointer to library paraphernalia like filing, repairs, reference services and loans.

TechDis, a service funded by the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), has introduced a set of integrated development packs for teaching staff, focusing on the key aspects of technology and disability. The TechDis Staff Packs are designed to give lecturers and tutors a basic understanding of e-learning and to ensure that learning is open to all learners and not limited to only those with disabilities. Presentations, learner profiles, information sheets, activities and sample resources are included in these packs. While the individual packs are self-supporting and can be presented at stand-alone sessions, they can also be made a part of a bigger staff development programme.
The packs can be bought as CDs or downloaded from the TechDis web site. The training material offers a preamble to the issues facing disabled people and gives a general idea of the disability legislation in relation to web site improvement.

Jamie Nunnelly has joined the Business Leader magazine group as publisher of The Park Guide, a new publication focused on the main players in the Research Triangle Park. The sectors covered include information technology, environmental science, life sciences and telecommunications. The first issue of the quarterly will feature articles on the industries and technologies in the Research Triangle Park. Business Leader is a monthly business magazine that aims to promote business in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

Library management software provider Endeavor Information Systems, US, has released the latest version of Voyager, its flagship solution for library management. Voyager 5.0 comes with a wide range of new features developed based on customer suggestions. The enhancements include serials processing and display, patron privacy management, circulation services, searching and media scheduling integration with WebVoyage, the Voyager OPAC. Apart from this, improvements in charge/discharge processing to reduce errors during processing have also been included.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a report on providing free access to scientific journals through the Internet. Earlier, a researcher's study would be submitted to a journal and the editor would send it to peers for review. Based on this review, the editor might publish or decline the study. To read the journal, researchers had to subscribe to it. Currently, due to increased pressure from funding agencies and widespread availability of the Internet, providing free access to scientific results might become a reality. The report, authored by Graham Vickery of OECD and John Houghton of the Victoria University, Australia indicates the inevitable change in the making.
According to the report, the current scientific publishing market in the US is around $7-11 billion. Nearly 2,000 publishers in the scientific field worldwide issue over 1.2 million articles in about 16,000 journals annually, as stated by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. However, the report suggests that 75 percent of scholarly journals are now web based. This has led to the emergence of three distinct business models - institutional subscription, open access publishing and open access archives. The developments may significantly alter the peer-reviewing practice, expanding its scope and making it more collaborative, observes the report.

Publishing and B2B services group Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, will adopt its traditional horse chess-piece logo, originally representing STM publisher Springer alone, as an umbrella brand for the entire group. This change will be revealed in mid-October at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The group's B2B publishers, who operate across various European countries, will now sport the same horse logo. This aims to give the company a well-demarcated profile as an integrated scientific publisher and B2B services provider. The group's other well-known brand names, including Gabler, Vieweg, Birkhäuser and Bauverlag, will continue to exist.
Moreover, the two distinct web sites of the group, www.springer-sbm.com and www.springeronline.com, will be integrated into www.springer.com.

The book Online Comics vs. Printed Comics: A Study in E-Commerce and the Comparative Economies of Content, authored by technology consultant Todd Allen, examines the new rules that are changing the media industry. The author has conducted a study of the comics publishing industry and concluded that the online publication model works best for that segment, as costs are considerably lower than for the print editions. The book provides specific revenue data as well as guidelines for web-based content providers. The book is available in print, published by Indignant Media, as well as for free in an online format.
Allen had earlier produced the online editions of various medical journals of the American Medical Association.

Astoria Software, Inc, US, has partnered with SDL International to jointly offer information management solutions to global manufacturers. The Astoria-SDL solution, developed on the XML and DITA industry standards, manages information related to products that face lengthy lifecycles and recurrent technology changes and are used across the globe. The solution offers support for multiple document schemas, management of content components and infinite reuse of content elements, segments and terms across various languages. Other features include advanced search facilities and versioning and automated content conversion for multi-channel delivery. The solution is projected to help enterprise users achieve faster time-to-market, better quality of global information, substantial cost reductions and greater customer satisfaction. Siemens Medical Solutions, for instance, saved $1 million by deploying the solution.
Astoria is an XML content management solutions provider for business-critical information publishing. SDL is a global information management solutions provider.

Exhibitions and publishing firm Informa Plc, UK, has posted a pre-tax loss for the first half of 2005. This was primarily attributed to the new IFRS accounting rules which led to a £86.6 million one-off goodwill writedown. The one-year-old company, created through the merger of Informa and Taylor & Francis, reported a loss before tax of £58.9 million against a £23.6 million profit before tax a year ago. The one-off goodwill writedown was due to a reorganisation carried out in January. Informa is the owner of the International Who's Who guide and Lloyd's List, the world's oldest daily.
The academic and scientific journals division of the company witnessed a slight increase in sales during the first half. The company also stated that its publishing business experienced tougher market conditions during the same period.

The University of Michigan, in a statement on the lawsuit against the Google Library Project, has said that the project is not only enormously helpful to readers but is also legally sound. The statement, given by James Hilton, an interim librarian and associate provost of the university, points out that major technological breakthroughs have created huge challenges throughout history but the benefits need to be noted. The Google project will provide significant benefits to the society by transforming the approaches to research and scholarship, says the statement. It will open up access to readers worldwide and also allow libraries to form digital archives for preserving the materials. The work by researchers will be made available to a much larger audience, it adds.
The statement assures that the university will not share the full text of copyrighted works under the project. The Google library project will only point out the works to searchers, who can then borrow or purchase a copy. Such enhanced searching opportunities will benefit authors as well as publishers, contends the statement.

The 2005 Communication Awards, given by the National Academies, have been announced. The recipients include John M. Barry for his book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, Gareth Cook in the newspaper / magazine / Internet category and Thomas Levenson and Paula Apsell in the TV / radio category. The three $20,000 prizes will be presented at a ceremony in Irvine, California in November.
The awards are part of the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative that recognizes excellence in several fields such as engineering, reporting and communicating science and medicine. The initiative, launched in 2003 to boost interdisciplinary research, is funded by a 15-year, $40 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation.

Gary Wiggins of Indiana University and David Spellmeyer, an IBM researcher, have resigned from the American Chemical Society (ACS)'s Joint Board-Council Committee as a sign of protest against the ACS' reticent handling of a conflict over the PubChem chemical database. ACS has expressed fears that PubChem, a free database hosted by the National Institutes of Health, may erode the revenues of its own fee-based database, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). The issue was scheduled to be discussed at a meeting of the ACS Joint Board-Council Committee in August but was not done. This triggered the two members to submit their resignations.

Scientific books and research journals publisher Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. has released the Verification Methodology Manual for SystemVerilog, a standard language of the chip design industry. The book, authored by Andrew Nightingale and Alan Hunter of silicon IP firm ARM and Eduard Cerny and Janick Bergeron of Synopsys, Inc., has been appraised by verification engineers from more than 30 chipmakers. It covers industry best practices and information on creating contemporary and effective verification systems utilising standard SystemVerilog assertions, functional coverage and testbenches. It provides a collection of verification functions for developers to facilitate interoperable verification modules. The manual acts as a blueprint for creating conventional and effective verification strategies. Springer has priced the product at $129.00 and an introductory technical tutorial developed by technical solutions provider Doulos is also available.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation has introduced an Open Access Institutional Membership programme that helps libraries and institutional sponsors in promoting open access publishing in their respective organisations. For a flat annual fee for 2006, programme members can publish their articles in any of the company's open access journals without article processing charges. The publisher, which brings out 10 open access journals at present, is expected to launch another 20 in 2006, and the programme covers the new journals as well. Moreover, organisations that sign up during 2005 will be provided for free membership for the rest of the year. The publisher's journals cover a wide range of fields such as mechanical and electrical engineering, applied mathematics, biomedicine and materials science.

Healthcare and pharmaceutical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced the launch of a supplement series, Therapeutic Insights & Review, with its flagship journal, Hospital Pharmacy. Content for the new supplement will be provided by pharmaceutical firms or by Hospital Pharmacy staffers. Pharma firms can use it to distribute data from sponsored symposiums to healthcare professionals. Hospital Pharmacy is a refereed journal provided free to medical professionals. As per recent readership figures, the journal is graded number one with directors of pharmacy, clinical pharmacists and Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee members.

Three authors have sued Internet services firm Google, US, on the grounds that the company's plans to create a database of searchable e-books sourced from university libraries amounts to "massive copyright infringement". Though trouble has been brewing between the company and authors over the Google Print Library programme, this marks the first-ever lawsuit triggered by the tiff. The three authors, Daniel Hoffman, Herbert Mitgang and Betty Miles, are joined by the Authors Guild, which comprises over 8,000 published authors. Each of the three authors holds copyright to at least one work from the University of Michigan library that is being covered by the Google project. Apart from Oxford University and the New York Public Library, the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard have allowed Google to form searchable databases. The plaintiffs have sought class-action status for the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan. Google insists that its programme respects copyrights. It has frozen the project till November 2005, after which it plans to re-launch it with an opt-out option for authors. However, authors want an opt-in option, whereby the user needs to seek approval before using copyrighted work.

Academic Press, US, part of publisher Elsevier, has released a publication on AIDS titled The AIDS Pandemic: Impact on Science and Society. The book, edited by H. F. Pizer and Kenneth H. Mayer, talks about the ways in which the disease develops and transforms a number of disciplines. A unique panel of experts has provided some new perspectives of the disease, which primarily covers the impact of the disease on issues such as culture, economy, epidemiology and health sciences. The book is based on the editors' unique and transformational work on the disease. Academic Press has published several bestsellers on various topics including biological and agricultural sciences, biomedical sciences, chemistry and forensic science.

The use of genetically modified mice in conjunction with an animal model of obstructive nephropathy is expected to help researchers tackle the development of kidney disease in an innovative manner, says an article published in the journal, Kidney International. With the animal model, researchers can expediently mimic different stages of chronic kidney disorders. The study can help them determine what molecules can be researched into and decide on critical targets for drug development. The animal model is based on obstructive nephropathy, also known as obstructive uropathy, which is often found in children and seems to be the first symptom of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Kidney International, published by the International Society of Nephrology, offers information on current laboratory as well as clinical research on renal diseases and medicine.

Humana Press has released a new international refereed journal, NanoBiotechnology, covering the convergence of biomedical sciences and nanotechnology. The journal is projected to act as a platform for the presentation of nanotechnology-related research and technological advances as well as applications in biology and medicine. The first edition, released in summer, carried 10 papers. Topics covered include visualising Nature operating from the nano to macro level, potential nanotechnology cures for articular cartilage defects and an optical nanotool that helps in researching protein organisation at the cell membrane. Topics to be covered in the future include molecular bioprobes, nanoparticles and nanobiosystems and nanobiomaterials. Led by Tuan Vo-Dinh, a corporate fellow at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Life Sciences Division, the journal has a 46-member editorial board.

The focusing process is very defective in people who have Alzheimer's disease, according to a study to be published in PLoS Medicine, an international open access journal. The study was performed by Alexander Drzezga and his teammates at the Technical University Munich, Germany. The research was conducted on three sets of people including healthy people, persons with mild cognitive impairment and people with moderate Alzheimer's disease. The result of the research revealed the differences between the brain activation patterns. PLoS Medicine provides an open-access model for the publishing of refereed research articles in various disciplines. It is published by the US' Public Library of Science (PLoS).

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) has developed an Internet portal, clinicaltrials.gov, that provides clinical trials information access to doctors and patients globally. In September 2004, owing to increased public pressure for transparency in clinical trials, a consortium of medical journal editors scheduled September 13, 2005 as a deadline for the registration of all clinical trials. It was stipulated that only registered trials would be published. This was the result of a major concern that researchers release information only about the positive results of trials, while modifying or curbing the negative ones. Content for the portal is be sourced from company web sites as well as other sites. Nearly 2,865 new trials have been registered in the week to the deadline. The medical journal editors' consortium includes the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet.

This is with reference to the news alert on Wiley's Mass Spectral Library titled "Wiley introduces online Mass Spectral Library" covered in the News Section of Knowledgespeak (dated 16th September 2005). It should instead read as "Wiley introduces Mass Spectral Library". The corrected version of the entire news item is here.

Nanostructured micro-devices might be produced in large volumes in different shapes and composition at a lower cost using tiny structures produced biologically, according to a report in the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology, published by the American Ceramic Society. The increased focus on low-cost mass production might yield extraordinary breakthroughs in the field of genetically engineered microdevices (GEMs) catering to the requirements of computing, environmental, biomedical, defence and several other applications, says the report. Deploying such a process would not only be more cost effective but also yield better quality products.
The article, authored by Kenneth Sandhage, says conventional microfabrication methods are so expensive that it is not feasible to deploy them in the mass production of complex, 3D nanostructured devices featuring a wide range of properties. Microorganisms, on the other hand, can produce microscopic nanostructured shells that feature well-controlled and reproducible 3D shapes.
The International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology publishes peer-reviewed articles on high-tech R&D focused on engineered ceramics. The editorial team comprises experts from the industry, academia and government. Each issue is focused on a specific topic, ranging from the commercialisation ceramics processes and products to design & testing, environmental issues, standardisation activities and databases.

Healthcare and scientific publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has launched an awards programme in the US exclusively for medical and nursing students and faculty in a bid to encourage upcoming healthcare professionals. This includes the "Medical Information Can..." awards for medical students and the Elsevier's Student & Faculty Awards for nursing students and faculty. Medical students will be invited to present essays on ideas to enhance healthcare and point-of-care medicine across the world. These will be reviewed by an elite group of Elsevier authors. The winning essay will be profiled in one of Elseviers' top journals. Likewise, nursing students will be awarded for outstanding commitment to their vocation. They will also be given an opportunity to nominate the faculty who leads them to excel in their profession.
A total of 44 winners will be selected across five regions in the US, which includes a National Grand Prize winner as well as 10 Regional First prizewinners. The honours include cash prizes, free textbooks and online subscriptions as well as charity donations.

Thomson Gale, a division of publisher Thomson Corporation, has brought out the second edition of its The Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer: A Guide to Cancer and Its Treatment. This marks the first major update following the launch of the encyclopedia in 2002. The guide provides valuable information about more than 120 types of cancers, their diagnostic procedures and alternative treatments. It comes in two volumes with nearly 500 standardised entries in each volume covering a wide range of topics such as definition and description, causes and symptoms, diagnosis, risks and prevention. The resource is also available in an e-book format via the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

The Satellite Image Data Service, funded by the UK' Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and hosted at MIMAS, has recently launched a new course and expanded its offerings. The new 10-module course, called 'Image Processing for Remote Sensing', will offer training in various aspects of satellite image processing as well as mapping. The service expansion, to be carried out over the next six months, will see the inclusion of a set of Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images for the UK, in an orthorectified geotiff format. The images are collated by the ENVISAT satellite deploying ASAR technology that can create accurate images irrespective of the time of the day or the weather. The new ASAR images, which will be projected to the GB National Grid and Irish Grid Coordinates, are expected to benefit academic users and researchers.
The Satellite Image Data Service has been extensively used in the geospatial industry, leading to the birth of acclaimed web sites such as Google Earth and Google Maps. Satellite imagery was used by the global media to exhibit the devastations made by hurricane Katrina in the Mississippi region as well as the Boxing Day Tsunami in the South Asian region.

Content management technology provider Infotrieve, Inc., US, has signed in as a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork to provide its customers with an enhanced scientific data management solution. As an Oracle Database reseller, Infotrieve can offer cost reductions and operational efficiencies to buyers of its Infotrieve Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) software. For the past two years, the Scientific Computing & Instrumentation Magazine has named the Infotrieve ELN the "Top Data Management Product". It enables content to be collated, examined, stored and shared in a secure environment. The Infotrieve/ELN, primarily targeted at the biopharmaceutical, consumer goods, packaged foods and energy sectors, offers electronic witnessing and digital signature features that meet FDA norms. Through its membership in Oracle PartnerNetwork, an international business network comprising 15,000 enterprises, Infotrieve can offer its customers access to various Oracle resources. This includes round-the-clock technical support and upgrades.

Connotea, the online reference management service of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has bagged the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) Award for Publishing Innovation. The award is presented to products that provide a novel approach relating to publication.
A free online bookmarking tool, Connotea enables users to store their web links and access them later from any browser. Furthermore, users can manage the links with individual tags and share them as well. The service has undergone major upgrades following its beta launch in December 2004, and a full version was recently launched. NPG has also introduced the updated version of the source code of Connotea with the latest features.

Publisher F-D-C Reports, Inc., US, part of STM publisher Elsevier, has launched Medicare Drug Focus, an online weekly that provides information for pharmaceutical and health plan personnel and other stakeholders. The journal covers Medicare prescription drug plans, changes in relevant policies and how pharmaceutical and biotech firms plan to respond to the changes. In addition, it provides services such as breaking news alerts, facts & figures slides, searchable archives, events schedules and a topical story index. A one-month trial is available.
F-D-C Reports' existing publications include The Gray Sheet, The Pink Sheet, The Tan Sheet, The Rose Sheet, Pharmaceutical Approvals Monthly and Research Policy Alert.

SOA Foundation software provider Systinet Registry, US, has been selected by NASA's Earth Observing System Clearinghouse (ECHO) to facilitate the discovery, access and publication of earth science resources. ECHO was created by NASA to provide scientists and researchers with access to its enormous collection of earth science data. Systinet will offer ECHO customers a user-friendly system to record, share and publish data related to earth science through data services. With the help of the data, researchers and federal decision makers can comprehend earth systems and behaviours better, as well as make predictions for impending events. The registry allows ECHO users to make enquiries across various databases. They can also learn from the registry what services they can employ to further process the data. The Systinet Business Services Registry supports the UDDI V3 standard.

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), the STM database arm of the American Chemical Society, has revamped its SciFinder service by providing four additional tools for database searching. It includes an innovative Similarity Searching Tool that deploys the Tanimoto algorithm to spot chemical substances that are similar to the one that the user is looking for. Another tool, Searching, scours the entire registry, which contains more than 26 million organic and inorganic substances, to provide more comprehensive results. Other innovations in SciFinder include easy navigation and enhanced usability features.
SciFinder was launched in 1995 and its Mac OS X version is slated for launch in late 2005.

Online healthcare tools and applications developer HealthGate Data Corp., US, has appointed Dr. Timothy J. McNamara as its Chief Medical Officer. He is also Assistant Professor and Medical Director at the Center for Healthcare Informatics, University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. McNamara has 12 years experience in the field of medicine and IT product development. Earlier, he has served as Vice President of Content Development at Cerner Corporation. McNamara previously founded Bluestreak Data, LLC and Applied Informatics and co-founded MetaContent. He also holds two patents in electronic prescription development and computerised drug dosage.

Textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Co., US, has come out with a science textbook that supports written lessons complemented by information techniques such as DVDs, CD-ROMs and web sites. The fourth grade textbook is projected to cater to the current generation of students, who are fed on a regular diet of video games and other interactive media like television. It urges students to think, with about 40 lab experiments. It also provides DVDs of students actually carrying out the experiments, which teachers can display to the class before starting the experiment. The web sites that come as part of the package offer animated simulations of what is taught in the lessons - for instance, bats are shown using sound to detect insects and keep off objects in the dark. Houghton Mifflin intends to market its complete textbook for US$44.79. However, the six components/units of the book can be individually purchased for US$11.97 each.

Information services provider ProQuest Information and Learning, US, has signed an agreement with MyiLibrary Ltd. to utilise the latter's platform to distribute over 2,000 health and medical e-books. The MyiLibrary platform provides features like flexibility, full-text searching and user-friendliness. To start with, ProQuest will provide Oxford Handbooks and Textbooks along with titles from other publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, Blackwells, Springer and others. Also, libraries can purchase or subscribe to individual medical titles as well as complete collections. Metadata captured from the digitised books will be added to the ProQuest platform. Users can perform cross-searches in ProQuest's full-text periodicals and MyiLibrary's e-books collection.
As part of its strategy of expanding its STM content pool, ProQuest has signed agreements with Alliance Publishing, NewsRx and Nature Publishing Group.

Publisher United Business Media (UBM) plc, UK, has sold its automotive titles, Auto Exchange and Exchange & Mart, to Exchange Enterprises Ltd., a division of Newsquest Media Group Ltd., UK, for £50.25 million (US$90.6 million). While Auto Exchange is a free weekly, Exchange & Mart is a classified motoring advertising weekly in the UK. The sale is in line with UBM's efforts to quit non-core operations and focus instead on specialist and integrated markets for professionals and enthusiasts as well as news distribution. The earnings from the sale will be invested in UBM's other businesses and do not create a tax liability. UBM, a specialist information services provider for the technology, healthcare, property & financial and media & entertainment sectors, earns 39 percent of its revenues from Europe, 51 percent from the US and 10 percent from Asia.

Indian offshoring in the publishing segment is expected to reach $1.1 billion by 2010, as against the current $200 million. According to business intelligence and research provider ValueNotes Database, the global expenditure on publishing outsourcing of $8.1 billion can be reduced to $4.86 billion if it is offshored. What is remarkable is that publishing outsourcing is no novelty in India - it began way back in 1977, pioneered by Macmillan. The scientific, technical and medical publishing (STM) industry leads the publishing outsourcing trend to tackle lower sales turnover against higher production expenses. The UK and the US are the two major countries for STM publishing. The report adds that while STM publishers have been outsourcing for decades, offshoring is proving to be more beneficial of late. Elsevier, Springer and Taylor & Francis are among the publishers who outsource various processes to India. There are more than 50 players in the Indian publishing outsourcing industry. The smaller companies provide data conversion/digitisation solutions while the larger ones offer complete services such as content development, design, data conversion and turnkey project management. Last week, Springer had announced plans to double its activities in India, from the current 25 percent to 50 percent.

Publisher Springer, Germany, has signed an agreement with publishing house Central European Science Journals (CESJ), Poland, to co-publish the well-known journals of societies and other institutions in Central and Eastern Europe from 2006. The two will co-publish about 40 journals in subjects such as chemistry, mathematics, biology, physics and medicine. Societies and other institutions in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Albania and the former Yugoslavia will be covered by the deal. Springer is expected to augment its scientific information solutions to Central and Eastern Europe with this partnership. The co-publishing deal takes off with five recently introduced publications from CESJ, all titles beginning with Central European Journal of…

Over 100 pharmaceutical and biotechnology institutions have subscribed to the R&D information solution, Thomson Pharma, since it was introduced in January 2005, according to Thomson Scientific. The solution integrates various databases of Thomson into drug discovery and development processes, offering research assistance that meets the information requirements of professionals at all levels of the workflow. The databases include Delphion, Investigational Drugs Database, Drugdex, Derwent World Patents Index and Web of Science. Davos Chemical Corporation, US, is among the early users of Thomson Pharma.

The latest version of MedReader, a free RSS reader and RSS publishing solution for the medical and healthcare industry, has been launched with additional features. MedReader, the only online RSS reader and publishing technology for medical content, is divided into four editions, for nursing, physicians, business and allied health professionals. Each edition is subdivided to offer specialty content to healthcare and medical professionals. Version 4.0 of MedReader offers multiple folders to facilitate efficient management, a scrolling updated tool for news alerts and persistent search technology Medical web sites such as Medical News Today and Sound Practice have linked up with MedReader to promote and create awareness about the advantages of RSS.

Bioline International (BI), a South-North (Brazil-Canada) non-profit organisation, has received US$30,000 as a grant from the Open Society Institute's Open Access Project. The grant is to support the inclusion of an additional 10 bioscience and health journals from developing nations into the BI system. BI has called for submission of publications to its open access platform. Scientific publishers in emerging nations face financial and technical problems in increasing the visibility of their journals. Nevertheless, local research is essential for the mainstream knowledge system, and this is facilitated by open access. To date, more than 40 refereed journals have partnered with BI, due to which some of their download volumes have improved ten-fold. A few publishers have indicated that scientists from the world over are increasingly making contributions to their journals owing to their enhanced visibility and citation impact, due to the open access model.

The National Research Council of Canada's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) has bagged the Agatha Bystram Award for its Secure Desktop Delivery (SDD) project. The award for Leadership in Information Management, given by the Council of Federal Libraries, recognises the project's innovativeness that enhances access to scientific, technical and medical (STM) content across Canada and the world. The yearly award is given for excellence and novelty in managing government information sources and service to customers. It is named after one of the Council's respected professionals.
The Information Management Champions Committee of the Public Works and Government Services, Canada, has also bestowed the SDD team with the Information Management Community Recognition Award for the project.
For the past two years, the SDD team has allied with FileOpen Systems, US, to distribute scanned research papers to customers' desktops. It has deployed the digital rights management (DRM) technology as well as a new online interface to improve the document quality.

Online scientific, medical and academic information research services provider Ovid Technologies, US, has appended over 160 medical, engineering and scientific books to its integrated e-books interface, Books@Ovid. Titles from publishers including Pharmaceutical Press, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) and McGraw-Hill have been added to the resource. This inclusion, offered until 2005-end, builds the total number of e-titles on Books@Ovid to more than 350.
The added titles cover neurology, infectious diseases, cardiology, endocrinology and surgery. These include LWW's Joslin's Diabetes Mellitus and Hospital Epidemiology of Infection; Pharmaceutical Press' Clarke's Analysis of Drugs and Poisons; and McGraw-Hill's Williams Obstetrics and Schwartz's Principles of Surgery.
In order to cater to a wider user community, including faculty and students, new engineering, social sciences and humanities reference materials such as the Dictionary of Engineering, Microfluid Mechanics and Concise Encyclopaedia of Environmental Science have also been appended.

Print and digital education and reference content provider McGraw-Hill Medical Publishing, US, has launched free weekly podcasts from its online service, AccessMedicine.com. The service offers information from resources across the world to physicians, healthcare professionals, researchers and medical students. The podcasts are developed by the authors of resources such as Hurst's the Heart Online and Harrison's Online, available at AccessMedicine.com. They allow medical professionals and students to listen to the latest medical news instantly, irrespective of their location. The podcasts include series on medical developments and therapies such as Harrison's Online updates, Hurst's the Heart Online updates and Harrison's Grand Rounds Lecture Series, provided by leading physicians.
Harrison's Online updates provide information on recent developments in medicine, while Hurst's the Heart Online updates analyse the latest cardiology information from medical publications and Harrison's Grand Rounds Lecture Series offers internal medical topics covering clinical management and common treatments. The web audio files can be shared, downloaded and shifted to an iPod or similar portable MP3 equipment, to be listened to anywhere and anytime.

Medical and scientific publisher Thieme New York, US, has released a book titled General Anatomy and Musculoskeletal System, the first in its new 'Atlas of Anatomy' series. The series represents the first freshly drawn anatomy artwork after a long time. The content, offered in a two-page spread format with over 3,000 original illustrations in all, links anatomical ideas with clinical practice. The first book covers subjects such as general anatomy, musculoskeletal system, surface anatomy and embryology.
The second title of the series, Neck and Internal Organs, will be published in April 2006, followed by Head and Neuroanatomy in October 2006. Each book in the series will also be published using Latin taxonomy. Other improvements, such as pictures available online for classroom use, are likely to be introduced.

The US' Pharmacy & Therapeutics (P&T) Society has named Managed Care Interface, published by Medicom International, Inc., US, its official journal with effect from the October 2005 issue. The refereed monthly journal will start featuring P&T Society news and information about its projects and programmes. Launched in 1988, the journal offers original research articles, clinical reviews, pharmacy practice studies and health economic examinations in the managed care sector. It is indexed in various databases, including International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, CINAHL, MEDLINE and Embase, and is circulated to around 40,000 executives every month.
The P&T Society membership consists of pharmacists and medical directors from hospitals, physician groups, health plans and health systems that are related to the P&T process. The society is also open to academics, healthcare executives, benefit consultants and employee benefit managers who wish to learn about formulary decision-making and P&T Committee efforts.

CABI Publishing, a division of CAB International, UK, has enhanced its database offerings to enable librarians and their customers to search and use the information in a more effective way. Improvements in the CAB Abstracts Archive, CAB Direct, CAB Abstracts, Global Health Archive and certain other databases allow users to choose the databases they wish to search, either separately or simultaneously. They can select any combination of datasets such as the start or end years and identify CABICODES of particular terms in the databases. Similarly, they have a choice between existing and archived files, which require subscription, to do a defined search. They can also find instant links to the complete content under the 'Link to Full Text' module that delivers documents for CISTI (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information) and the British Library with suitable citation materials from CABI databases.
Improvements in the Animal Science Database, Forest Science Database, AgBiotechNet, Organic Research Database, and Nutrition and Food Sciences Database allow users to make searches based on authors, publications and ISSNs.
Effective from September 28, 2005, the databases will be hosted on a new edition of the CAB Direct platform through a new server IP.

Novis, France, which publishes DrugResearcher.com, over 50 specialist digital newsletters and 22 other business online portals, has changed its name to Decision News Media to emphasise the editorial culture of the company's news service. The group provides online news for free and earns revenues only through advertising. It follows stringent principles on editorial freedom, with no editorial support for advertisers. There is also no paid-for editorial matter.
The company's flagship publications, such as InPharma-Technologist.com, FoodNavigator.com and NutraIngredients.com, have received numerous awards for providing information that aids business decision-making. Having won the Webby-Worthy Award for 2005, the group is also short-listed for the 2005 News Website of the Year Award from the Association of Online Publishers, US. Besides, it has received Website Launch, Food Industry Website of the Year, Editor of the Year, and News Reporter awards over the past one-and-a-half years.

AdValiant.com, a division of technology and database services provider Dialog Group, US, has introduced a co-registration platform at its MyMedcenter.com web site and health network. MyMedcenter is a public health web site that offers syndication to media business associates through a network of radio and television web portals. It includes 87 media properties such as stations allied with Post-Newsweek, Scripps Howard, NBC and Cox Television. Users of the co-registration platform can register for offers from Blockbuster, Home Depot, Dell and other brands.
Dialog Group's three operating divisions - Dialog Group Communications, AdValiant and Data Dialog - offer various technical and data services. Dialog Group Communications provides communication, creative, CRM, account and interactive services. AdValiant offers Adialogin, the first real-time data verification and communication technology and lead enhancement for the online marketing industry. Data Dialog offers consumer surveys, data services, list management, lead generation, data compiling, and appending services.

The Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has selected ProQuest Information and Learning, US, to electronically provide its 50 biological, medical and physical science titles via the latter's scientific and medical databases from October 2005. Under the deal, NPG's flagship title Nature and other titles, such as Gene Therapy, British Journal of Cancer and Nature Reviews, will be distributed via ProQuest's databases including ProQuest Medical Library, ProQuest Agriculture Journals, ProQuest Science Journals and ProQuest Health and Medical Collections. The deal is projected to widen ProQuest's STM content base with acclaimed titles.
ProQuest's database comprising over 16,000 periodicals will now include archives of Nature from 1990, un-restricted access to NPG's open access titles and current content that will be available for a year after first publication.
In a similar agreement earlier this week, publisher Alliance Communications Group, US, had granted ProQuest the global online and microform rights to deliver its publications via the latter's database. The journals include the Journal of Endovascular Therapy, Strength and Conditioning Journal and Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
Earlier, ProQuest had signed an agreement with the Norwegian Health Service Research Centre, a publicly funded organisation, to offer over 1000 journals to health institutions across Norway through ProQuest's resources.

Open access (OA) publisher BioMed Central (BMC), a division of the Current Science Group, UK, has named Matthew Cockerill as Publisher. He was initially the company's Technical Director when it was set up in 1999 and later its Director of Operations. Before BMC, Cockerill took a major part in developing an online portal for biologists titled 'BioMedNet' that included the review journals, Trends and Current Opinion. He has been a staunch supporter of using technology for structuring and organising medical and biological content.
Current Science Group is an independent electronic publisher that aims to provide free access to refereed research papers. BMC offers online research services, such as the Faculty of 1000 in Biology and in Medicine, as well as a wide range of editorially intensive resources for medical practitioners and scientists.
The previous Director and Publisher of BMC, Jan Velterop, quit the company in May 2005 to involve himself further in advocating OA. He had then opined that BMC and the US' Public Library of Science (PLoS) were the only bodies to fully adopt the OA system.

Scientific and specialist information publisher Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, has announced plans to expand its operations in India with services for the financial and marketing segments. While 25 percent of the publisher's activities are currently performed in India, it aims to shift a further 25 percent of publishing and editing work to the country. Currently, two-thirds of scientific and one-third of business media works are performed at Springer's Indian arms, Springer India and Scientific Publishing Services. The company is also scouting to acquire a local company. Out of the nearly 5,000 employees of Springer, 1,200 are currently based in India, which is expected to be doubled shortly.
Springer has been offering its scientific and research content to the Indian digital library project and similar resource-sharing projects. Indian subscriptions to the company's resources have been increasing along with the contribution from Indian scientists. Springer is also working to network major research organisations, engineering schools and special databases to its database platform, Springer Link.
Early this month, Springer Science+Business Media had announced plans to enhance its presence in the Dutch B2B publishing market by acquiring upcoming publishers in the country.

The UK is losing nearly £1.5 billion every year in the potential effect of scientific research expenditure in the country, says Professor Stevan Harnad, Moderator of the American Scientist Open Access Forum and Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science. He has estimated the potential earnings on the investment in scientific research that are lost due to the existing academic publishing environment. Though Research Councils UK's (RCUK) £3.5 billion annual funding leads to the publication of nearly 130,000 articles, that does not fully represent the return on invesment for the UK Government, adds the professor. For research papers to attain value there must be further usage, application and value addition. The research/citation impact - the number of times an article is cited by other articles - must be measured, he opines. In his article titled 'Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment Research', Harnad contends that there is a certain loss of citation impacts owing to the inaccessibility of UK research papers. The online environment has enabled authors to self-archive their works or place them in institutional repositories that can be viewed for free. Supporting RCUK's policy of free access to research papers, Harnad says that the online era is an opportunity to maximise the earnings on public investment in research studies.

STM publisher Springer Science + Business Media, Germany, plans a public offering in early 2006, reports Handelsblatt. Buyout firm Candover Investments Plc., UK, has told the paper it may exit the publishing company next year. Springer Science was formed in 2003 by Candover and Cinven Ltd., another buyout firm, following the purchase of Kluwer Academic Publishers and BertelsmannSpringer. The companies paid € 1.05 billion to the Bertelsmann Group for the purchase.

The UK's Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) announced the ALPSP and ALPSP/Charlesworth Awards on September 15 at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. The 'European Respiratory Journal' bagged the 2005 ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Learned Journals while 'Textile: the Journal of Cloth & Culture' won the ALPSP/Charlesworth Award for Best New Journal. The ALPSP Award for Publishing Innovation was given to Nature Publishing Group's 'Connotea'.

Web media and market research company IMV Ltd., US, has launched LabPulse.com, an Internet portal that seeks to provide science professionals with the latest news as well as information on laboratory equipment, supplies and related services. The technologies covered will include microscopy, chromatography, electrophoresis systems, spectroscopy, real-time PCR systems, DNA sequencers, balances, microplate readers, centrifuges and laboratory information management systems (LIMS). With a free membership, visitors to the web site can also view listings of products and vendors and conference agendas.
The information, targeted at trade audiences, industry and government professionals and academicians, will enable them to exchange information, conduct research and explore new products the non-traditional way.

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, US, has launched a comprehensive database titled 'Wiley Registry 7th Ed./NIST 2005 Mass Spectral Library'. The CD ROM resource, which contains over 461,000 mass spectra, covers illegal drugs, environmental pollutants, pharmaceuticals, chemical weapons and several other compounds. For the first time, the Wiley Registry of Mass Spectral DataT, 7th edition and the NIST/NIH/EPA Mass Spectral Library 2005 have been integrated into a single comprehensive library. The database is targeted at laboratories that cater to emergency response, urgent care and various critical activities where immediate recognition of the compound is crucial. The library comprises 820,528 unique chemical names as well as 222,553 unique CAS numbers in formats such as Agilent Chemstation and NIST MSSearch/Thermo Xcalibur.

Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press (OUP), UK, has revamped its web site with enhanced information for readers, purchasers, authors and society partners, as well as for better efficiency and accessibility. As part of the restructuring process, the entire journal collection was consolidated into the HighWire Press platform. Service, functionality and design features were also standardised across all the journals. OUP roped in academics, librarians, authors and scientists into the redesigning process to make the web site user-friendly. The site now offers uniform navigation across pages to allow users to identify relevant content in various OUP journals.
OUP issues nearly 4,500 new books each year. Its online journal division publishes more than 180 journals including Nucleic Acids Research, Human Reproduction and Brain.

Publisher Alliance Communications Group (ACG), US, has granted ProQuest Information and Learning, US, the global online and microform rights to deliver its publications via the latter's database. As per the agreement, 19 ACG journals, such as the Journal of Endovascular Therapy, Strength and Conditioning Journal and Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, can be accessed through ProQuest databases such as ProQuest Medical Library, ProQuest Nursing Journals and ProQuest Science Journals. The deal is expected to support ProQuest's programme to enhance periodical STM databases with high quality content.
ACG, the publishing division of STM printer Allen Press, Inc, releases professional and scholarly publications. Recently, it had announced the release of publications such as Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, and Biofeedback and Photosynthesis: Fundamental Aspects to Global Perspectives for the year 2005.

The European Commission (EC) has granted € 550,000 ($674,744) to the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) for studying the similarities between medical informatics and bioinformatics. The project, titled 'Synergies in Medical Informatics and Bioinformatics' (SYMBiomatics), is sponsored under EC's Sixth Research Framework Program. Aimed to guide EC in funding policy on the two areas, the project involves documentation of the latest events and trends in biomedical informatics by nine organisations in the UK, Italy, France, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands. The study will be made from scientific literature as well as from bioinformatics and medical informatics experts. An online survey, based on open-end consultation results from experts, will be conducted. Besides, data-mining and bibliometric techniques will be deployed to identify and examine the suitable scientific content. EBI will organise the activities of these organisations and prepare a white paper, based on the study findings, to be presented in a 2006 summer meeting.
The SYMBIOmatics Specific Support Action, a part of the project, is an information collecting and delivering effort that seeks to understand and explore the synergies between bioinformatics and medical informatics. With clinical research creating a better insight into the molecular basis of various diseases, an overlap between the two fields is predicted.

ProQuest Information and Learning, US, has clinched a deal to supply full-text journals to the Norwegian Health Service Research Centre (Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services), a publicly funded organisation. Health institutions across Norway can now access over 1,000 journals from ProQuest collections including ProQuest Nursing Journals, ProQuest Medical Library and ProQuest Psychology Journals. Over 60,000 nurses and 15,000 doctors, professionals and administrators belonging to the primary healthcare sector and various hospitals can access these journals through the Norwegian Health Electronic Library. The electronic library is an online portal created by Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services and the Directorate for Health and Social Affairs.
The criteria for selection were commitment to the development of medical and health content, coverage and content, technical integration, embargo periods, user-friendliness of the interface, pricing and levels of service. With NHS as the basis, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services is looking at offering its electronic service to libraries across the nation.
ProQuest, an aggregator and publisher of information pertaining to economics and business, STM, humanities and social sciences and general reference, recently signed similar deals with NHS Scotland and NHS England.

Niche publisher Corland Publishing, US, has introduced an e-zine titled Diesel Forecast that provides comprehensive reports about diesel vehicle technology and business news for a select audience. The preliminary issue is offered for free on a trial basis. Each issue will analyse the status of the diesel industry, technological improvements in vehicles, trends, vehicle introductions and developments in diesel fuel. The launch is made in line with the growing interest in the US on fuel-conserving diesel vehicles following sharp hikes in global oil prices. The publication offers statistics and market trends, such as future changes in the requirements for diesel-based equipments and services. The editorial seeks to guide the primary audience on their involvement and strategies in the diesel market. John McCormick will be the Executive Editor and Rob Cleveland will be the publisher of the e-zine.
Corland Publishing also publishes the online magazine Hydrogen Forecast, which covers the hydrogen economy.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) has initiated an open access (OA) consultation to identify and deal with the effects of OA on scholarly publications, the research community and research libraries. In October 2004, the council had adopted an open access model for the research papers funded by it. In order to examine its consequences, SSHRC has developed a questionnaire for the stakeholders on how OA can be optimally incorporated in its activities and programmes.
The questionnaire covers policy and operational issues regarding free access. The questions include regulation for submitting a copy of research papers and self-archiving. Operational challenges are addressed with questions on institutional repositories and open access journals programmes. The deadline for submitting the response, either by e-mail or post, is October 31, 2005.

Software vendor Adobe Systems, Inc., US, has announced the latest version of its authoring and publishing solution, Adobe FrameMaker, which allows users to take content output in print, XML, PDF and HTML formats. With FrameMaker 7.2, users can develop complex and lengthy technical manuals and catalogues through word processing and XML authoring and publishing. It also assists in migrating from unstructured to structured records with a guide that describes the steps to shift to an XML structure. The built-in conversion software in the current version maintains character and paragraph formats, thereby quickening the conversion process. It also provides templates including the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) application that manages and combines technical content.
XML Schema, a Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) structure standard document, is added to the FrameMaker 7.2 group of standards. XML Schema is an alternative to the Document Type Definitions (DTDs) standards of FrameMaker 7.2. Authors can reverse steps multiple times. The History Palette feature enables authors to view and undo multiple changes at one click.
The software, slated for launch in September, will be available in English, French and German.

The Aviation Week Group, part of The McGraw-Hill Companies, US, has launched its latest publication, Defense Technology International (DTI), which seeks to explore the role of defence technologies in policies, programmes, operations and funding. The magazine's non-US delivery, for global military and industry leaders, will be over 35 percent. The debut issue covers technologies relating to unconventional and developing threats and includes the topics 'Armor's New Look', 'Breakthroughs In High-Rate-of-Fire Guns' and 'Israeli Military Goes Digital'. Regular columns include Science Watch, Technology Watch and The Cutting Edge. Sharon Weinberger is the editor-in-chief of the publication.
Of the 38,000 copies, half will be distributed as part of the group's Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. The rest will be distributed to top-level executives in the areas of international government, land, sea and joint commands. The next issue of the magazine is slated for November 21, 2005. From 2006, it will be a bimonthly.
The other publications of the Aviation Week Group include Aviation Week & Space Technology, Aviation Daily, Overhaul & Maintenance, Business & Commercial Aviation, World Aviation Directory & Aerospace Database and ShowNews.
In August 2005, the group launched Aviation Week Contrails, an e-zine that covers the novel experiences of aviators such as astronauts, combat aircrews, military and civil pilots, mechanics and aircraft designers and air traffic controllers.

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., the UK operation of publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, has acquired The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery from Robotic Publications Ltd., UK. Wiley will publish both the online and print formats of the journal from September 2005 on a quarterly basis. Introduced in June 2004, the journal is targeted at medical practitioners, commercial manufacturers and researchers. Wiley will retain the current team of editors who hail from the disciplines of robotics and allied technologies. With this deal, the publisher expects to expand its suite of surgery information products. Its other surgery titles include the British Journal of Surgery.
The journal is currently accessible at www.roboticpublications.com. Wiley plans to offer the content via Wiley InterScience, its online content delivery solution, under the institutional subscription model. The publisher has publishing, marketing and delivery centres across the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Early this week, Wiley had reported first quarter revenue and operating income of $237 million and $32 million, respectively. This was partly attributed to the performance of its STM and Professional/Trade divisions all over the world.

A recent survey covering physicians across the US has revealed that the web-based clinical information resources of MD Consult have boosted productivity, helped in making quick and accurate diagnoses and enabled users to keep abreast of medical findings. The medical information services, including the MD Consult Core Collection, are provided by MD Consult, US, part of STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands.
According to the findings, physicians using MD Consult saved 2.3 hours per week on an average and were able to provide solutions quickly in 61 percent of the cases. All respondents have opined that the service provides them with current information as well as the best practices within their specialised fields. They have also opined that the service resulted in better patient care in 29 percent of the cases.
In addition, MD Consult carried out case studies at two Texas medical centres to identify the value that the medical resource brings them. The Medical City Dallas Hospital, which uses MD Consult, is expected to earn a net benefit of over $5 million over the next five years due to the resource. The financial incentives include an increased number of patients attended to per week, reduced costs in interlibrary loans and higher librarian productivity. In one instance, information sought by a physician at the Medical City during a surgery was provided from MD Consult, which solved a major emergency.

Calculation software vendor Mathsoft Engineering & Education, Inc., US, has launched the latest version of its calculation tool, Mathcad, which can capture and reuse the data in engineering calculations. The tool, Mathcad 13, is part of the Mathsoft Calculation Management Suite, an enterprise software tool for innovating and improving returns on quantitative engineering knowledge. The data captured from calculations can be reused, checked, published and integrated across the development steps. Mathcad 13 supports the XML and .NET platforms.
The latest benefits allow novel development and engineering of products via enhanced production and management of key engineering information within a short span of time. The version offers new programme debugging capacities, improved and customisable 2D plot graphics, error messages for unseen mathematical flaws and an autosave function. It allows users to do away with cryptic and error-prone spreadsheets and complex proprietary programming languages while developing personal applications. The tool supports non-linear units including Celsius, Fahrenheit and Decibels.

University publisher Oxford University Press Inc., US, a division of Oxford University Press (OUP), UK, has selected XML content server MarkLogic Server for its online content distribution. MarkLogic Server, a product of Mark Logic, US, assists OUP in creating a distribution platform for online content products for libraries and academic institutions. The server will allow OUP to tap new audiences by offering personalised products across multiple channels. Besides, it enhances the return on content investments and reduces the total costs for creating and delivering new products.
The African American Studies Center will be the first to deploy the content delivery platform to integrate reference sources, diagrams, maps, timelines, specially chartered supplemental content and primary source references from OUP. The subscribers of the service can view and search through various scholarly references with results categorised under subject and time.

The US' Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International) has partnered with US-based Alcoa and eHigherEducation (EHE) to provide 23 self-paced online courses covering quality principles and tools. The e-learning courses, developed at the SAE/Alcoa Quality Institute, are targeted at quality managers and related professionals at all levels in an organisation. They particularly cater to professionals in the commercial vehicle, automotive and aerospace industries. Initially, the course was developed for Alcoa in association with EHE. Once the potential use of the courses was realised, the scheme was expanded for a wider audience. Some of the courses are Basic Statistical Methods, Data Collection, Design of Experiments, Process Capability Analysis and Mistake-Proofing.
SAE allows over 84,000 members, including engineers, business executives, educators and students, to exchange information and enhance the engineering of mobility systems.

Publishing and information services provider Wolters Kluwer, The Netherlands, has announced the appointment of Fred Grainger as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Wolters Kluwer Education. Grainger was previously Managing Director of UK-based Nelson Thornes, a Wolters Kluwer Education division. His appointment to the new post of COO follows the resignation of Harry Sterk as CEO of Wolters Kluwer Education. Grainger will report to CEO of Wolters Kluwer, Nancy McKinstry. He will work on the company's strategies to recreate its position as a market leader and develop new revenue channels in the areas of electronic publishing associated with testing and assessment tools. Earlier, he was President and CEO of Global English Corporation, US, CEO of Granada Learning (an erstwhile Thomson-Yorkshire TV joint venture), UK, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development for the International and Media Division of Thomson Corporation, US, and CEO of Alignmark Information Publishing, US. He was also the founder-CEO of Interactive Learning Productions.

The US' National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has signed a six-year, US$308 million agreement with Lockheed Martin, US, under which the latter will develop an Electronic Records Archives (ERA) system for NARA. ERA captures and permanently saves online content. It extracts the content in any format and makes it available in the updated versions of the existing hardware or software. Though the complete system is slated for launch by 2011, a subset of the model is projected to be functioning by 2007.
Lockheed Martin, the main contractor for ERA, will coordinate with NARA's Washington offices for the project. It will head a team of data organising and archiving companies such as Métier Ltd., Fenestra Technologies Corp., Science Applications International Corp. and BearingPoint Inc. Lockheed Martin is a technology company, which studies, develops, designs and produces systems for areas such as aeronautics, electronic systems and integrated systems & solutions.

The Lancet, the medical journal published by Reed Elsevier, The Netherlands, has digitised millions of articles from its publications dating 200 years back. The project, expected to assist medical professionals and the academia, is a part of the journal's strategy to increase revenues and customer satisfaction. The new revenue generating techniques in the online editions include contextual promotions, banner ads and skyscrapers. The journal offers links to other important areas so as to encourage more subscriptions to various sections of the web site. It also offers easy access to articles and research papers as well as enhanced payment structures for the online information. Subscribers can select between various subscription models - unlimited, pay-per-article or 24-hour access. The online project was developed by interactive agency Global Beach, UK.

The UK's Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) has initiated the second edition of a study about the practices and policies involved in online publishing of academic journals. The association had released the first report in 2003, in association with publishing consultancy John Cox Associates, UK. That report imparted information on journal publishers' response to the challenges of electronic publishing. It also included their solution to the requirements of authors, libraries and readers when online publication was maturing.
Since the first release, the publishing industry has witnessed crucial changes. For instance, the ALPSP Learned Journals Collection has allowed small-scale publishers to participate in large-scale consortia licences. The open access system has posed a potential threat to traditional subscription-required repositories. Pay-per-view has evolved as a significant revenue contributing model. Such new concepts and data will be updated in the current report, which will be published in February 2006. The report is expected to represent university press academic (both non-profit and commercial), society and commercial publishers.
The ALPSP has invited journal publishers to participate in the study that will be conducted in the second half in 2005.

Medical publisher Greenbranch Publishing, US, has announced a new book titled 'Secrets of the Best-Run Practices' targeting physicians and medical practitioners. Authored by Judy Capko, the book provides physicians and practice administrators with techniques that solve management troubles, attract patients and induce staff to stay. The topics covered include Conquering Work & Patient Flow Problems, Amazingly Productive Doctor and Dynamics of the Outpatient Academic Practice. The book is complemented with a 90-minute audio conference on September 14, 2005, in which Judy Capko speaks about the 'Power of Revenue Management: Getting Paid for What You Do!'

Salaries are essentially not the key motivator for industry scientists to work for an employer, according to an online survey for the year 2005 published by The Scientist. The third annual survey focuses on the work places considered the best by scientists across the US, Europe and Canada. Aimed to garner the work experiences and expectations of scientists, the study measured various deciding factors such as teamwork, ethics, job satisfaction and assumed significance and integrity of the research work.
The scientists have mentioned 'companies with strong ethics and that appreciate work' besides 'providing satisfying work' as the best working places.
Ethical issues were placed third in the combined ranking of the 1,560 responses about job-related factors. The study has integrated the decisive factors to job satisfaction with the separate rankings of workplaces. The respondents have rated involvement in the team, professionalism and integrity maintained by colleagues as among the priorities. Overall, the scientists have ranked 'personal satisfaction' in the daily work as highly important.
Scientists have deemed important the logical and practical use of research as well as their involvement in decision-making that relates to them. The opinions among the scientists were broadly similar. While US scientists ranked 'ethical standards' at number 2, European and Canadian scientists ranked it at 14. The other major difference was in the 'employee healthcare' factor, which was rated at number 2 in the US and at 36 in non-US responses.
Respondents were provided 43 positive inputs about the working environment and were asked to rank them in the order of importance.
Research papers like these are expected to provide a backdrop to the EU initiatives to encourage careers in science, create awareness about science in the society and higher mobility for scientists.

Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has acquired ophthalmology-related information provider Boucher Communications, Inc. (BCI), US, for an undisclosed amount and integrated it with its Medical Research unit. The Medical Research division offers print and online research content for medical and academic groups. BCI provides solutions for the opticianry, optometry and ophthalmology segments via its five vision care publications. The core journals, including Eyecare Business, Content Lens Spectrum Ophthalmology Management, Retinal Physician and Optometric Management, provide information on clinical and practice management as well as business techniques. These cover recent scientific developments in age-related macular degeneration, posterior segment care and diabetic retinopathy.
BCI also releases specialty publications such as Framebuyer and New O.D. among other patient-and practitioners-based supplements. It conducts educational events for vision care professionals and provides electronic newsletters and tailored communication programmes. The acquisition of BCI is expected to help Wolters Kluwer Health's Medical Research unit to move ahead in the specialty market segment. Wolters Kluwer Health is part of publisher Wolters Kluwer, Netherlands.
Last month, Wolters Kluwer had purchased the Information Management business of healthcare information service provider NDCHealth Corporation, US, for $382 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, US, has reported a 4 percent increase in revenue and operating income to $237 million and $32 million, respectively, in the first quarter of 2005-06. The increase has been mainly attributed to the robust performance of the company's worldwide Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) and Professional/Trade divisions. The Higher Education division posted flat earnings during the period.
The publisher's STM business in the US grew 6 percent against the first quarter of the previous year, directly boosting total earnings by 10 percent. Non-subscription income, sales of journal backfiles in particular, performed well on a year-on-year basis. Revenue from the STM book programme as well as subscription journals grew 6 percent over the previous year's first quarter. The global STM revenues and STM book revenues have risen around 6 and 9 percent, respectively.
Besides, many Enhanced Access Licences (EALs) were delivered to global academic and corporate customers. Various improvements were incorporated to the EAL that enabled better customer service. During the first quarter, an increased number of customers opted for Wiley InterScience's umbrella of access options that led to a nearly 42 percent increase over the previous year. Similarly, the 2004 impact factor ranking that estimates the number of citations of articles in Wiley's journals also went up. The company's publications include Biomedical Materials Research and Catheterization and Cardiovascular Intervention.
For the same period, revenues of Wiley Europe grew 6 percent, attributed to a top-line growth of STM journals and reference books sales as well as acquisitions, new launches and extended contracts. The company's performance in Asia, Australia and Canada grew 3 percent. Sluggish business in Canada was overcome by progress in the Asian market. Professional/Trade publications sold well in India, Thailand, China and the Philippines.

In its recent editorial, The Lancet has published scathing comments against its Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier for the latter's associations with the arms trade. It said it was 'deeply troubled' to learn about the publisher's involvement in organising arms fairs. The journal's readers, mostly from the medical world, would find The Lancet's links, even passively, with technologies such as cluster bombs 'incomprehensible', the editorial said. The journal had earlier raised its voice against cluster bombs that pose a major peril to civilians, especially children.
The journal's editorial team only recently came to know of the publisher co-organising the Defence Systems/Equipment International (DSEi) event in London along with UK's Ministry of Defence. The editorial 'respectfully asked' its publisher to avoid business against human interests, particularly civilian, health and welfare. Completely rejecting any assumed connection between the journal and arms trade, the editorial said that a few military technologies that Elsevier had cleared for exhibition at the London event were against the values of harm reduction and science-based decision making.
In addition to the unprecedented editorial, The Lancet has released an open letter, which calls on Reed Elsevier to come out of arms trade, with signatures from physicians across Europe, Asia and the US.
A Reed Elsevier spokesperson has responded in a statement that the defence industry is fundamental to the freedom and security of a country and added that the fair in London aimed more to display the relief activities of the armed forces than to showcase arms.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the United Health Foundation, US, have collaborated with BMJ Publishing Group, UK, to offer free access to the second edition of the Clinical Evidence Pediatrics resource. The partnership supports 60,000 paediatricians in their evidence-based medicine practice by allowing access to the resource, in print and electronic formats. The second edition aggregates paediatric and evidence-based practice information into one volume. It covers 65 complete-text topics relating to various diseases and conditions that practicing paediatricians need to deal with. The online version of the resource also offers free access to 200 topics encompassing adult and paediatric conditions.

Niche media focused strategic management and investment firm Apprise Media LLC, US, has acquired specialty publisher Y-Visionary LP, US, for undisclosed terms. Y-Visionary will be integrated with the Action Pursuit Group (APG) of the company's Apprise Enthusiast Media operations. Y-Visionary publishes nine monthly and bi-monthly magazines covering the automotive aftermarket, shelter market and outdoor sports. Its publications include Street Trucks, Drag Racer and Import Racer in the automotive sector, Victorian Homes in the shelter market and Bow & Arrow Hunting in the outdoor sports area.
Y-Visionary is Apprise's fourth specialty media acquisition this year. The previous acquisitions include Beckett Media (now part of Apprise's Enthusiast Media operations), CFW Enterprises and Canon Communications.

Ariadne Genomics, a US-based developer of systems biology tools for life sciences research, has provided its MedScan Text-to-Knowledge Suite for Bayer HealthCare AG, Germany, to create an internal molecular interaction database. MedScan, a scientific information processing tool, retrieves pathway-oriented information from scientific resources with modern language processing technology. The information extracted, ranging from regulation to molecular synthesis, molecular transport, expression or binding and protein modification, are stored as XML files. The tool can be applied to interpret research results and corroborate hypothesis as well as integrate with other bioinformatics software tools.
Ariadne Genomics offers tools to assist pathway analysis, ordered data management and mechanised scientific information processing. Its other tools for life sciences studies include PathwayStudio Central, PathwayAssist and the ResNet molecular networks database.

Reed Construction Data, US, part of Reed Business Information, has forged a marketing tie-up with online sales portal eBay, under which eBay business users can gain provisional access to Reed Bulletin's electronic construction project content as well as RSMeans QuickCost calculator. The deal covers information on the recent top 10 construction assignments in the country worth hundreds of millions of dollars. eBay users can access this as well as data on numerous other projects by subscribing to ReedBulletin.com. They also get a free trial of the RSMeans QuickCost calculator that estimates construction charges across the US and Canada. The complete version of the calculator can be bought online. Besides, a complete web repository of used construction machines can be viewed through eBay.com. The agreement enables eBay promotional efforts to be combined across Reed Construction Data's MasterFormat directory as well as online Associated Construction Publications.

Not-for-profit organisation RLG, US, has completed a draft report on the certification of digital repositories, titled An Audit Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories. The report is available at RLG's web site. The checklist has been created in association with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), US. The aim of this joint project, RLG-NARA, is to develop norms to validate digital repositories in providing consistent storing, migrating and access services.
It will be used at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek - the National Library of the Netherlands - that has stored the digital collections of Elsevier Science Direct Journals, Portico, an electronic journals' archive, and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The LOCKSS system of Stanford University, US, will also take part in the project.

The organisation Universities UK, which supports and promotes universities in UK, has expressed support for broad and free access to online versions of public-funded research studies. Arguing that academic literature is critical to national productivity, the organisation has moved its support away from subscription-based access to journals and web sites. It has opined that free access increases the number of citations for a paper, which in turn advances the concerned scientist's claim to research funding.
Universities UK has also stated that the subscription charges for scholarly communication, which served well for the research groups, were functioning at a 'sub-optimal level'. The primary cause for the increase had been the upsurge in journal prices, which grew 58 percent between 1998 and 2003, as against the general inflation rate of 11 percent. Advances in digital publishing had enabled a basic change, Universities UK said. The organisation has also suggested a system that juxtaposes the existing model with new methods for meeting publication expenditure.

Two research papers commissioned by the Scholarly Communications Group of the UK's Joint Information System Committee (JISC) have provided fresh insights into the issue of open access publishing. Disciplinary Differences and Needs, authored by Sue Sparks, Rightscom Ltd., UK, describes how disciplinary differences influence the extent of use of content sources by researchers and the mediums available to deliver the research results. It examines broader factors affecting scholarly communication, including institutional repositories, self-archiving and the Research Assessment Exercise. The paper concludes, among other things, that e-prints hold significance in physical sciences, engineering and certain categories of social sciences, while books are vital in the criteria of language and area research.
The second paper, Learned Society Open Access Business Models by Mary Waltham, offers a detailed analysis of nine learned society journals, their pricing strategies and open access models. According to the report, alternative publishing is necessary, as the current models are increasingly becoming unaffordable. The quantity of submitted papers as well as published research articles is rising, leading to higher costs for the publishers. The margins of the learned society publishers are endangered, as they cannot expect subscriptions from the higher education community. This is the cause for turning to the open access publishing system, though the shifting of the publishing model may pose financial challenges. The paper concludes that there is no universal solution to the issue of funding research paper publication. The transition to an alternate model should be analysed collaboratively and implemented based on firm evidence.

Malaysian Genomics Resource Center (MGRC), Kuala Lumpur, owned by Synamatix, US, has licensed its online bioinformatics services to the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, UK. The services will be applied in cancer research studies headed by Keith Vass, head of bioinformatics, Beatson Institute. The MGRC services function on Synamatix's SynaSuite bioinformatics components and based on SynaBase, its structured network resource that stores biological information. Financial details of the agreement were not revealed.
The enormous growth of genome information has led to the necessity of an effective storing and analysing tool. Synamatix, the developer of the world's first integrated structural database system for genetic sequence data, caters to the data management and mining requirements of international life sciences organisations.

Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) can be useful for college science teaching but cannot be a substitute for conventional paper laboratory notebooks, according to Todd Woerner, a chemistry instructor at Duke University, US. As many pharmaceutical firms are gearing up to provide ELNs for their scientists, there is a sudden rush for them at universities as well. However, Woerner recommends against this trend for college chemistry instructors, as academic and industry research labs have not made the shift yet. US-based scientific research consulting company Atrium Research has revealed that 12 percent of the potential users are already using ELNs and has projected a 30 percent growth in purchase every year. However, businesses, and not universities, form a major percentage of the buyers.
Woerner has estimated that 25 chemistry students at his university deploy ELNs instead of print each year. He has said that ELNs have their own pros and cons for the academia. As the system does not allow students to alter the data once submitted, chances of data manipulation are reduced. However, formatting or altering the files in ELNs is difficult, as is writing equations and drawing diagrams in a word processor.
In a survey among 150 members of the International Center for First-Year Undergraduate Chemistry Education, none indicated using ELNs.

Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., UK, presented various best practice awards to scholars at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Honolulu, Hawaii. Each award was sponsored by a well-known Emerald journal, such as the Journal of Operations & Production Management, Journal of Management Development, Journal of Managerial Psychology and Journal of Management History.
The awards were for various management categories such as Distinguished Scholar, Lifetime Achievement Award, Best Paper Awards for Management Education and Development Division, Organization Development & Change Division and HR Division. Emerald also presented the prestigious Carolyn Dexter Best International Paper Award for Erroneous Learning from the West: An Empirical Study of Chinese Cases Published in 1992 and 1999. The book was authored by Neng Liang of the China Europe International Business School.
A workshop followed the awards ceremony, where regional editors, fellow academics and journal board members discussed various management decision topics such as methodologies and the importance of history in management. Furthermore, a Professional Development Workshop led by Emerald editors addressed the versatile role of journal editors.

A recent research conducted by Hitachi Data Systems, US, has revealed that the volume of digital content that companies have to handle is likely to increase by up to 30 percent over the next two years. The biannual study, called Hitachi Data Systems Storage Index, is conducted among more than 840 CIOs and IT directors from 21 nations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The current index shows an uncertain IT expend on data storage versus a minimum increase in IT budgets and an ever-escalating data pressure.
Seventy-eight percent of the respondents have agreed that data will increase in the next two years, among which 76 percent cite e-mail as the largest reason behind it. However, IT budgets are projected to increase just 10 percent during the same period. It may be inferred that the storage spend is not tracked diligently or the boundaries between conventional storage and evolving technologies have been blurred. Respondents cited security, downtime and budgets as their biggest storage problems.

Sales and marketing support solutions provider Redi-Mail Direct Marketing has formed an alliance with healthcare informatics firm Verispan Inc. to offer high volume prescriber data for mid-level practitioners and physicians. Redi-Mail Direct Marketing, a division of Redi-Direct Marketing, Inc., US, provides services such as database management, list management and sourcing, fulfillment capabilities and lettershop. Verispan, a joint venture between Quintiles Transnational Corp. and McKesson Corp., offers an array of patient-oriented information services and products.
Licensed by the American Medical Association (AMA), Redi-Mail Direct Marketing will deploy its list services and database skills along with Vector One: Prescriber Extract (VOPEX), Verispan's Vector One product suite. Vector One, which offers an HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) complaint database, is a patented product of Verispan. The information provided by VOPEX, including quintile/decile rankings on prescribing trends, will assist in identifying physicians, health experts and mid-level practitioners who prescribe in a specific market, therapeutic or drug category. The pharmaceutical industry can identify prescribers and new vendors or drugs in the market with the data that classifies new and existing patient therapies, measures data based on territory figures and creates measures.

Business intelligence provider firstRain, US, has partnered with HealthACE, US, to integrate the latter's Pharma Intelligence daily report with its application service. HealthACE is a provider of strategic and personalised intelligence solutions to senior pharmaceutical professionals. The combined offering will provide relevant information from Pharma Intelligence via the personalised platform of firstRain to the customers of both companies. firstRain's content is tailored for healthcare professionals who seek information on industry events without investing additional time and personnel in it. Users can select the mode and frequency of information delivery.

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, US, has signed an agreement with VitalSource Technologies, US, to provide its prominent textbooks this Fall through the VitalSource P2 publishing platform. Wiley Desktop Editions, the e-collection, comprises over 80 of the publisher's bestsellers in subjects such as science, math, engineering, and computer science. A trial pack and a 60 percent discount on the list price of the print publications are available. VitalSource is a provider of educational digital content. Its P2 platform provides functions including note taking and note sharing, print, search and numbering pages. Using the VitalSource Bookshelf application, students can purchase the e-textbooks and store them on their desktops as a permanent reference material.
Wiley has previously offered similar products, including WileyPLUS, to help customers select the appropriate course title. These have received positive responses from the faculty and students.

Content management technology and information services provider Infotrieve, US, has released a white paper titled 'The Case for an Electronic Laboratory Notebook'. Aimed to assist scientists and R&D managers in evaluating the merits of capitalising on an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) system, the paper is provided for free online. It explains ELNs, the variations among specific and cross-disciplinary ELNs and their benefits as against traditional paper laboratory notebooks. These benefits include intellectual property security, efficiency gains and knowledge management features. The paper also presents Infotrieve's ELN and describes its compliance with FDA's norms for electronic records management.
The paper follows Infotrieve's July-August 2005 study that revealed that though over 90 percent of the respondents had not used an ELN, 36 percent planned to buy one within six months. Besides, 60 percent said that they were in the process of buying an ELN. Infotrieve caters primarily to the life sciences industry.

Triangle TechJournal publisher and technology events organiser TechMedia, US, has announced plans to introduce a new journal from January 2006, titled TechJournal South. The monthly will cover the life sciences and technology markets in south-eastern US regions including North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, Northern Virginia, South Florida and Atlanta. The content, primarily targeted at senior technology professionals, pertains to areas such as software, biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, defence, telecom and Internet. The journal will offer sections such as profiles of senior executives, funding news and executive postings. After the launch, Triangle TechJournal will be folded into TechJournal South. Currently, the journal is providing free subscriptions to selected southeast technology professionals and service providers at www.techjournalsouth.com.

Science media company Seed Media Group, US, publisher of Seed magazine, has named Nobel laureate Dr. James Watson as Special Advisor to the Board. Dr. Watson, who received the Nobel for co-discovering the structure of the DNA, has been a Consultant to the President's Scientific Advisory Committee as well as a member of the US' National Academy of Sciences and the UK's Royal Society. He has served as the President of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory between 1994 and 2003 and later became its Chancellor.
The publisher of Seed had raised funds recently to form Seed Media Group LLC, a new media firm for widening its content and brand across several media channels. Its growth strategy involves creating science literature to be delivered in various media products such as magazines, newspapers, digital, books, online and television.
In July 2005, the company appointed Chris Mooney, a political blogger, and Christopher Carbone, an editor, to its editorial team.

The International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP), US, has introduced an educational online lunchtime seminar series titled 'ISMPP U'. The 'lunch and learn' events will be conducted monthly for medical publication professionals. The subjects as well as the delivery mode of the series are based on feedback from participants of ISMPP's inaugural Annual Meeting in early 2005. The sessions, scheduled through December 2005, will cover topics including 'How to Increase Publication Acceptance' presented by Stan Heimberger, Senior Vice President, Current Medical Research and Opinion, and 'Evidence-Based Medicine and Publication Bias' presented by Desmond Thompson, Senior Director of Medical Communications, Merck Research Laboratories. ISMPP members will be notified by e-mail of forthcoming sessions and they can participate for free. The schedule for the spring semester will be declared later in the year.

Pharmaceutical business intelligence provider Cutting Edge Information, US, has published a research report, according to which $50,000-100,000 is the average budget for medical publishing during the pre-clinical stage of drug development for popular brands. The paper, titled 'Pharmaceutical Medical Publications: Winning Physician Support', says the niche brands typically spend $2,000 on an average, while the mid-level brands spend none at all during that stage. Out of the 16 drugs studied, ranging from blockbusters to niche brands, all the five blockbusters were allocated $65,000-200,000 by Phase I for publishing. Mid-level and niche brands escalated their expenditure in Phase I to $15,000 and $14,000, respectively. About a third of the niche brands continued not to spend at all on publication till Phase III.
As medical publication enables the transfer of scientific and clinical knowledge, established drug companies invest in it in the early stage of drug development. They see medical information as a platform for their products to challenge the competitors as well as to jump to a billion-dollar status from the middle rungs.
The report also comprises data such as outsourcing techniques, performance of in-house, contract and outsourced writers, factors affecting publication decision, examination of the preferred publishing source and duration of the activities for the drugs. It also details phase-by-phase publication spending and staffing requirements for the brands studied.

The Geological Society of America has introduced its first public access journal titled Geosphere that publishes research papers on geosciences for global readers. The online bimonthly, hosted by Allen Press, US, has invited papers in electronic format. The Society, set up in 1888, provides information targeting earth scientists from academia, industry, government and business. Its existing journals include Geology and Geological Society of America Bulletin as well as the magazine GSA Today, which are also hosted by Allen Press.

The UK's Joint Information System Committee (JISC) has initiated the JISC Digital Repositories Programme, which grants funds for 21 projects such as the Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch (PerX). Digital Repositories' features include 'architecture that manages content as well as metadata', a 'sustainable, trusted, well supported and well managed' platform and a minimum set of basic searches. PerX will assess the likely use of subject-specific e-repositories and create a pilot repository resource discovery service catering to engineering learning and research groups. The pilot project will be used to gauge the factors including end-user attitudes, maintenance and sustainability systems that affect the full-fledged use of digital repositories. It will also analyse why the engineering community has offered only limited support to e-repositories. Though the pilot addresses the engineering field, the results may be of interest to other subject repositories.
The Institute for Computer Based Learning, The Geotechnical, Institution of Civil Engineers/Thomas Telford Limited, Rock and Water Resources Library, Cranfield University and JISC Regional Support Centre are partners in PerX.

Enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies developer Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), US, has announced that its Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP) has been named KMWorld magazine's '2005 Trend-Setter'. The selection is based on the product's ability to bring added value to the user organisation, its employees and other stakeholders. FAST ESP was chosen among 1,200 products from 200 vendors for its applicability, cost of ownership, rate of adoption, flexibility and the vendor's idea about the potential of knowledge management. FAST's portfolio, including FAST ESP, offers complete information solutions for vertical markets such as life sciences, media and publishing, financial services and e-commerce and Internet portals.

Publisher Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, is set to boost its presence in the Dutch B2B publishing market with the acquisition of an upcoming group of publishing houses in the country. The group includes Checklist Publishing, Rendement Uitgeverij, Uitgeverij Goed Bestuur and Publicount. Rendement and Checklist offer print and e-mail news magazines in the B2B segments of tax and finance, personnel, IT and organisation. These will be integrated with Springer Uitgeverij. The management of the acquired companies, comprising Luc Muijser, Jan Schelling and Arne Westerhof, will continue to be the publishers.

Technology, healthcare and entertainment media firm CMP Media, US, has signed a joint venture agreement with specialty media house CyberMedia, India, to create an international media portfolio for global outsourcing services. CMP-CyberMedia LLC, the joint venture, combines CyberMedia's BPO portfolio with CMP Media's Managing Offshore business. It offers an umbrella brand portfolio including print, online and events, to enable marketers to reach the right audience for their information. It will also allow industry professionals to assess and obtain services for their operations. CyberMedia's President-Publishing, Hoshie Ghaswalla, will take over as MD of the new venture. Rusty Weston, the founder of Managing Offshore, will be the Editor-in-Chief. CyberMedia offers a portfolio of services for publishing and information companies.

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, has provided scientific capacity and a technology path for over 110 companies through its programme, Growing Enterprises with Technology Upgrade (GET-Up). The project, launched in 2003, aims to energise local firms by increasing their competitiveness and empowering them for the knowledge-oriented market. A*STAR researchers and engineers 'second' themselves to a company. Then they assist it in developing an in-house R&D environment and in determining its essential technologies and growth potentials.
A*STAR, along with IE Singapore, EDB and SPRING Singapore, works primarily in the segments of engineering, chemical, electronics and information and communication technology (ICT).

Health Direction, the business intelligence unit of the NHS (National Health Service), UK, has introduced the Practice Development Database that provides comprehensive literature at the Practice level. The resource will help pharmaceutical companies understand and work with Leads at the Practice level to create and apply shared techniques for local requirements. The database covers topics such as Quality Outcomes Framework data for each practice, identification of practitioners with a special interest, primary care premises development information, and practice level health need and population. Essential information about ongoing changes for creating patient-oriented NHS services, including Practice Based Commissioning (PBC), is highlighted in the database. The new database supports the wide advancements in the global roll-out of PBC and the staffing practices of PCOs to assist pharma companies in developing strategies.

CABI Publishing, UK, has announced that it is introducing the CAB Abstracts Plus database that will offer scientists additional complete text documents ranging from rare journals and conference papers to distribution maps from its resource. The database, expected to be available from January 2006, has tools that operate individually and cover scientific content in agriculture and applied life sciences. The primary component of the database, CAB Abstracts Full Text Select, is a repository that provides more than 10,000 full text papers aggregated from conferences, reports, and journals. It is going to be a permanent source of content that is available either mostly in print or for a short period in the online versions. The research papers in the repository will not be deleted or shifted and can be accessed through CAB Abstracts. Other titles of CABI Publishing are also offered in CAB Abstracts Plus under CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources, and CAB Reviews Archive. In CAB Reviews Archive, for the first time, users can view the digitised version of over 1,500 reviews of print journals published by CABI between 1940 and 2003. CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources is a new electronic publication that contains nearly 100 reviews about specific areas offered by CAB Abstracts. Titles including Distribution Maps of Plant Pests, Distributions Maps of Plant Diseases and Descriptions of Fungi and Bacteria as well as maps and descriptions of mid 1900's are provided in CAB Abstracts Plus. CAB Abstracts Plus allows librarians to navigate across a wide range of content from CAB Abstracts and choose components that could be useful for their patrons. Initially, CABI Publishing will offer the database through CAB Abstracts on CAB Direct and later extend it to CAB Abstracts on Ovid and SilverPlatter.

Technical information and decision-support tools provider IHS, US, has announced the availability of the IHS Medical Devices Standards Collections. The solution helps global medical devices manufacturers and suppliers meet regulatory and quality assurance norms. Besides buying digital versions and hardcopies of key industry standards, users can also gain access round-the-clock to frequent updates on the revisions of the standards. Moreover, the solution allows subscribers to quickly find and print documents through its advanced search and navigation technology. The IHS offering provides a complete index of industry standards including full-text hyperlinks as well as document abstracts.

Christopher T. Heun, a professor of law at Harvard University, has opined in an article in InternetWeek that Google's proposal to digitise library books, including the copyright protected ones, is likely to be found legally sound. The publishers who oppose the Google Print Library Project may have to fight a tough court battle, as the law is likely to favour the project for its social value, says the article. The initiative, which seeks to scan entire books - without permission - from the libraries of Oxford, Stanford, Harvard and Michigan Universities and the New York Public Library, has publishers protesting. Various publishing firms and associations, such as the Text and Academic Authors Association and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, are planning to sue Google, stating that intellectual property cannot be misappropriated by a search engine. But the law may be in favour of Google, much depending on how the term 'fair use' is interpreted by the courts, says the article quoting various legal and publishing professionals. The other issues are the size of the text scanned, the permission model - whether it is opt-in or opt-out - and the basic undercurrent that Google is a commercial organisation.

Wiley Publishing, US, has released a book titled Nanotechnology for Dummies, which seeks to demystify the complex technology for common readers, supported by a humorous writing style. The title, the latest in Wiley's "For Dummies" series, covers the origin of the technology, its various applications and its impact across several industry segments. It also offers information on a range of products that nanotechnology can create, such as stain-proof clothing, scratch-resistant glass, eyeglass coatings to reduce glare, drug delivery systems, medical diagnostic tools, corrosion resistant paints, portable power generators, burn and wound dressings, long-lasting tennis balls and tiny computers. The book is authored by Richard Booker, a student at Rice University, and Earl Boysen, an engineer.
For the layman and average investor, the book is expected to serve as an introduction to the science, which integrates chemistry, physics and industrial engineering at a nano-material or atomic level. Wiley estimates that global spending on nanotechnology hit $2 billion in 2003, while US federal spending on R&D in this field stood at $3.7 billion.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched the Web Soil Survey site that facilitates public access to the information and maps put forth by the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS). Users can utilise the site to take well-informed decisions for various land development activities including agriculture, city and county planning and engineering/construction, apart from conservation. The NCSS, initiated in 1899 for cooperative soil conservation, collates, categorises, examines and disseminates soils information. It is operated as a partnership between state and federal departments.
The web site offers the features of Define, View and Explore. With these, users can 'Define' specific areas that they want information on and 'View' the information or print the maps that the site provides. With 'Explore', users can scan an area to obtain information on whether the soil there is suitable for their use. The information can either be downloaded to a hard drive, CD or DVD, or be printed. Soil survey maps, which are currently being printed and distributed by USDA for free, will be phased out.

Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, will publish Kidney International, the journal of the International Society of Nephrology, as well as the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, run by the Society for Investigative Dermatology, Inc., from January 2006. Following the shift, the titles, currently published by Blackwell Publishing, UK, will adopt the purchasing system of NPG's portfolio. Under this system, subscribers can opt for a site licence (web access) and/or a print-only subscription based on their usage pattern. The site licence model offers weekly published articles within five days of acceptance, access to content dating back to 1998, a new website layout on the nature.com platform, statistical reports on online usage compliant with COUNTER and articles indexed in CrossRef Search. Subscribers need to fill an NPG licence agreement. While both the journals will see changes in content and design, Kidney International also gets a new Editor-in-Chief, Qais Al-Awqati.

Architecture, engineering and construction software developer Building Systems Design, US, in association with technical information provider IHS Inc., US, has released the Fall 2005 version of BSD SpecLink. This offers numerous new hyperlinks to the Standards Store of IHS. SpecLink, is deployed to create and maintain construction specifications. It uses a core relational database structure rather than word processing to provide guide text for various building product categories as well as references to several standards related to the construction industry. Previously, users who had to access the standards from the 185 sponsoring bodies could do so only by seeking permission individually. Under the new agreement, users can utilise the hyperlinks to directly access the standards. Out of the 2,173 referenced standards, 1,844 are accessible through the IHS Standards Store. Users are offered abstracts of the documents that can be downloaded or purchased online from IHS. The rest of the standards are provided in the sponsoring organisations' web sites, some of it for free. SpecLink is upgraded every quarter and the IHS database contains the current and earlier versions of the standards, providing a comprehensive and updated resource for construction specifications and reference standards.

The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has signed a deal with Elsevier to offer the company's Scopus abstracting and indexing database of STM content to British universities and colleges. Within weeks of the agreement, Scopus was accessed by over 70 universities and colleges. JISC, a federal support organisation for higher education, offers advice and guidance for using information and communications technology (ICT) in education and research. It negotiates with publishers and information service providers to offer a pervasive and consistent information platform to UK academia. Scopus was selected based on the committee's evaluation of the database since its November 2004 launch. In July 2005, Scopus was integrating with Elsevier MDL CrossFire Commander's structure searching features, which allows users to switch between the Scopus text and the visual display of organic and inorganic chemistry and organometallic data of CrossFire Commander.

Seven more publishers have agreed to contribute titles to Thomson Gale's Gale's Virtual Reference Library. Thomson Gale is a division of Thomson Corporation, US. The publishers include John Harper Publishing, Idea Group Reference, Bernan Press, Linworth Publishing, Thomson Course Technology, M. E. Sharpe and Philip's. John Harper Publishing, UK, will provide titles related to Global Political Reference and the EU. Idea Group Reference, US, will offer 30 titles in the disciplines of information science and technology. Bernan Press, US, a distributor of US governmental and intergovernmental organisations' publications, offers two titles to Gale's library. Professional documents for K-12 school library media and technology professionals will be provided by Linworth Publishing, US. Thomson Course Technology, US, will contribute 10 publications for popular undergraduate courses and degrees. M. E. Sharpe, US, a publisher focused on social sciences and humanities, offers titles from M. E. Sharpe and Sharpe Reference imprints. Philip's, part of the Octopus Publishing Group, UK, will add its Astronomy Encyclopaedia to the library.

Internet search services provider Google Inc., US, has invited European publishers to provide their non-English content to its Google Print book-scanning project. The project has been opened up to non-English publishers for the first time. The company began scanning English publications last year. It will now add publications in Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Though the database currently indexes content in nearly 100 non-English languages, all of them were sourced from publishers in the US, Canada and Australia. Google aims to add more non-English publications from European countries, a few of which had criticised the company for giving priority to English content. The company aims to digitise the content and create new ad revenues by attracting more visitors. According to Google, publishers Springer Science & Business Media, Netherlands; Grupo Planeta and Grupo Anaya, Spain; De Boeck and Editions De L'Eclat, France; Mare Buchverlag, Germany; and Giunti Editore, Italy are interested in the project. In a bid to counter Google's move, the European Digital Library project, which was initiated in May 2005 by French President Jacques Chirac, has created a few working groups for editorial choices, search engine options, private sector co-operation and financing. The Advisory Council of the project is projected to submit an interim report to Chirac by this year. It has requested other European countries and EU institutions to join the project as partners and also offer finance. The digital library, seen as 'an essential asset for Europe in order to seize its place in the future geography of knowledge', has received support from countries such as Hungary, Poland, Spain, Germany and Italy. The launch of Google Print in Europe comes amidst a temporary freeze of the company's libraries project in the US, under which Google planned to scan books from libraries' collections. Publishers have time till November 2005 to pull out of the project.

Prof. Stevan Harnad of the University of Southampton, UK, has released an open letter in his blog, countering the criticisms of the Netherlands' International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical publishers (STM) against the self-archiving policy of Research Councils UK (RCUK). The letter, addressed to Professor Ian Diamond, Chair of RCUK, says that STM argues as if RCUK wanted to mandate an open access (OA) publishing model, while all that the RCUK suggested was that the final version of the studies done with RCUK funding be self-archived by the researchers. RCUK aims to maximise the use of Britain research by offering the papers to institutions that cannot afford the published version. A few of the criticisms are based on the conflict of interest between the British research community, the public funding it and STM's perception of what is the best for the STM publishing industry, says the letter. STM's concern, about the diminishing of publishers' revenues due to the policy, has not been proved so far, it adds. The association has expressed fears of imminent confusion created by various versions of the same paper. On the other hand, says the professor, for institutions with tight budgets, the author's version is far better than not having one at all. The letter also rejects STM's argument that self-archiving will affect peer review on the grounds that it is the author's peer-reviewed version that will be archived in the first place. The cost of establishing Institutional Repositories (IRs) is irrelevant to the STM industry, as the IRs are not substitutes for publishing, it adds. Further, the professor has suggested that RCUK either eliminate or separate the abstracts of its ideologies from the actual policy, which suggests self-archiving and assisting OA publication costs. He adds that publishing models need not be discussed, as they are not part of RCUK's mandate.

The membership of the British Computer Society (BCS), an industry body and chartered engineering institution for IT, has surged 20 percent over the past 12 months, taking the total number of members to over 50,000. The increase is seen as representing British IT professionals' perception that a chartered status, regular retraining and the acquisition of new skills are beneficial to one's career. The society has also reported an appreciable increase in the demand for IT education and qualification tools in the country, as the industry looks to introduce new sets of skills to enhance recruitment chances. BCS' certified foundation and practitioner courses in IT Service Management have witnessed demand growth of 100 percent and 44 percent, respectively, while there is also substantial demand for training in software testing (20 percent) and businesses systems development services (44 percent).

Drug discovery and development simulation software provider Simulations Plus, Inc., US, has acquired chemistry software company Sage Informatics LLC, US, for an undisclosed sum. Sage Informatics' products include ChemTK, ChemTK Lite and ChemTKX, targeted at the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals markets. The information and guidance products for computational and medicinal chemists are expected to expand the current offerings of Simulations Plus, provide technology for future product development and expand its customer base. From October 1, 2005, David Miller, President of Sage Informatics, will join Simulations Plus as a Senior Scientist and Product Manager for ChemTK.

Integrated graphic communication services provider Cadmus Communications, US, has launched an upgraded version of Rapid Review, its online solution for submitting and tracking manuscripts. Version 3.0 of the tool features enhanced capabilities developed in response to customer feedback. The tool improves customisation options for publishers who can organise workflows and forms to meet their specific requirements at a minimum cost. It also offers increased flexibility in use and submission of online documents by authors.
Besides, Rapid Review caters to the script submission and monitoring needs of publishers of peer-reviewed journals. It assists the publishers in managing the entire review process on the web, thereby lowering the number of reviewing times and the administrative overhead charges.

Healthcare business process outsourcing services provider Per-Se Technologies, US, has announced plans to acquire the physician, hospital and retail pharmacy operations of NDCHealth Corp., US, for about US$665 million. The deal includes US$270 million to refinance NDCHealth's debt. The transaction is part of a US$1 billion multi-party agreement under which publisher Wolters Kluwer, as announced earlier this week, will acquire NDCHealth's Information Management services for $382 million.
The deal with Per-Se, slated to be completed in three to six months, will earn NDCHealth stakeholders $19.50 per share. Per-Se, which earned $352.8 million in 2004, has projected an over 60 percent rise in its income to $590 million in the year up to the second quarter of 2006. Post deal, it expects to provide an enhanced revenue cycle management service for healthcare service providers.
NDCHealth has opined that the two transactions will boost the customer base and product portfolios of both Wolters Kluwer and Per-Se.

The search service of the UK Patent Office will be shifted to the British Library's building at St. Pancras, thereby making the library the UK's primary source for intellectual property, patents and innovation content. The shift, scheduled for September 5, will integrate the search room of the Patent Office and the resources of the Business & Intellectual Property Centre of the British Library. The existing free access market research documents and subscription databases of the centre will be combined with information from the Patent Office to offer comprehensive data on markets, marketing, patents and business to SMEs, businessmen and researchers.
Users can access unique trademark search records, which are not available on the web and can be obtained only from the Business & Intellectual Property Centre or the Patent Office in Newport. These facilities are augmented by the collection at St. Pancras. The patent information, combined with market research papers offered by the Business & Intellectual Property Centre, assists entrepreneurs throughout, from the preliminary stage of product/service development to implementing the ideas in the market.
Recently, the library had widened its free and priced offerings for entrepreneurs, such as a new customised suite of services for start-ups.

Following the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP)'s move, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), Netherlands, has criticised the self-archiving policy of the Research Councils UK (RCUK). Though the association has supported RCUK's intention to allow free availability of public funded research, it has called the policy 'precipitous' and lacking 'scientific rigour'.
STM opined that the policy would deter the diversity of the journals and refereeing system, threaten the investments of STM publishers and not enhance the access or value for scientists. Further, it insisted that the existing publishing model had created a dynamic research infrastructure in Britain that incorporated all the four principles of RCUK. The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons had pointed out in its report 'Scientific Publications: Free for All?' that it did not see a major problem in scientific information accessing or any prominent trouble in meeting public requirement for viewing the journals.
Pointing out that all STM member publishers allowed their authors to submit a copy of their papers in institutional repositories (IRs), the association said that IRs had not made substantial archives of the research papers. These archives, STM said, had not increased access to research results and the cost in making them effective was not evaluated to check if it exceeded the cost involved in the traditional publishing system. Similarly, it was difficult to determine if the author-pays model or IRs would be of higher quality than the current publishing system, said STM. Institutionalising the refereeing model for repositories would not be an enhancement to the current journal-specific review policies.
While the STM agreed that there was an increasing gap between research funding, research output and libraries' budgets, it asserted that RCUK's proposals would not address the problem. As there were many UK universities that had collections of STM journals, RCUK's policy calling for digitisation of journals in repositories seemed unnecessary, STM said.
To benefit the research community and the common public, STM suggested that the RCUK hold a dialogue with publishers and researchers.

SAGE Publications, US, has signed an agreement with the UK's International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), under which it will offer free or highly discounted electronic access to about 300 of its publications to research organisations in 66 developing nations from 2006. The agreement is part of INASP's Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI) that strengthens the creation, access and distribution of information to improve the capacities of research bodies in emerging nations.
INASP, founded by the International Council for Science, France, aims to increase access to knowledge and information through capacity building in Third World countries.

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has selected US-based ScholarOne, Inc.'s ScholarOne Manuscript Central platform to widen and improve the scope of ACS Paragon System, its online refereeing and manuscript organising tool. The new ACS Paragon Plus Environment, installed with ScholarOne Manuscript Central, is slated for launch in Autumn 2005. The system is projected to help ACS launch new options and functionalities in its content management services and thereby better serve academics, editors and reviewers.

The US' National Campaign to Control Hypertension (NCCH) has launched a web site, Controlhypertension.org, that is sponsored by Thomson Professional Postgraduate Services, a division of Thomson Corporation, US. The site, granted unlimited funding by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Switzerland, offers comprehensive information on high blood pressure (hypertension), its identification and prevention. It targets physicians and healthcare professionals as a one-point source to learn about the latest breakthroughs and useful information. The portal's offerings include a monthly-updated library, daily-updated cardiovascular news, a clinical trials resource centre, literature reviews and patient education records. The literature includes expert advice from NCCH faculty for healthcare professionals on various challenging clinical issues.

STM publisher Hindawi Publishing, US, has introduced its 10th open access journal, titled EURASIP Journal on Signal Processing and Bioinformatics, in collaboration with the European Association of Signal, Speech and Image Processing (EURASIP). The journal, edited by Ioan Tabus of Tampere University of Technology, Finland, carries research articles on theories and strategies in bioinformatics and signal processing that are applied in the core subjects of genomics, systems biology and proteomics. It has adopted the Article Processing Charges model that requires authors to pay for publishing and allows unlimited distribution, usage and reproduction under the Creative Commons Attribution License. The reproduced content, however, needs to be cited. The publisher offers nine other public access journals in the disciplines of computer engineering, materials science, biomedicine and mechanical engineering.
In August 2005, Hindawi launched the title Speech and Audio Processing under the same publication business model. It specialises in basic and applied areas of speech communication and audio processes.

Thomson ResearchSoft, a division of Thomson Corporation, US, has launched the Mac OS X version of its bibliographic management tool, EndNote 9. The tool, used by researchers, students and librarians across the world, carries features such as the capacity to search web-based bibliographic resources, develop instant bibliographic information and manage references and visuals. It improves accessibility to international databases and enhances performance, including importing, exporting and arranging of reference libraries. It allows users to search EndNote libraries via Spotlight, the desktop search system of Thomson, in the Mac OS X Tiger operating system. Using MARC structures and text standards, the tool enables connection to international libraries in their native languages.
Earlier this week, Elsevier MDL, US, had launched the Mac OS X version of its DiscoveryGate content platform that is fully compatible with the Tiger operating system. The platform enables a structure-searchable function to combine online research papers using scientific databases, reference documents, journal articles and patent publications.

Information and content service provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has associated with CambridgeSoft, US, to deliver chemical structure search tools for drug developing scientists and pharmaceutical chemists. The companies presented a software component, their first joint offering, at the annual meet of the American Chemical Society. The tool enables scientists to use ChemDraw, a software for chemical-drawing, to search on the basis of chemical structure for every compound stored in WH Health's pipeline intelligence database, Adis R&D Insight. Scientists can use their respective languages to search across the database using CambridgeSoft's technology that transforms the compound names into their related chemical structures before searching for it. This benefits users, as they can assess a compound structure in terms of allied compounds.
Adis R&D, marketed by WK Health, contains a database of over 20,000 compounds. New medicines and emerging therapies from international resources are added everyday and monitored through their development lifecycle.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, has announced plans to reduce the number of issues of the print version of its alumni magazine, Technology Review, from 11 to six per year, as well as increase its online presence. This is part of a revamping exercise for the journal. The online edition of the magazine received 3.4 million hits and the advertising impressions increased 23 percent in the first six months of 2005 as against the corresponding period in 2004. R. Bruce Journey, the publisher of the journal, is also stepping down to be succeeded by Jason Pontin, who already serves as Editor-in-Chief. Under Journey's leadership, Technology Review was transformed from a niche journal into a mass publication, on par with other technical magazines. The circulation increased from 90,000 to 315,000. However, the magazine's print subscriptions slumped to 291,000 while online hits showed a robust growth. The magazine's new strategy is to focus on the online medium while the monthly print edition will publish lengthier articles.

The European Bioinformatics Institute has collaborated with Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, Ghent University, Belgium, to release the PRoteomics IDEntifications (PRIDE) database. The open access online resource will serve scientists related to proteomics in pooling and sharing the vast quantity of available information on the subject. Proteomics, the study of proteins on a large scale, helps understand how cells and tissues produce protein under different conditions. This in turn assists in the development of new diagnostic and predictive systems in medicine. The PRIDE database includes information on the findings of the Human Proteome Organization's Plasma Proteome Project as well as a human platelet proteome set brought out by Ghent University. Results of other international projects, such as the Human Proteome Organization's Liver Proteome Project, will be appended after they are published.

Scientific services organisation FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany, has stated in its recent annual report that it has moved forward in its objectives, namely to strengthen science and business in the country and to establish itself as a leading scientific and technical information provider in Europe. In order to sustain the global competition of the online scientific market, the management has implemented a new strategic positioning in 2004. Accordingly, it has attached high importance to its long-term partnerships, such as with STN International, as well as its recent association with the Max-Planck-Society (MPS) and FIZ CHEMIE Berlin.
The institution's association with MPS resulted in the 'eSciDoc' project, under which the partners created an integrated information, communication and publication interface for online scientific literature. FIZ Karlsruhe works with FIZ CHEMIE Berlin to combine the existing technical databases to assist in developing new products and services. The initial projects are already on stream.
FIZ Karlsruhe operates its key venture, online service provider STN International, along with US-based Chemical Abstracts Service and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. In 2004, STN offered 235 databases with 183 million documents via STN Service Center Karlsruhe. In 2005, FIZ Karlsruhe and CAS created STN AnaVist, an information management software tool for evaluating and visualising search results in diagrams, tables and figures.

Media and information firm PennWell Corporation, US, has acquired CMM International, a biennial trade show focused on the conversion and package printing industry in North America, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition is projected to complement PennWell's Conferences & Exhibitions group and introduce a new market for its range of business-to-business communications products.
CMM International will also support PennWell's Electronic Publishing franchise, which offers an e-newsletter, an online portal, a publication as well as events for publishing, design and printing professionals. PennWell's publisher, Steve Taneman, will handle the CMM International show from PennWell's Advanced Technology Division at Nashua, US. In April 2005, over 15,000 people attended the CMM International event held in Chicago. The next event will be held in June 2007 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, US.