Internet search services provider Google Inc., US, has submitted court filings stating that its massive book scanning project is fair use because it has delivered many public benefits without harming authors. The company has been fighting a court battle with the Authors Guild on the project, Google Books. It claims that its creation of full-text book searching is "the most significant advance in library search technology in the last five decades" and that the Authors Guild has shown "no evidence that Google Books has displaced the sale of even a single book."
The new filing is in response to Judge Denny Chin's deadline for Google and the Authors Guild to submit arguments on why the case can be decided without a trial. This is just the latest phase of a legal dispute that began in 2005 after authors and publishers sued Google over its ambitious plan to create a massive digital library.
The lawsuit was on ice for several years as the parties worked out a settlement that would have created an online market for the books. Judge Chin blew up the settlement in March 2011, however, after concluding that it was a "bridge too far."
In its filing, Google cites a number of pop culture examples to argue that a searchable digital library is a benefit to the public. The company also describes how book searches unearthed references to an unheralded baseball player, Steve Hovley, that would otherwise have remained buried. Google also cites the more serious example of Minoru Yasui, a civil rights lawyer who is all but invisible in the Library of Congress catalogue but surfaces repeatedly in Google Books. Additionally, Google cites evidence suggesting that online book discovery helps authors sell more copies.
The Authors Guild, which is expected to submit its own motion for summary judgment later, has repeatedly argued that Google had no right to take copyright law into its own hands and reproduce authors' works without permission. The Guild is also at the center of a related fair-use case with libraries over the "Hathi Trust," a massive digital replication of their paper collections.
The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, US, has reported a substantial increase in the number of multi-author papers in recent years, with many surpassing 50 authors and some reporting upwards of 3,000 authors. The trend reveals a steep increase after remaining at a fairly low level from the late 1990s to 2007 when Thomson Reuters Science Watch last surveyed the phenomenon of multi-authorship. These findings appear in Multiauthor Papers: Onward and Upward, a ScienceWatch article.
This trend of multi-authorship began its notable spike in papers published during 2010, when ScienceWatch identified more than 15 papers indexed in Thomson Reuters Web of Science with at least 1,000 authors. The following year, that number jumped to 140. The multi-author movement is being driven in large part by the substantial number of international researchers focusing on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the CERN particle accelerator located on the French/Swiss border. The LHC is being used by physicists to study the smallest known particles, which serve as the building blocks or fundamental structure of all things.
In 2011, ScienceWatch tracked 120 physics papers with more than 1,000 authors and 44 papers with more than 3,000 authors. The progression in space science, although not quite as pronounced as in physics, is equally discernible, with the number of papers with 100 or more authors increasing ten-fold between 2005 and 2010. In all, the increase in multi-authorship reflects the growing impetus toward more collaborative research and underscores the value that can be gleaned from co-producing scientific research, even while the trend sharpens an ongoing debate about the very nature of 'authorship.'
Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch is an open Web resource for science metrics and research performance analysis. Features include data and commentary on the people, places and topics at the forefront of science today, illustrating the power of bibliometrics for providing a prospective view into the research landscape. As a part of Thomson Reuters research analytics suite of solutions, ScienceWatch highlights the important role of research evaluation and management in support of strategic decision-making.
Construction information provider Reed Construction Data, US, has announced the release of Local Bid Alerts, a new construction project alert service that connects contractors and other construction professionals to commercial and civil jobs coming up for bid in their market. Local Bid Alerts are absolutely free of charge and require no subscription of any kind.
The Local Bid Alerts service uses Reed Construction Data's powerful database of projects and contacts to introduce contractors to jobs that can help drive their market success. In addition to leads, the service provides contact information and all available plans and specifications, allowing contractors to reduce the time they spend researching and focus on jobs with the most potential for profit.
Local Bid Alerts automatically delivers new project leads to the contractor's inbox on a weekly basis. Once received, the contractor 'owns' the lead and can follow it through all building stages for added value through the duration of the project.
Apple has reported that the iPad market share is on its best run in years despite a global economic slowdown. In a recent announcement of its quarterly earnings, Apple highlighted how iPad revenues and sales managed to keep the company on an earning status. Figures in the international market illustrated an increase of 52 percent in revenues valued at $9 billion and 84 percent in unit sales valued at $17 million.
According to industry analytics firm Strategy Analytics, some of the new figures suggest an increase in the overall tablet share for Apple. That means a 68.3 percent control of the market after making deliveries of 24.9 million units, unlike the 62 percent share Apple accumulated during the previous year's second quarter.
Apple's current market share is the best in many years, but Strategy Analytics also warns the company of its slowest growth rate since the first-generation iPad launched in Q2 of 2010, following the slowdown in the global economy.
Additional statistics from Strategy Analytics indicated a loss of almost 3 percent for Microsoft’s market share. The firm is set to launch Windows 8, its latest OS that is designed for tablets, later this year.
Other firms that have also been affected lost a total 3.5 percent market share, which mainly attributed to RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. Meanwhile, Android has gained sales of up to $7.3 million from $4.4 million last year. However, its market share did not budge in the increasingly lucrative tablet market at 29.3 percent.
Library information provider OCLC Research, US, has announced that videos of all Libraries Rebound presentations and discussions are now available on YouTube and on the OCLC Research website. There are 17 videos in total.
The OCLC Research Library Partnership meeting, Libraries Rebound: Embracing Mission, Maximizing Impact, took place in Philadelphia, PA, from June 5-6, 2012. It focused on the implementation of distinctive services that better align the library with the mission of its parent institution.
Links to 17 individual videos from the meeting as well as a playlist that comprises all of these videos are available below. The playlist, individual video links and individual links to each presenter's slides are also available on the Libraries Rebound web page. In addition, links to Hangingtogether blog summaries about the meeting are also available.
Academic publisher SAGE has announced the appointment of Dr. Ling Chen as the Editor in Chief of Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ), effective in the summer of 2012. Dr. Chen will replace Dr. James Barker who has served as editor for MCQ since 2006.
Chen has more than a decade-long history with MCQ, having served as an editorial board member and as an associate editor. Additionally, she worked as editor and editorial board member on several other publications including the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and Discourse & Communication. In her current position at Hong Kong Baptist University, Chen serves as an associate professor of Communication Studies and as the Research Graduate Student Coordinator at the School of Communication.
Management Communication Quarterly is a peer-reviewed journal that covers a variety of topics related to communication and organisational contexts. It publishes conceptually rigorous, empirically-driven, and practice-relevant research from across the organisational and management communication fields and has strong appeal across all disciplines concerned with organisational studies and the management sciences.
Enterprise digital content conversion and publishing software company WebWorks, US, has announced the release of its latest version of ePublisher, 2012.2. WebWorks ePublisher, featuring WebWorks Reverb, is the next-generation help authoring software designed to create user-friendly web documentation that enhances online browsing on desktop, tablet and mobile environments.
This latest version is the first help authoring tool to fully implement Responsive Design into its feature set. In ePublisher 2012.2, WebWorks took significant strides to make its native Reverb format universally functional.
The Reverb Help output format was introduced into the ePublisher platform in the January 2011 release. It was the first help authoring tool format designed to leverage the speed, social and data mining functionality of the Internet - making it easier for end users to find companies' help pages and individual help topics via search engines.
WebWorks, a division of the Quadralay Corporation, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year.
The latest edition of Blogspeak is now online. Featured are: Judyluther (Altmetrics – Trying to Fill the Gap? ); Kent Anderson (Review: "Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back"); Cameron Neylon (How can scholarly societies survive as we move ever closer to Open Access?); Mike Shatzkin (The ebook marketplace is about to change…a lot) and Stephen Curry (UK plan for open access to research is a golden opportunity, not a cost). Blogspeak includes blog posts relevant to the publishing industry, particularly STM publishing. Subscribers are invited to participate in the latest edition of Blogspeak Here.
Scanning project never hurt book sales, says Google 
Dr. Ling Chen named Editor in Chief of Management Communication Quarterly
Latest edition of Blogspeak now online