STM publisher Springer, Germany, plans to expand its open access (OA) programme by offering a fully OA option for books. This is expected to extend the company's SpringerOpen and BioMed Central journal portfolio, and its Springer Open Choice option. Any electronic version of a SpringerOpen book is fully and immediately OA, and thus freely accessible on SpringerLink for anyone in the world with access to the Internet.
SpringerOpen books are seen to give authors and editors in all areas of science the opportunity to publish OA with the same standards they are used to at Springer. The copyright for the entire OA book including every chapter remains with the editor/author.
SpringerOpen books are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC) licence. This facilitates the open distribution and the free re-use and sharing of the work for non-commercial purposes, as long as the authors/editors are properly attributed. SpringerOpen Book titles will be listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), the discovery service for OA books which increases visibility and findability of Springer's OA books.
Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing, US, has released Leadership & Management Learning Center, a new learning portal that seeks to provide highly relevant content from thought leaders on best practices and benchmarks to support and sustain formal and informal organisational learning.
Leadership & Management Learning Center comes pre-populated with targeted content including summaries of top business books, articles from leading business magazines and journals, e-books and videos. The content is organised into 82 key business competencies enabling users to browse relevant content by topic. Custom mapping to specific competencies is also available from EBSCO for organisations using their own competency model.
EBSCO’s new platform seeks to offer organisations an easy-to-use, customisable learning portal — a "plug & play" solution that includes tools to facilitate social collaboration as well as comprehension tests to reinforce key learnings, in addition to the content collection. It can also include links to an organisations' existing learning content or third party content. Leadership & Management Learning Center can be accessed through multiple means including a dedicated portal, Sharepoint or a Learning Management System (LMS).
Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health, US, now reportedly leads the industry in digital transformation of medical journals with a strategy to help its advertising partners leverage multimedia content to increase audience reach and engagement, and deliver return on investment.
According to Manhattan Research's recent Taking the Pulse US 2012 study, physician tablet adoption for professional purposes almost doubled since 2011, reaching 62 percent in 2012, with the iPad being the dominant platform. Moreover, four in 10 physicians use a tablet between patient consultations, with online journals being the top source accessed during this time.
With the early market release of Wolters Kluwer's Lippincott William & Wilkins (LWW) medical and nursing journal iPad app editions, the team is seen to be creating value for its advertisers. The aim is to help advertisers get into the 'digital game' quickly, test out and develop new multimedia content, while maintaining their audience reach in the print/online journal.
For pharma and device marketers, video and other rich media ads reportedly allow them to visually illustrate products and studies, engaging readers to create a stronger brand experience overall. To date 50 advertisers, including five of the top 20 pharma and six of the top 20 device companies, are using LWW's digital journal solution.
Digital content strategies also said to provide a more transparent view into reader behaviours that translates into greater return on investment for advertisers. Preliminary data from LWW journal apps across six specialties showed an iPad reader interacting with an ad on average 10–40 seconds, while page views for digital increased 30 percent to 70 percent.
The Cochrane Library, an online resource published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, on behalf of the Cochrane Collaboration, is seen to benefit Australian patients and their healthcare practitioners for better health decisions. The Cochrane Library is stated to feature over 5,000 published systematic reviews of evidence for healthcare interventions, ranging from surgical procedures and drugs to behavioural therapies and preventive care. Cochrane reviews are said to provide independent high-quality evidence to aid in healthcare decision making.
The Australian Government, through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), has renewed funding for Australia's national licence to the Library. This means every Australian will continue to be able to access reliable information about what works and what does not.
Australians are the highest per capita users of the Library in the world. In 2011, Australians viewed 708,000 Cochrane abstracts online and downloaded 501,642 full reviews. The three most popular reviews in Australia were models of care for childbearing women, preventing falls in older people living in the community, and zinc for the common cold. The most popular review internationally looked at interventions for preventing obesity in children.
According to NHMRC CEO Prof. Warwick Anderson, the Council is committed to a health literate society where all Australians benefit from access to the latest health and medical research. Ongoing support for the Cochrane Library is seen as recognition of the vital role systematic reviews play in informing policy and practice. The renewal of the licence marks the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the original licence at the Cochrane Colloquium held in Melbourne in 2002.
Academic publisher Oxford University Press (OUP), UK, has announced the acquisition of the American Journal of Hypertension. The title is said to provide a forum for scientific inquiry in the field of hypertension and related cardiovascular disease. It is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal with an Impact Factor of 3.181.
The journal seeks to publish high-quality original research and review articles on basic sciences, molecular biology, clinical and experimental hypertension, cardiology, epidemiology, pediatric hypertension, endocrinology, neurophysiology and nephrology. The acquisition sees the continued expansion of OUP's substantial cardiology list, which includes the journals of the European Society of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and the European Society of Cardiology.
The first issue of the American Journal of Hypertension will be published by OUP from January 2013. Visit the website for more information, submission guidelines, and to sign up to receive tables of contents by email: ajh.oxfordjournals.org
arXiv, a US-based free repository that has reportedly revolutionised the way scientists share information, has announced that it is adopting a new governance and business model. An operating grant from the Simons Foundation, Cornell University Library has helped arXiv take a major step toward sustainability. Beginning in January and running through 2017, the Simons Foundation will provide up to $300,000 per year as a matching gift for the funds generated through arXiv’s membership fees. The grant also provides $50,000 per year as an "unconditional gift" that reportedly recognises the Library’s stewardship of arXiv.
The Cornell University Library is seen to have been steering arXiv toward sustainability since January 2010, when it launched an initiative to create a business model that would engage libraries and research laboratories that benefit most from arXiv's service. A 2011 planning grant from Simons Foundation helped arXiv's leaders develop operating principles and establish a governing board for the new model.
Annual membership fees, paid by voluntary contribution from these institutions, help cover arXiv’s costs — and, now, will provide a sum for the Simons Foundation to match.
The newly established model has garnered partners all over the globe. To date, more than 120 member institutions in over a dozen countries have pledged their support, totalling $285,000. Among the 100 institutions that use arXiv most heavily, nearly three-quarters committed to five-year pledges.
arXiv has been based at Cornell since founder Paul Ginsparg joined the faculty in 2001. The repository includes research in physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science and related disciplines. As an open access service, it allows scientists to share "preprint" research before publication and reportedly boasts hundreds of thousands of contributors. In 2011 alone, arXiv saw close to 50 million downloads from all over the world and received more than 76,000 new submissions.
Library information provider OCLC, US, has announced that it has completed beta testing of the new OCLC WorldShare Interlibrary Loan service and is moving forward with an 18-month phased migration to the new service. The new service is scheduled to replace WorldCat Resource Sharing in 2013 as part of libraries' existing subscriptions. It will seek to centralise workflows now managed in multiple systems, and provide new functionality that speeds fulfillment of interlibrary loan requests, saving time for library staff and library users.
Librarians from 20 OCLC member libraries participated in a six-month beta test of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan. Librarians from these institutions provided input that helped shape the development of the service. Many beta testing participants will continue their roles as advisors to OCLC on development of the new service as members of a new WorldShare Interlibrary Loan Advisory Group.
The release of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan represents the first large migration of OCLC member libraries to the OCLC WorldShare Platform, where they will benefit from expanded integration across a growing number of services. The platform will enable library staff and others to develop applications that will help them connect the service with other services in use within their libraries. They may also use the new service in conjunction with other components of OCLC WorldShare Management Services.
The phased rollout of the service has begun and will continue through December 2013. Open migration for all WorldCat Resource Sharing users will begin in February 2013 and continue until the end of access to WorldCat Resource Sharing on December 31, 2013.
OCLC has invited a small group of libraries with a low volume of borrowing-only interlibrary loan activity to participate in the initial 90-day managed migration currently in progress. Participation in the next managed migration group, scheduled to begin in October 2012, will be open to interested WorldCat Resource Sharing librarians whose normal interlibrary loan activities can be supported by available functionality in the service before its full release in February.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), US, has announced that this is the final week to register for the 2012 DuraSpace/ARL/DLF E-Science Institute programme. There are just a few openings still available for the programme, which runs from September 6 through December 13, 2012.
The E-Science Institute is designed to help academic and research libraries develop a strategic agenda for e-research support, with a particular focus on the sciences. The programme consists of a series of interactive modules that take small teams of individuals from an institution through a learning process to strengthen and advance their strategy for supporting computational scientific research.
The coursework begins with a series of exercises for teams to complete at their institutions, and culminates with an in-person workshop. Local institution assignments help staff establish a high-level understanding of research-support needs and issues.
Originally funded and developed by the sponsors and supporting institutions of ARL and the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)/Digital Library Federation (DLF), the E-Science Institute was previously only available to ARL and CLIR/DLF members. Going forward it is managed by the DuraSpace organisation in partnership with ARL and CLIR/DLF, and the programme is open to all institutions.
Accelrys, Inc., a US-based provider of scientific innovation lifecycle management software, has announced the latest release of its enterprise electronic laboratory notebook (ELN), Symyx Notebook by Accelrys. The ELN is said to offer a new multidimensional scientific spreadsheet for use in planning, executing and tracking a wide range of biological experiments.
In addition, powerful new project tracking and optimisation software are seen to provide a more complete biology solution, from efficient study orchestration to study execution in the lab. Together, the new ELN capabilities accelerate scientific innovation lifecycle management across a range of chemical and biological experimentation, helping bridge the productivity gap from innovation through commercialisation.
By improving bench scientists' ability to capture, mine and reuse experiment and study information from within the ELN, the new scientific spreadsheet seeks to improve data access, enhance knowledge management and reduce laboratory cycle times. The new project tracking and optimisation capabilities are seen to improve collaboration and cascade management for project teams while enhancing study visibility and capacity management for study directors.
Integration of the new notebook capabilities with the Accelrys Enterprise Platform supports the combined management of information, tasks and collaboration from early-phase screening and assay development through downstream drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, ADMET, bioanalytical and in vivo pharmacology. The Platform's scientific Component Collections, built on Accelrys' domain expertise in chemistry, biology, materials science, informatics and predictive science, is said to rapidly and cost-effectively deliver advanced imaging, modelling and analytics capabilities supporting scientific workflows from research to development.
Today's drug discovery process is observed to require coordination among multiple teams within the enterprise and, increasingly, across geographical and organisational boundaries. In this challenging R&D environment, the new ELN capabilities from Accelrys are said to improve access to information, foster better collaboration and speed laboratory cycle times.
You can also register for the complimentary webinar, "Informatics-Driven Project Execution for In Vivo Pharmacology," scheduled for 8 a.m. PDT, September 12.
Springer unveils fully open access option for books 
EBSCO Publishing unveils new portal for organisational learning 
Oxford University Press acquires American Journal of Hypertension