Columbia University and business information provider Thomson Reuters, US, have announced the launch of the Advanced Data Visualization Project (ADVP). The project, based at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), will be sponsored by Thomson Reuters. It is projected to facilitate research into data visualisation and its implications for academia and industry.
Data visualisation is seen as an important mechanism that allows decision makers to gain critical insights and mine and navigate relationships between data sets. The partnership is expected to combine Thomson Reuters content and industry expertise with Columbia University researchers’ expertise to meaningfully define data visualisation across disciplines.
Although based at the GSAPP, the project will explore data visualisation applications in various fields including journalism, science, medicine and public health, law, architecture, planning and political science. It will utilise experts from the University, Thomson Reuters and outside researchers. Thomson Reuters will be actively engaged with the programme and lead one of six flagship visualisation projects.
The first year of the ADVP will serve to establish the basic platform for a wider range of large scale experiments to be carried out over the following two years, culminating in the establishment of a University-wide Institute for Advanced Data Visualization at Columbia University. The first few years of the programme will also serve to produce a definitive edited volume of exhibited experimental work that will become a guide to understand this evolving field.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Thomson Reuters CTO James Powell will moderate a discussion between the project’s progenitors, GSAPP Dean Mark Wigley and Ed Schlossberg, adjunct Professor at GSAPP, entitled “Information’s Beautiful Future.” The panel will explore the potential of data visualisation to harness and communicate information clearly and dynamically.
Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, has announced that its open access option for individual journal articles, OnlineOpen, will be available to authors in 81 percent of the journals it publishes. OnlineOpen gives authors the option to publish an open access paper in their journal of choice where it will benefit from maximum impact.
OnlineOpen, Wiley’s hybrid open access model for subscription journals launched in 2004, is available to authors of primary research articles who wish to make their article available to non-subscribers on publication, or whose funding agency requires grantees to archive the final version of their article. As of July 2012, OnlineOpen is available in over 1200 subscription journals.
In addition to OnlineOpen, Wiley launched Wiley Open Access, a fully open access journal programme, in early 2011. The portfolio includes eleven journals, with additional journals scheduled to launch later in the year. Wiley Open Access provides open access publication in peer-reviewed journals where all published articles are immediately freely available to read, download and share.
Germany’s FIZ Karlsruhe, along with Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, will be present in various respects at the 6th European Congress on Mathematics, to be held in Kraków from July 2-7. The event takes place every four years at different locations and is projected as the most important conference in mathematics.
Olaf Teschke, head of FIZ Karlsruhe’s mathematics and computer science department, will hold a lecture on how the European Digital Mathematics Library (EuDML) and the Zentralblatt MATH database (zbMATH) complement and enhance each other. Additionally, FIZ Karlsruhe will provide information at its booth on zbMATH, a database for publications in the fields of pure and applied mathematics.
The Otto Neugebauer Prize will be awarded for the first time. It is named after the founder of the journal Zentralblatt für Mathematik, which is the precursor of zbMATH. The prize is endowed by Springer Verlag and awarded for research in the field of history of mathematics. The Austrian-American mathematician Otto Neugebauer (1899-1990) conducted groundbreaking studies on Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian and Greek mathematics and, in 1931, founded the Zentralblatt für Mathematik.
The conference is jointly organised by the European Mathematical Society (EMS), the Polish Mathematical Society, and the Jagiellonian University of Kraków. The prizes awarded besides the Otto Neugebauer Prize include the EMS prizes, awarded to the 10 best young researchers, and the Felix Klein Prize for the best solution to a problem from applied mathematics.
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced exceptional gains across 193 journals in its portfolio with the latest Impact Factor (IF) scores and specialty rankings, based on the 2011 Journal Citation Reports (Thomson Reuters). Overall, 57 percent of LWW journals had gains over the previous year, with 26 titles increasing 25 percent or more.
Impressive gains were noted in rankings across categories in the JCR Science category. In the top 5 rankings, LWW hold 29 spots across 21 specialties; in the top 10 rankings, LWW holds 60 spots across 34 specialties; and rounding out the top 20 rankings, LWW holds 114 spots across 46 specialties.
Circulation (IF 14.739), published on behalf of the American Heart Association (AHA), maintained its #1 position in Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems category. In addition, 6 AHA titles noted gains of 25 percent or more, including two titles that joined the JCR list last year, Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics and Circulation: Cardiovascular Intervention. In the surgery category, Annals of Surgery (IF 7.492) still holds the #1 ranking and is the most-cited journal in its category with 35,171 citations. Academic Medicine increased its impact factor 34 percent (IF 3.524) and took over the #1 spot in the Education, Scientific disciplines.
A total of eight LWW published titles were newly recognized by the 2011 JCR. These include: Advances in Skin & Wound Care; Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS; Dermatitis; International Journal of Rehabilitation Research; Holistic Nursing Practice; Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing; Journal of Nursing Research; and Ultrasound Quarterly.
Top ranking LWW published journals span many core and specialty medical, nursing, and allied health categories, including Allergy, Healthcare Sciences & Services, Nutrition and Diet Science, Rehabilitation, Respiratory System, Rheumatology, and Virology, among others.
Rankings are published annually in the Journal Citation Reports, a registered trademark of Thomson Reuters. Impact Factor (IF) is a measurement of the frequency by which an article in a scholarly journal is cited in a particular year. It is considered by many to be a measure of a journal’s influence and prestige.
Open Access publisher InTech, Croatia, has published the results of a survey appraising attitudes and awareness of the library community towards the Open Access (OA) business model in scholarly publishing. 211 librarians participated in the survey with 156 completing all questions. The majority of respondents were associated with large academic institutions covering a broad discipline base and located in Europe or North America.
The survey revealed high levels of awareness of OA amongst the library community but anticipated lower awareness amongst the research community. While 95 percent of respondents stated they were very or quite familiar with OA, 61 percent state their author and reader communities were not familiar with OA. Further, the survey found that librarians are seeking to educate their communities about OA but lack supporting resources. Nearly 97 percent stated that it is part of the librarian’s role to provide information on OA, but 42 percent state that they don’t feel they have sufficient knowledge or information to do so effectively.
Librarians feel benefits of OA are already being realised, the survey noted. Fifty percent of respondents state that OA is already achieving tangible benefits with a further 45 percent envisaging this for the future. According to the survey, currently librarians are not actively involved in managing OA funds. Their key concern with OA relate to its cost. A future of many mixed business models is anticipated by librarians. About 64 percent of respondents agree with this, while 26 percent state that OA will become the predominant model in scholarly communications.
The Royal Society of Chemistry has announced that its publishing portfolio once again improved its Impact Factors following publication of the 2011 results. Last year the RSC published four times as many articles as it did in 2006 meaning a rise in quantity has gone hand in hand with a rise in quality overall.
Individual journal highlights include ChemComm (6.17), Green Chemistry (6.32), Energy & Environmental Science (9.61), Natural Product Reports (9.79) and ChemSocRev (28.76). An impressive first Impact Factors were recorded for Chemical Science (7.52) and Polymer Chemistry (5.32).
The average Impact Factor (IF) for a chemistry journal stands at 2.67 - the RSC's average IF is 5.46. According to the Society, of the top 20 journals in the multidisciplinary chemistry category, six are from RSC Publishing. Almost half of the Society’s 27 journals have an IF of 5 and above.
Cambridge Journals, a division of Cambridge University Press (CUP), UK, has announced the launch of two new open access (OA) journals in mathematics - Forum of Mathematics, Pi and Forum of Mathematics, Sigma.
Cambridge has established the Forum of Mathematics to offer OA journals to the mathematics community, with the same high-level peer-review process as traditional subscription journals, with standards set by an international editorial board of the highest calibre.
For the first three years Cambridge University Press will waive publication charges, though authors with access to specific funds for OA publication will be encouraged to pay a low charge of £500/$750.
This project has been under development for two years and Cambridge has earmarked significant investment to provide OA models to disciplines that do not enjoy a funding tradition similar to the life and biomedical sciences.
The Forum of Mathematics journals will be hosted on Cambridge Journals Online (CJO). Content will be available online from the beginning of 2013.
Transfer, the UKSG-sponsored initiative to create a Code of Practice to follow when journals are transferred between publishers, has announced the release of its Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service (ETAS).
ETAS is a rapid alerting service that will allow publishers involved in a journal transfer to notify the various stakeholders by providing a standardised set of information relating to the exchange. This information will then be hosted in a searchable database, providing a simple and easily accessible way for librarians and other groups to find out about journal transfers involving the 36 currently endorsing publishers.
ETAS is the latest development from the Transfer Working Group and is a partnership of JISC, Mimas, UKSG and Cranfield University. It will replace the existing Transfer alerting service, which was not linked to a database. Data from the old alerting service system will also be migrated to ETAS.
This is to inform our esteemed subscribers that there will be no newsletter dispatch on July 4, 2012, on account of the ‘Independence Day’ holiday. We will resume our newsletter service on Thursday, July 05, 2012. The newsletter will contain all the headlines that have appeared after the July 3rd issue.
Columbia University, Thomson Reuters launch data visualisation project
FIZ Karlsruhe to showcase zbMATH database and EuDML project at Mathematics event
OA survey findings on the evolving role of the librarian towards OA business model in scholarly publishing
RSC Publishing reports continued growth in impact factor journals