Frankfurt Book Fair has announced that researchers from European atomic research organisation CERN will participate in this year’s event on October 10-14. The CERN stand will occupy 165 sq m in Hall 4.2, the Hall for Expert Information, Science, Technology and Education. Among the displays is the first server of the World Wide Web, which was developed in 1989 in Geneva. Also for the first time, a model will be shown of the cases of anti-matter, which were used in Ron Howard’s film Angels and Demons.
Using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, CERN researchers have been trying to unravel the origin of the universe. The ‘World Machine’ lies 100 metres under the surface in a 27 km long tunnel.
At the Fair, the researchers will take questions directly as visitors get a live connection look into the CERN control room. In order to make the adventure of particle physics understandable close-up, an interactive ‘LHC Time Tunnel’ is being built especially for the Frankfurt Book Fair. It takes visitors into the microworld of elementary particles and uses immersion projections to view the effect of the Higgs field. It also allows simulation of the collision of 2 protons with LHC energy.
Every 2-3 hours physicists from CERN will stand on the presentation platform to give 20-minute talks with a general overview of the goals and the state of research at CERN. Questions can be submitted to the researchers by texting, Twitter, or by e-mail.
STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that, together with the Geological Society of London, it has won the award for best Education/Industry Partnership at the 2012 Getenergy awards ceremony.
Celebrating excellence in education and training in the upstream oil and gas industry, the Getenergy awards help to validate the significance and sustainable quality of work that benefits the wider oil and gas energy industry. The Education / Industry Partnership award, determined by over 11,000 individual votes on Getenergy’s website, recognises the success of Elsevier and the Geological Society of London’s collaboration in developing a new module for Elsevier’s Geofacets research tool.
The module adds over 48,000 maps (70 percent of which are available for download as.geotiffs) sourced from 11 journals from the Geological Society of London’s Lyell Collection.
The Getenergy Award ceremony was held on the evening of June 13 at One Whitehall Place in London, UK. Entries were voted for from a shortlist, with over 11,000 individuals taking part in voting.
The Getenergy Awards recognise excellence in learning, education and training for the global oil and gas industry. The awards are part of the annual Getenergy exhibition and workshops which bring together providers of education and training together with national and international oil, gas and services companies from 40 countries. Award recipients are nominated by peers before formally being selected by an Awards panel. The final stage is an industry-wide vote which attracts more than 10,000 votes each year.
STM publisher Thieme Publishing Group, Germany, has redesigned its E-Journals platform, improving usability and technological functions. Medical and health professionals can now access E-Journals wherever they are – in the library, at the office or on the go. With its user-friendly search, E-Journal offers convenient, efficient access to the online content of 150 journals.
The completely re-launched user interface makes the online journal database Thieme E-Journals more user-friendly and easier to navigate. Abstracts, full-text versions, additional material, images and videos are now only a click away. Clear, intuitive icons represent functions like bookmarks or bibliographic information downloads, helping scientists and doctors in hospitals and independent offices integrate the knowledge platform in their daily routines.
At the core of the improved usability are enhanced search options. The new online platform integrates a so-called ‘facet search’. The new ‘image view’ option lets users view only illustrations of their selected articles. This is especially useful in image-focused areas like radiology.
Doctors, scientists, physiotherapists, and other medical professionals can now also access journal articles and other content via their smartphones or mobile online devices. This allows users to research information from anywhere, anytime. They can view illustrations and videos on the go, access articles, etc.
Thieme E-Jounals currently offers digital content from 150 scientific and medical journals. Articles available online cover medicine, chemistry, veterinary medicine and other areas pertaining to health professions including physiotherapy and patient care. In addition, the knowledge platform offers videos, podcasts, and audio files on various medical issues. Content overviews and article abstracts can be accessed free of charge. Full-text versions of individual articles are available for a fee. Individual subscribers can access digital versions of the journals without additional cost. Libraries, research centres, hospitals, or corporations can purchase customised title licenses.
UK-based online publishing services provider Semantico Ltd has announced the launch of Scolaris, the new digital publishing platform for the scholarly and academic publishing. The product launch took place at the S3UG event on June 28, 2012 at The Royal Institution of Great Britain. The event was attended by a select group of industry professionals.
Scolaris is the next generation integrated content platform, engineered to manage the complexities of journals, reference works and dictionaries. It builds on the success of its predecessor SIPP and features specific new functionality for the journals sector.
Semantico is a digital publishing solutions company focused on helping publishers protect and grow the value of their content assets online. The company operates as a strategic partner, providing a range of services and technologies including consultancy, publishing platform design and build, e-book system development, digital marketing, access management, support and hosting.
Academic publisher De Gruyter, Germany, has announced its new eJournal pricing model 2013. The subscription options now available include: Complete Package STM (Science, Technology, Medicine) including 300 journals, or LLH (Language, Literature, Humanities, Law, Economics) including 247 journals, Complete Package STM English only or LLH English only. The Complete Package (Big Deal) and the Complete Package English comprise the Complete Packages STM and LLH, English only respectively.
In addition, nine subject packages are available. Alternatively, it is possible to pick and choose from one of the subject packages, or continue a single subscription. Subject packages offered include: Classical Studies and History; Biology, Chemistry, and Geosciences; Library and Information Science and Library Reference; Mathematics, Physics and Engineering; Medicine; Philosophy, Theology, Judaism, and Religion; Politics, Economics, and Sociology; Law; Linguistics and Literature.
The 283 subscription journals include highlights such as Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (Impact Factor 2011: 2.150), and Crelle's Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik (Impact Factor 2011: 1.042). The Complete and Subject Packages also contain open access journals published in the respective subject areas.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has joined the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), who work collectively as the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), to file an amicus curiae brief (PDF) with the Supreme Court of the United States in support of petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng in the case Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons. The LCA asks the Court to be true to the values of the country’s founders - people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were both founders of libraries and great champions of library lending.
Wiley, a publisher of textbooks and other materials, claims Kirtsaeng infringed its copyrights by re-selling in the US cheaper foreign editions of Wiley textbooks that his family lawfully purchased abroad. The LCA believes an adverse decision in this case could affect libraries’ right to lend books and other materials manufactured abroad.
The ‘first-sale doctrine’ is the provision in the Copyright Act that allows any purchaser of a legal copy of a book or other copyrighted work to sell or lend that copy. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the first-sale doctrine applied only to copies manufactured in the US. This interpretation of the law effectively strips libraries of their first-sale right to lend their own copies of works made abroad.
In its friend-of-the-court brief, the LCA has asked the Supreme Court to reverse the Second Circuit and apply the first-sale doctrine to all copies manufactured with the lawful authorisation of the holder of a work’s US copyright.
This is the second case the Supreme Court has heard on this issue in the last two years. In Costco v. Omega, a case involving the importation of luxury watches with copyrighted logos on them, the Court was deadlocked 4-4, leaving the issue unresolved. Justice Kagan pulled-out herself from the case due to her participation in the litigation when she was Solicitor General, but Justice Kagan will participate in Kirtsaeng.
The LCA brief explains that this case is critically important to libraries and their users because a significant portion of US library collections consist of resources that were manufactured overseas. More than 200 million books in US libraries have foreign publishers. Additionally, many books published by US publishers were actually printed in other countries, and often these books do not indicate where they were printed. If a book does not specify that it was printed in the US, a library would not know whether it could lend it without being exposed to a copyright lawsuit.
The LCA believes it is critically important for the court to recognise the impact this case could have on library services to the public and consider possible solutions.
The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) consists of three major library associations—the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries. These three associations collectively represent over 300,000 information professionals and thousands of libraries of all kinds throughout the US and Canada.
Academic publisher Cambridge University Press, UK, has announced that it will publish Journal of British Studies (JBS) on behalf of the North American Conference on British Studies from January 2013. The official publication of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS), the JBS has positioned itself over fifty years as one of the critical resources for scholars of British culture from the middle ages to the present.
The JBS partners with Cambridge, forging a joint commitment to foster the best in scholarship and offer the best in publishing services to an international community of researchers.
Journal of British Studies will continue to combine peer-reviewed original research papers and book reviews by renowned international scholars, using both established and emerging approaches to present their ideas on British society, history, politics, law, literature, art, economics, and sociology. The journal will be available in print and electronic formats. Volumes 1 through 50 will be included in the Cambridge Journals Digital Archive, as will the complete archive of Albion, a complementary journal formerly published by the NACBS.
Journal of British Studies will be hosted on Cambridge’s cutting-edge electronic platform, Cambridge Journals Online, which will provide increased usability, functionality, and many new features to enhance and optimise article usage.
Negotiators from nine countries are meeting on July 2-10 in San Diego to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). The TPPA is a multilateral trade agreement between Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore, covering all aspects of commercial relations between the countries.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), along with organisations representing the library community in some of the countries participating in the TPPA, have expressed concern that the TPPA's extensive intellectual property chapter does not reflect the balance necessary to protect the public domain and the ways in which society may access and use content. Presently, exceptions to copyright protection are said to be noticeably absent from leaked drafts of this ‘gold standard' IP agreement for the 21st century.
As with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has been rejected by the European Parliament, library groups have reportedly been concerned throughout the TPPA negotiations, regarding the lack of transparency related to its procedures, provisions and priorities.
IFLA, alongside nine other library organisations, has issued a statement on the TPPA which outlines its concerns. The statement also reiterates the role libraries play in fostering equitable access to information and cultural expression, while ensuring that the interests of creators are respected and protected.
CERN researchers announce participation at Frankfurt Book Fair
Elsevier and Geological Society of London honoured for best Education/Industry partnership at 2012 Getenergy awards ceremony
Scolaris launches new publishing platform at S3UG event
ARL joins library groups to support lending rights