Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group, UK, has announced the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language blogging network for scientists and science communicators. Nature Network bloggers will be amongst the first to take up their new home on the Wordpress-based site.
SciLogs.com is hosted by Spektrum der Wissenschaft, part of Nature Publishing Group (NPG). The English language site joins the popular German language blogging network, SciLogs.de, and Dutch (SciLogs.be) and Spanish (SciLogs.es) sites, which together have more than 100 active bloggers.
More than 25 Nature Network blogs are making a new home on SciLogs.com. They have transferred their full archive with them, so that previous conversations are preserved for posterity. Redirects are in place so that links and search indexing continues to work seamlessly.
SciLogs.de has been hosting blogs since October 2007 and currently has around 350,000 page views per month. Blogs are written by active scientists and science communicators and include researchers at the Universities of Heidelberg, Bremen and the Max Planck Institute.
Spektrum der Wissenschaft is an international edition of Scientific American, which became part of NPG in 2009. Launched in July 2011, the Scientific American Blog Network, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com, brings together 15 blogs by Scientific American staff with 38 blogs from more than 40 independent bloggers.
Blogs written by Nature-branded journal editors and other NPG staff are now hosted at http://blogs.nature.com
The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, US, has announced a partnership with CHDI Foundation, Inc. to develop systems biology tools for Huntington’s disease (HD) research. HD is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that affects muscle coordination and leads to gradual cognitive decline and dementia; there are currently no effective treatments available. The collaboration will include reconstruction and analysis of causal networks underlying HD mechanisms and building a comprehensive collection of HD pathology pathway maps to assist researchers worldwide.
One of the central goals of the MetaMiner Partnership will be to identify disease mechanisms through network analysis of gene expression data in HD patients with different numbers of CAG repeats in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. The number of CAG repeats is a predictor of the age of disease onset.
A second objective of the collaboration will be to build pathology pathway maps for disease mechanisms, continuing the work of MetaMinerTM for HD, a program that focuses on HD pathway reconstruction. This project, a collaborative effort between Thomson Reuters, as well as selected pharmaceutical companies and universities, has generated 15 specific HD pathway maps. Thomson Reuters builds causal networks and pathway maps using a proprietary manual curation technology and full text peer-review literature as a source of protein interactions.
Once complete, the images of the new HD pathway maps will be available on CHDI’s website and through MetaCore. Users of MetaCore, an integrated software suite for functional data analysis, will be able to access the HD pathway maps for greater insight via MetaCore’s analysis tools.
Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, and The Transplantation Society (TTS) have announced a partnership affiliation to advance content and access to Transplantation journal, the official journal of the Society, for society members and subscribers. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Through the collaboration, TTS and Wolters Kluwer Health – LWW will develop access to Transplantation online, including the full archive online, as well as digital access on mobile and iPad devices for members and individual subscribers. In addition, the partnership will help to advance the journal’s content as the premier, essential resource for healthcare professionals in the field of experimental and clinical transplantation globally. Institutional access to Transplantation is made available through WK Health’s Ovid online medical research solution, OvidSP, used by more than 12,000 institutions globally.
Transplantation has been the trusted source for extensive and timely coverage of the most important advances in transplantation for more than 40 years. The journal is the most cited and influential journal in the field, with more than 25,000 citations annually and is consistently ranked among the top impact factor journals in Transplantation, Surgery and Immunology categories identified by the Journal Citation Reports. It publishes original research articles under the categories of ‘Clinical and Translational’ and ‘Basic and Experimental’. Rapid Communications bring attention to research at the forefront of the field. Other areas covered include cell therapy and islet transplantation, immunobiology and genomics, and xenotransplantation
On the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair (October 9, 2012) publishing experts from around the world will gather at the Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) Frankfurt conference. TOC Frankfurt is organised by the Frankfurt Academy in co-operation with O'Reilly Media, and returns for its fourth year under the motto "From Transition to Transformation". International specialists and experts will share their knowledge of innovative technologies and new processes in digital publishing, in more than 30 sessions, panels and workshops. Already more than 50 speakers have been confirmed.
The EDItEUR Supply Chain Track will return for a second year to TOC Frankfurt, focusing on the operational challenges facing the book and e-book supply chains, with a particular emphasis on supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. Industry experts such as Ken Michaels (Hachette) and Jonathan Nowell (Nielsen) will critically examine new business models and highlight the opportunities that the ever-changing digital market holds for suppliers.
The TOC Frankfurt MetaData Workshop makes its debut: Brian O'Leary (Magellan Media) and Laura Dawson (Bowker) will present a workshop on the preparation and maintenance of metadata. The two will discuss the BISG metadata report findings, the impact of global sales and the degradation of territorial rights on metadata management, and will provide practical tips on how to deal with sensitive information to improve business figures.
The workshop will take place on October 11 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm at the Frankfurt Book Fair (Room Entente, Hall 4C). There is an Early-Bird price of € 200 plus VAT (reg. price € 250 + VAT) until August 15. The workshop will be held in English.
Serials Solutions, US, has announced that users of its Summon service will soon be able to discover resources in the Digital Library of Georgia's collection that is projected to include a million digital objects in more than 200 collections from 60 institutions and 100 government agencies. This follows a recent agreement to index the organisation's collection that includes digitised books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, architectural drawings, audio and video.
The digital library is an initiative of Galileo, the state's virtual library, and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. It partners with allied organisations across the state to promote the ongoing development, maintenance and preservation of digital collections and online digital library resources. It seeks to provide digital library, photographic and micrographic services to participating organisations, and works at the local and national levels in the development of digital library standards, practice and technology.
With its single, unified index architecture and granular faceting, the Summon web discovery service seeks to provide opportunities for researchers to discover valuable content from open access digital repositories and digital collections as well as rich digital repositories provided by more than 100 customers.
Professional information solutions provider Reed Elsevier has announced the appointment of Linda S. Sanford as a member of the Supervisory Board of Reed Elsevier NV (RENV), effective December 4, 2012. The appointment is subject to shareholder approval at an Extraordinary General Meeting of RENV to be held later in the year, and as a non-executive director of Reed Elsevier PLC from the same date. She will also be appointed a non-executive director of Reed Elsevier Group plc.
A US citizen with a strong technology background, Sanford is currently the Senior Vice President, Enterprise Transformation, IBM Corporation - a provider of information technology (IT) products and services worldwide - for whom she has worked since 1975. She has been a non-executive director of ITT Corporation - a New York Stock Exchange listed company leading in the manufacture of highly engineered components and customised solutions for the energy infrastructure, electronics, aerospace and transportation industries - since 1998. She is also a member of several educational and non-profit boards.
Reed Elsevier Group plc is a provider of professional information solutions to the science, medical, legal, risk management, and business to business sectors. The group is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV.
Safari Books Online, an on-demand digital library for technology, digital media and business professionals, has announced their next generation Safari To Go apps which are free apps designed specifically for Apple and Android phone and tablet users.
The new apps are more than 'mobile-ready' versions of Safari Books Online. They allow users to consume and manage content, navigating in a familiar and comfortable environment, from their mobile device of choice. The Safari To Go apps make learning on the go convenient and easy by giving users the ability to pick up where they left off from any Safari Books Online reading platform.
The Safari To Go apps can be downloaded from the Apple App store and from Google Play for Android device owners.
Safari Books Online is an on-demand digital library that delivers a wide range of vetted learning resources in both book and video form from the world's leading authors in technology, digital media and business. Technology professionals, software developers, web designers, and business and creative professionals use Safari Books Online as their primary resource for research, problem solving, learning and certification training.
The Association of Research Libraries' (ARL) Committee on Diversity and Leadership has selected 14 masters of library and information science (MLIS) students to participate in the 2012–2014 Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW) as ARL Diversity Scholars.
The ARL IRDW offers numerous financial benefits to programme participants as well as leadership development provided through the annual ARL Leadership Symposium, a formal mentor program, career placement assistance, and a research library visit hosted by the Purdue University Libraries. The programme is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and by voluntary contributions from 52 ARL member libraries.
This programme reflects the commitment of ARL members to create a diverse academic and research library community that will better meet the challenges of changing demographics in higher education and the emphasis on global perspectives in the academy.
Enterprise technology and innovative solutions provider Blackboard Inc, US, has announced that it has been selected by the Saudi Electronic University (SeU), the first government e-university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as a strategic partner to support their eLearning requirements. The announcement was made by Blackboard and its local partner, BME Holding S.A.L. (BME).
Following a formal and extensive evaluation process, which included functional assessment and review of vendors, SeU concluded that Blackboard Learn, Blackboard's flagship learning management system (LMS), is the most flexible and effective learning platform to meet their needs.
SeU found Blackboard solutions to offer advanced functionality and significantly enhanced collaborative learning opportunities compared to competing vendors. Executives at SeU determined that Blackboard solutions would be easier to implement and manage than the alternatives based on the company’s strong and proven product support and well-organised, global user community.
The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) in Saudi Arabia recognises that distance learning is critical to the future success of Saudi education expansion and quality. With the creation of SeU, the MOHE will work with the existing Saudi universities to centralise distance learning study programmes into a single organisation. SeU has a target to enroll 6,000 students for its initial launch phase.
SeU will leverage the Blackboard Mobile Learn solution to give students and faculty access to their course experience on mobile devices. Blackboard Collaborate, the online Web conferencing and collaboration platform will give students and faculty more opportunities to interact virtually, and the Blackboard Connect platform will increase the effectiveness for alert notifications and community outreach.
Consultants from Blackboard joined leaders from SeU for a five-day, on-site workshop to review the short-term implementation plan of Blackboard solutions, align efforts with the university's Strategic Plan and coordinate timing to make the solutions available to students in early September.
New home for Nature Network blogs on SciLogs.com
Thomson Reuters and CHDI Foundation partner to develop systems biology tools for Huntington’s disease
TOC for Publishing Frankfurt to hold 30 sessions, panels and workshops 
Reed Elsevier appoints Linda S. Sanford as a non-executive director