STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the launch of a new international, peer-reviewed journal - Performance Enhancement & Health. The journal critically explores the health implications of performance enhancement on the human being, from steroid doping in elite athletes, right through to amphetamine use amongst truck drivers.
Performance Enhancement & Health boasts a wide-ranging appeal that extends from social scientists through to healthcare workers and those working in physical or sporting fields. As a multidisciplinary journal it provides fascinating food for thought. With the 2012 Olympic Games only just ended, the debate continues over performance enhancement in sport.
Performance enhancement is not only unique to athletes however. Performance enhancement can be pharmacological, genetic, psychological or technological and may be linked to identity, social capital or pleasure, as well as productivity. Health is envisaged broadly as absence of disease, optimal functioning, and (personal or community) well-being. Performance Enhancement & Health therefore examines the implications of performance enhancement on the human condition – both in the sporting arena and beyond.
The journal's co-editors, Dr Jason Mazanov of the University of New South Wales and Associate Professor Frances Quirk of James Cook University, identified the need for a specific forum for scholars to discuss the role and impact of performance enhancement in society.
Mazanov and Quirk's aims in producing Performance Enhancement & Health include exploring how the effort to enhance our human condition has influenced health, and developing a more worldly understanding of the performance enhancement–health nexus.
Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced the release of OvidOpenAccess, a new search discovery feature that integrates thousands of Open Access (OA) resources within the OvidSP platform. OvidSP users can now conduct a single search query to uncover relevant answers to important medical questions across subscribed and OA content.
Resources provided through OvidOpenAccess includes more than 200 journals from Medknow, a leading, global Open Access publisher and part of Wolters Kluwer Health, and thousands of OA articles available in PMC (formerly known as PubMed Central), the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature from the US National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NLM). OvidOpenAccess has value-added content for all institutional subscribers of the OvidSP platform, a leading medical research platform.
With OvidOpenAccess, OA content is listed in a separate, easily identifiable results widget alongside the main Search Results pane in OvidSP Basic Search. Users can conduct post search tasks, such as print, save, and export to a project or project folder in the My Projects function. Currently, OvidOpenAccess includes a growing list of more than 70,000 full text articles from Medknow’s clinical and research journals.
Medknow journals are published on behalf of nearly 160 professional healthcare societies and associations and span a wide range of medical and healthcare disciplines, including nursing pharmacology, and alternative medicine. In addition, users have access, through the PMC Open Access Subset, to bibliographic citations of articles published in more than 1,000 un-embargoed journals.
The OvidSP medical research platform delivers a solution of aggregated premium content from more than 150 information producers, and rich search functionality and tools to quickly find and manage search results. Used by more than 12,500 institutions globally, OvidSP helps physicians, clinicians, students, researchers, and librarians to make important decisions to improve patient care, enhance ongoing research, and fuel new discoveries.
InformationWeek Reports, a service provider for peer-based IT research and analysis, has announced the release of its latest research report titled 'Cloud Security: Verify, Don't Trust.' The report analyses results from InformationWeek's 2012 Cloud Security and Risk survey. More than 360 business technology professionals responded to this poll.
InformationWeek asked respondents to share their attitudes about cloud security and their approaches to assessing provider security controls, including the use of technical audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. Survey participants were also asked about IT's use of auditing reports and documentation such as the SSAE 16 and the Cloud Security Alliance's CAIQ.
About 55 percent of respondents that use or plan to use or are considering cloud services say unauthorised access to or leak of proprietary data is a top concern, trumping issues such as performance and vendor lock-in. About 20 percent say cloud providers have superior security controls. Other findings reveal that 35 percent perform or plan to perform vulnerability assessments of cloud providers; another 5% do so or will do so even though their contract with the provider forbids it. About 28 percent run or will run at least one mission-critical application in the cloud.
Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, has won 23 APEX awards in categories ranging from layout, writing, overall excellence and, for the first time, Website content, writing, and design. Wiley received more awards overall than any other publishing house, company or association.
APEX 2012, the 24th Annual awards for Publication Excellence, is an international competition that attracted 3400 entries to compete in 130 categories. Wiley's awards were based on excellence in graphic design, editorial content, and success in achieving overall communications effectiveness and excellence.
Wiley's awards included the APEX 2012 Grand Award for the Journal of Leadership Studies, edited by Jeremy Moreland and published on behalf of the School of Advanced Studies of the University of Phoenix.
Frances Hesselbein, Editor-in-Chief of Leader to Leader, was honored for regular departments and columns. The Journal of Healthcare Risk Management, published on behalf of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management, was recognised for excellence in health and medical writing.
National Civic Review, now in its 101st year and published with the National Civic League, was recognised in the Magazines and Journals print category for titles over 32 pages.
New Directions for Youth Development and Editor-in-Chief Gil G. Noam received an award for custom publishing for its special issue with the National Afterschool Association.
Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture, recently launched with the University of the Rockies, received recognition for its design and layout.
Editor Russ Bleemer and Alternatives to the Higher Cost of Litigation, published on behalf of the CPR Institute, won in the category of print newsletters.
Awards in the Website category, a first for Wiley, went to www.Boardandadministrator.com and Editor Jeff Stratton who won recognition for site content and writing, while the newly launched www.Federalgrantsandcontracts.com, curated by Editor Kelly Sullivan, was awarded for site design and illustration.
The growing online presence of Wiley Web sites was further recognised with awards of excellence given to Departmentchairs.org, edited by Carolyn Allard, for its individual webpage of sample articles and Valerie Canady, Editor of Mentalhealthweeklynews.com, for excellence in site content and writing.
In recognition for excellence in newsletter writing Robert E. Willett, editor of Natural Gas & Electricity, received the award for excellence in technology and science writing.
Joan Hope and The Successful Registar were honored for excellence in a newsletter produced by one or more persons. Trudy Banta, Editor of Assessment Update, was recognised for excellence in editorial and advocacy writing. Editor Gregory K. Fritz and The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter achieved recognition in the category of newsletter writing.
Within the Magazine and Journals category, Jean M. Henscheid, executive editor of About Campus, received recognition for excellence in print publications up to 32 pages.
Editor-in-Chief Jane M DeHaven and Bell Labs Technical Journal were honored for achievement in technical writing in the custom-published category, and 2011 winner Environment Quality Management received an award in excellence for “green” publishing.
Three medical newsmagazines - The Hospitalist, The Rheumatologist and ENT Today - earned five awards for custom content and design excellence.
Apple recently filed an opposition to the Department of Justice's proposed settlement with three publishers in its e-book price-fixing case, arguing that the company stands to be punished by the deal though it never 'participated in, encouraged, or sought to benefit from collusion,' and assailing a deal that would harm the company by nullifying contracts 'before a single document has been introduced into evidence.' The three publishers are: Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.
Apple reportedly urged the court to do one of two things: approve a more narrowly focused settlement that bars collusion; or reserve final judgment on the settlement until the company has had their day in court. In addition to Apple, the two non-settling publishers - Penguin and Macmillan - also filed opposition briefs.
The brief also prominently raises the outpouring of public comments against the settlement, noting that 92 percent (800 of 868) submissions came from 'actual market participants' who opposed the settlement, raising questions as to whether the deal is in the public interest.
McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., US, has announced the appointment of Stephen Laster as the company's chief digital officer. Laster will lead the company's digital initiatives, including creating compelling digital learning experiences for students and inspiring creative innovation across all aspects of the organisation.
The appointment of Laster is the latest representation of McGraw-Hill Education's transformation from a provider of print-based education materials to a developer of digitally-based products and services.
Laster joins the company from Harvard Business School, where he served as chief information officer since 2006. In that position, he transformed the school's technology organisation and delivered critical new systems and services, while establishing the school's first educational technology group focused on digital learning product development.
Laster will report to Lloyd G. "Buzz" Waterhouse, McGraw-Hill Education's president and chief executive officer, as the process continues to establish McGraw-Hill Education as an independent, digital learning and education services company later this year.
The International Journal for Equity in Health, published by open access publisher BioMed Central, is currently accepting submissions on Multimorbidity and Equity in Health for inclusion in a special series on the topic.
Multimorbidity, the co-occurrence of health conditions in individuals and populations, is a phenomenon with high burden and high prevalence in persons and groups of disadvantaged circumstances, such as low socioeconomic status, immigrants, and ethnic/cultural minorities.
This thematic series will accept papers on patterns and trends of multimorbidity inequity, variations in multimorbidity burden by social characteristics, and on the impact of multimoribity inequity on healthcare resource use and outcomes. The deadline for submission is December 1, 2012. A special 20 percent discount off the publication fee will be granted to papers accepted to this special series.
International Journal for Equity in Health aims to improve the understanding of issues that influence the health of populations. This includes the discussion of political, policy-related, economic, social and health services-related influences, particularly with regard to systematic differences in distributions of one or more aspects of health in population groups defined demographically, geographically, or socially.
Academic publisher Maney Publishing, UK, has announced the appointment of Dr Dan Vaughn as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy (JMMT). Dr Vaughn will succeed Chad Cook, who has provided five years of service and strong leadership to the journal. Dan will work alongside Chad in 2012 before assuming full duties for the first issue of 2013. Chad will continue to sit on the Editorial Board of the journal and work as a reviewer.
Dr Vaughn is based at the Physical Therapy Program at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI, where he has both teaching and clinical practice responsibilities. His research at Grand Valley State has focused on the efficacy of manual therapy interventions and the influence of therapeutic exercise on spinal posture.
Dr Vaughn would like to see JMMT expand its scope of influence and recognition through acceptance into Medline and Web of Science; an expanded, international circulation; greater participation of entry-level PT students and manual therapy residency students in developing journal content; and enhancement of clinical science content that supports the practice of manual therapy.
JMMT is the official journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists, The McKenzie Institute International, NZMPA, OMT Australia and CAMPT. Members of these societies benefit from bespoke access to the journal content.
Information services provider Swets, Netherlands, and Mendeley, a UK-based startup, have announced that leading research universities and institutions around the world have signed up for the research productivity, collaboration and analytics tool developed by the companies.
Mendeley Institutional Edition, the new tool for libraries from Swets and Mendeley, has already been adopted by several leading universities and institutes around the world. These early adopters have taken advantage of the deep insights Mendeley Institutional Edition provides to librarians, including what articles their researchers have published and what the reach of that research is. A dashboard displays what content is being read and matches the results with the licensed content provided by the library. Students and researchers get the benefits of a social discovery service combined with a reference manager and collaboration platform.
The first institutions to adopt Mendeley Institutional Edition include VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland; University of Pittsburgh, University of Nevada (Reno); Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Forestry and Fisheries Research Council of Japan; University of Western Ontario; and several other institutions in the San Francisco Bay area and the East Coast of the USA.
Mendeley Institutional Edition adds value to the researcher and librarian workflow. For researchers it provides a premium personal account to manage documents and bibliographies, as well as facilitating collaboration with other researchers across the world. For libraries, it provides an intuitive interface presenting new metrics on the reading, publishing and sharing behaviour of their users in real time, unlike traditional publisher usage statistics or the impact factor, which is delayed by up to 3 years.
Elsevier launches new journal - Performance Enhancement & Health 
WK Health launches OvidOpenAccess to support the research needs of the global medical community 
International Journal for Equity in Health calls for papers for special series in Multimorbidity and Equity in Health