MarkMonitor, an online brand protection technology, is projected to strengthen the broad portfolio of IP solutions from Thomson Reuters, resulting in a powerful suite of comprehensive brand protection offerings to assist customers in securing their revenue and reputation.
Flagship offerings of MarkMonitor include MarkMonitor Brand Protection, which is said to safeguard brand equity, revenue and reputation from paid search scams, unauthorised channels, counterfeit sales, false association, impersonation, cybersquatting and other threats. The company’s other products include MarkMonitor AntiPiracy, for monitoring, detecting and responding to piracy and related promotional activities; and Domain Management, for proactively seizing domain name opportunities and preventing others from undermining a company's brand and revenue.
Library information provider OCLC, US, and Europeana, the provider of Europe's digital library, have worked together on an approach that will enable OCLC member institutions to contribute metadata derived from OCLC's WorldCat database to the Europeana.eu portal in a manner that is consistent with OCLC's WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative.
This agreement aims to dispel concerns that OCLC's policies around metadata in its WorldCat database are an obstacle to complying with the terms of the Europeana Data Exchange Agreement (DEA), which places all metadata contributed to Europeana.eu in the public domain, using the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication license. While OCLC makes no intellectual property claims to individual metadata records in WorldCat, it asserts a copyright claim over the WorldCat database as a whole - which created uncertainty over contributions to Europeana.eu by members of the cooperative. Nevertheless, OCLC wishes to support participation in Europeana by its member libraries given the significance of Europeana.
In response to these concerns, OCLC requested and Europeana agreed to ask subsequent users of the metadata to give attribution to both OCLC and to the contributing institution as the source, and to make them aware of the OCLC cooperative’s community norms around data.
OCLC will continue to publicize its cooperative norms and provide advice and support to members of the cooperative who contribute metadata, while Europeana will actively encourage re-users of the metadata to uphold the aforementioned Usage Guidelines for Metadata.
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has announced the launch of the PLOS Global Participation Initiative, which aims to encourage submissions from researchers around the world who may previously have been prevented or limited in their ability to publish in open-access journals.
With this initiative, PLoS seeks to increase the global participation of authors in open-access publishing. It aims to reduce and, if possible, eliminate unnecessary barriers (including cost) to the immediate availability, access and use of research while pursuing a sustainable publishing model in which openness, quality and integrity are central.
The first programme in this new initiative aims to tackle barriers to publication based on cost, specifically addressing the lack of funding for publication faced by authors in many countries.
PLoS developed the Global Participation Initiative in consultation with its International Advisory Group (IAG), which is a group of eminent individuals from around the world. Multiple data sources were analysed to establish the parameters of the programme by examining Gross National Income per capita and national expenditure on Research and Development.
Addressing the financial barriers to publication is an important first step towards the goal of ensuring the widest possible global participation in open-access publishing.
Four leading education companies - Cengage Learning, Inc., John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Pearson Education, Inc. and McGraw-Hill Education – have announced that they have settled five unconnected matters involving copyright and trademark infringement claims against companies relating to the sale of counterfeit textbooks. The five separate settlements call for the combined payment of more than $2.6 million dollars and agreements not to engage in any infringement going forward.
The five distributors agreeing to settle the publishers’ claims are: Kentwood Industries in California, Texas Book Company in Texas, Sterling Educational Media in Florida, Davis Textbook in California and ABSnext Corporation (formerly known as Budgetext Corporation) in Arkansas.
The settlements came about after an intensive investigation by the education companies revealed a large wave of counterfeit textbooks being distributed in the US. The investigation further revealed that among the sources used by the textbook distributors to acquire their books were overseas suppliers identified as being a source of counterfeit textbooks.
While the education companies have settled claims against these five distributors, they are currently pursuing action against other groups of individuals and companies that engaged in similar conduct.
STM publisher Springer recently concluded its API Challenge 2.0, and announced the winners of the competition. The challenge asked programmers to create new and original non-commercial applications that use Springer's metadata and content APIs. The goal is to offer users new and novel ways of finding, visualising and/or manipulating relevant data drawn from Springer’s large and growing content database.
After submissions were made, an interdisciplinary panel of judges evaluated the submitted works, ranking them on three categories: creativity and originality, user experience and design, and value and benefit. Winners took home $8,000, $4,000 and $2,000, for first, second and third place, respectively.
Metadata for more than 4.8 million documents from Springer journals, books and protocols was made available to the participants. Also available were full-text content, metadata and images for approximately 80,000 open access articles from BioMed Central and SpringerOpen journals. The awarded applications are now freely available to end users for one year.
Springer APIs make Springer data available to approved third parties via a secure software interface, enabling third parties to build applications with Springer data.
Non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing, UK, has announced the appointment of Brett Rubinstein as the new Head of Business Development and Sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Rubinstein will take up his new role at the Bristol office of IOP Publishing in mid-September. He has over ten years' experience in science, technical and medical publishing and currently holds the position of Vice President, Library Sales in the Americas for Springer.
Part of the Institute of Physics, IOP Publishing provides publications through which leading-edge scientific research is distributed worldwide. Beyond the company's core journals programme, high-value scientific information is made easily accessible through an ever-evolving portfolio of community websites, magazines, conference proceedings and a multitude of electronic services. IOP Publishing is focused on making the most of new technologies and continually improving electronic interfaces to make it easier for researchers to find exactly what they need, when they need it, in the format that suits them best.
TEMIS, a US-based provider of Semantic Content Enrichment Solutions for the Enterprise, and academic publishing house De Gruyter have announced a major license and services agreement.
With semantic content enrichment developing into mainstream technology for the information industry, De Gruyter made the strategic decision to integrate Luxid into its primary online portal, De Gruyter Online, ensuring uninterrupted delivery of next-generation products and services to its growing global customer base.
De Gruyter will deploy the Luxid platform as part of its publishing workflow - initially to enhance medical and linguistics-related content - providing advanced search and discovery tools designed to maximise searchability of content. De Gruyter subject matter experts will use Luxid to design domain-specific Skill Cartridges based on the publisher's thesauri renowned across the information industry.
Communications of the ACM (CACM) has published a cover story in its September issue on how companies need to use their IT-related capabilities to leverage cloud computing resources.
Three information management professors describe the importance of trust between the client organisation and the cloud provider to gain advantage in a competitive market. The group, which includes professors from Belmont University, Kyungpook National University and Baylor University, collected data from a global sample of more than 300 companies in various industries. Their results are seen to reflect the importance of technical, managerial and relational capabilities to maximise the likelihood of deployment success and competitive advantage for cloud computing.
Also in this issue, CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi addresses the recent debate over proposed legislation that prohibits open access mandates for US funded research, which has reportedly raised a lot of passion among ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) members. He urges consideration of this issue in the context of ACM's overall purpose in advancing computing as a science and a profession, and its portfolio of programmes in education, professional development, public policy, internationalisation, electronic community, conferences and award recognition. ACM, he says, is not an abstract entity, but an association of computing professionals with democratically elected leadership.
CACM, the flagship publication of the ACM, seeks to offer readers access to this generation's most significant leaders and innovators in computing and information technology, and is available online in digital format.
National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis S. Collins has announced the appointment of Dr. Janine Austin Clayton as Director for the Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH) and Associate Director for Research on Women's Health, NIH.
Dr. Clayton has been serving as ORWH Acting Director since the retirement of Dr. Vivian Pinn in August 2011. Prior to her tenure as Acting Director, Dr. Clayton served as the ORWH Deputy Director for three years. She currently co-chairs the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers.
Dr. Clayton's research interest includes ocular surface disease. She discovered a novel form of disease associated with premature ovarian insufficiency that affects young women. Dr. Clayton is the author of 80 scientific publications, journal articles, and book chapters. She has received several awards from NIH and is recognised as a leader by her peers.
The Office of the Director, the central office at NIH, is responsible for setting policy for NIH, which includes 27 Institutes and Centers. This involves planning, managing, and coordinating the programmes and activities of all NIH components. The Office of the Director also includes programme offices which are responsible for stimulating specific areas of research throughout NIH.
Thomson Reuters completes MarkMonitor acquisition with US regulatory clearance
Springer concludes API Challenge 2.0, announces winners 
IOP Publishing appoints Brett Rubinstein to head Business Development and Sales for EMEA