The US' National Federation for Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) will hold a 90 minute webinar to provide an update on the Google landscape on September 26, 2012. John Blossom, President of Shore Communications, Inc, will offer insights on the new approaches and directions he is observing in Google products and services, on the strengths of their platform, and on what he sees changing as Google continues to evolve.
With more than 12 billion searches processed per month, Google is expected to continue to dominate the search arena. But today Google is more than search. It offers mobile devices as well as tools for social networking, collaboration, communication and document creation. It has been observed that, with a focus on the convergence of content, technology and people, Google continues to leverage industry trends in order to maintain market dominance and end-user loyalty. The webinar will seek to find out what is new on the company’s horizon.
Some of the topics that will be covered are: Google's Operating System, Chrome, and how it is shaping our view of computing, the web, and our relationship to emerging forms of the Semantic Web; and The impact of mobility and choice of devices (Desktop (Chromebox), laptop (Chromebook), and tablet (Nexus 7). Other topics to be discussed include Google's On-Going Platform Integration (Google Plus, Knowledge Graph, Scholar, Play, YouTube, Gmail and Drive); and Anticipated new (Google Fiber) and soon to-be-discontinued (iGoogle) services.
Interested parties, who want to take a fresh look at Google, its current and future directions, and learn how their organisation can better meet industry trends, may register for the NFAIS webinar. The registration form can be accessed at: http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/377-john-blossom-google-landscape-sept-26-2012.
STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the launch of a new Ethics in Research & Publication programme, an initiative designed to help educate early career researchers on the importance of research integrity.
The Ethics in Research & Publication programme has come about through a collaboration between Elsevier and an advisory panel of experts recognised for their deep understanding of current ethical issues surrounding research and publishing and the evolving approaches to solving them.
Distinguished panel members include Dr. David Rew, Medical Chair SCOPUS Content Selection and Advisory Board; Prof. Alexander T (Sandy) Florence, Editor in Chief, International Journal of Pharmaceutics; Ole G. Evensen, Assistant Director, University of Bergen Library, Norway; and Prof. Margaret Rees, Secretary of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The programme is inspired by real-world stories of researchers who have been the victims of misconduct. With the goal of addressing the growing incidence of publishing ethics issues, the programme emphasises the individual researcher's contribution to advancing science through integrity and good ethical standards. At the same time the programme also highlights the devastating impact misconduct can have on the science community as a whole, as well as on an individual researcher's career.
Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has added three new anthropology databases to the EBSCOhost platform. Formerly available via First Search from OCLC, the three databases: Anthropological Index, Anthropological Literature and Anthropology Plus, cover the fields of anthropology, archaeology and related interdisciplinary research.
Published by the Royal Anthropological Institute, Anthropological Index contains information from a broad geographical range, emphasising the Commonwealth and Africa, and extending to Eastern Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific. The database indexes periodicals covering the fields of physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural ethnography and linguistics.
Anthropological Literature is published by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and indexes articles, reports, commentaries and obituaries found in nearly 700 journals and monographic series. Over 600,000 citations are included in this resource covering articles published from the early 19th century to the present, in more than 50 languages. Anthropological Literature provides comprehensive indexing for the fields of social and cultural anthropology, Old and New World archaeology, physical anthropology and anthropological aspects of related subjects, emphasising Mesoamerican, Native American and Andean archaeology and ethnology.
Anthropology Plus is a compilation of Anthropological Index and Anthropological Literature. This broad and rich resource provides extensive indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, interdisciplinary studies, etc.
Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that the Medical Center of the Rockies has selected its ProVation Medical Software for gastroenterology procedure documentation and coding in its GI labs.
Located in Loveland, Colo., the 148-bed Medical Center of the Rockies is a regional medical center with a full spectrum of services including specialties in cardiology and trauma care. It is home to two intensive care units, a birthing center and a special care nursery, a medical nursing unit, a surgical nursing unit, and full-service radiology and laboratory.
ProVation Medical provides procedure documentation and clinical decision support solutions for hospitals and Ambulatory Surgery Centers. ProVation MD, ProVation MultiCaregiver and ProVation EHR software reduce transcription, paper storage and image printing costs and deliver a high Return on Investment (ROI). ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, put evidence-based healthcare into practice by establishing and maintaining standards of care.
The British Library has welcomed the UK government's commitment to proceed with introducing the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-print works) Regulations in April 2013. The statement by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (September 5, 2012) follows a public consultation which closed in May 2012.
Since the introduction of the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act, the Legal Deposit Libraries have been working with the government and publishers to secure the necessary regulations to collect material published digitally and online.
The Non-Print Legal Deposit regulations would empower the British Library to collect, store and preserve the nation’s memory in the digital age. To date, much of the country's published heritage has reportedly been lost to a digital black hole with information and records of major events of the 21st century lost forever.
It is expected that a comprehensive archive of digital and non-printed materials, preserved for generations to come, will provide significant research benefits. This is seen to enable the creation of new knowledge, inspiring innovation and creating cultural and economic value for the UK.
GeoScienceWorld (GSW) has announced that its online journal collections and portal are now available in a mobile-optimised format with the help of HighWire's Mobile Web Interface. GSW is a non-profit organisation that serves peer reviewed journal literature from 26 publishers to researchers in more than 40 countries.
With average monthly visits to GSW from mobile devices already topping 9,000 hits, creating a version that is designed for advanced searching and browsing on the small screen will improve the experience and workflows for researchers, library patrons and society members.
Visitors to GSW’s portal pages and the majority of their 41 journals are automatically redirected to the mobile version when accessing the sites on an enabled smartphone (m.geoscienceworld.org). The content presented on mobile sites is in a format designed specifically for the smaller screen size and functionality of a mobile device.
Each of GSW's mobile journal sites feature the full text of content of the current issue (with user authentication), archives, and tables of contents, in addition to providing search and social bookmarking options. For consistency, the mobile sites maintain the look and feel of the full web versions.
UK researchers' and educators' demands for high performance computing are now reportedly secured until at least 2022, thanks to an initial £30 million e-infrastructure investment from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the higher and further education funding councils.
The investment will build Janet6, the next generation of the UK's national research and education network, adding value across the sector from high-end research to universities, colleges and schools. It will also enable research to stay competitive on both a national and international level, and support the £60 billion contribution that higher education brings to the UK economy.
Research shows that as institutions use innovative methods to deliver digital resources to their students, so their use of different devices over the network grows. The pattern of data across Janet shows that data usage doubles every 18 months and this is unlikely to change.
However, in addition to this normal usage increase, there will also be a 'data deluge' from data intensive research, which means that future network demands are set to increase. The high capacity network means that research in biomedical sciences, climate science and genomics can continue at current rates, even with the need for the transfer of large data sets, as well as high performance computing, that are needed for research and analysis in these subject areas.
A seamless transition to the new network, and a proactive approach to network provision where it is needed, means that most customers should not see any disruption in service. The new network will reportedly continue to provide unseen yet essential support to the work of researchers and educators, enabling them to communicate easily and share large data sets across international boundaries.
Service provider SSE Telecoms has been awarded the contract to provide the fibre for the Janet infrastructure in the largest UK deployment of its kind, this year. The Janet6 infrastructure will be based on Ciena's platform, which will enable the network to easily scale from 100G to 400G and beyond as requirements change over time. Janet6 will be fully operational by October 2013.
Janet6 has been developed in the context of the Government's Public Services Network (PSN) programme, and as Janet6 unfolds, the Janet team will continue to work closely with the PSN programme to ensure maximum efficiency in public-sector ICT spend.
The Janet6 programme is aligned with, and co-funded by, the BIS e-infrastructure initiative. BIS investment in both the core Janet network and in extending Janet means that it can better serve additional data intensive research disciplines.
Non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishing, UK, has announced the launch of a new journal, Methods and Applications in Fluorescence. This brings IOP’s existing journals portfolio to 69 titles.
An electronic-only journal, Methods and Applications in Fluorescence will cover developments in fluorescence spectroscopy, imaging, fluorescent probes, labels and materials. It will focus on both methods and advanced applications and will accept original research articles, review articles and technical notes. The journal aims to be the natural forum for the very highest quality papers in the field.
Alongside the Editorial Board, three Editors-in-Chief will direct the journal in order to successfully cover the broad scope of the journal. The Editors-in-Chief are: Prof. David Birch of the University of Strathclyde, UK; Prof. Yves Mély of the University of Strasbourg, France; and Prof. Otto S Wolfbeis of the University of Regensburg, Germany.
IOP will manage the peer-review process in conjunction with the journal's Editorial Board, as well as take responsibility for the production, sales and marketing of the journal. It will be published quarterly and will be freely available online until the end of 2013.
Methods and Applications in Fluorescence is currently open for submission of papers.
Academic publisher Oxford University Press (OUP), UK, has announced the launch of a new, ground breaking resource Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) and the re-launch of the Oxford Handbooks Online and Oxford Reference.
OSEO is an important new initiative that will bring the famous and world-renowned collection of Oxford scholarly editions online for the first time. Launching with 171 editions of works written by authors principally active between 1485 and 1660, OSEO will publish the original texts of about 12,000 works, which include 200 plays, some 7000 poems, and over 5000 letters. OSEO will provide trustworthy and reliable critical editions of original works by some of the most important writers in the humanities, such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, as well as works from lesser-known writers such as Shackerley Marmion.
The electronic environment of OSEO provides a new research method and tool for the reader, who can quickly examine the history of the scholarly editing of a work or see instantly how a particular word used in a text has changed over time. Students and scholars can interrogate texts in ways that could never have been done before, with a simple click of a mouse. The new site can be found here: http://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/.
The launch of OSEO also coincides with the relaunch of one of OUP's leading resources, Oxford Handbooks Online: Scholarly Research Reviews. The new site has been reengineered in response to usage data and market research so that it is better aligned with how scholars and students access and use this kind of resource. The site has a more sophisticated functionality that makes it easier to search, browse, and download individual essays, and important modifications have been made to the underlying publication model that make it possible to publish individual chapters online in advance of print, provide updated versions of existing articles, and to publishing online-only articles on emerging areas of research.
Oxford has appointed an Editor in Chief and Editorial Board of subject experts in each discipline to provide guidance and ensure quality. The coverage in Oxford Handbooks Online has been significantly expanded, increasing from four disciplines to fourteen to include Psychology, History, and other major fields of research.
Oxford Reference has also been redeveloped as the new home of Oxford’s quality reference publishing. Bringing together over 1.7 million entries, OUP have seamlessly integrated the superb reference content from Oxford Reference Online and the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf onto the new Oxford Reference platform, enabling users to easily access and cross-search Oxford's prestigious reference works at the click of a button.
The new Oxford Reference platform is made up of two collections. The Oxford Quick Reference collection contains over 125 core academic dictionaries allowing users to quickly check facts and key information about a concept, person, term, subjects, or language. The Oxford Reference Library contains over 180 in-depth and specialist titles from Oxford's award-winning collection of Encyclopedias and Companions.
Each site launched by OUP will have an intuitive design based on Oxford University Press's extensive research into the ways readers access and use the materials on each site. Part of the OUP mission in developing these sites alongside user feedback is to ensure that users find content easily and quickly. Oxford have therefore launched the Oxford Index, a free discovery service that lets users search across Oxford's digital academic content and find related content across all of their online sites.
NFAIS webinar to examine new products and services from Google 
Elsevier’s new Ethics in Research & Publication programme to educate young researchers about the importance of research integrity
British Library welcomes UK govt. response on Non-Print Legal Deposit regulations