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US task force releases report on sustainable preservation of digital knowledge base - 09 Mar 2010
The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access has published a new report titled ‘Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Information’. The report says that a key societal challenge of the Information Age is to ensure that valued digital information will be accessible not just today, but in the future. This requires solutions that are at least as much economic and social as technical, the report points out. The study is the result of a two-year effort focusing on the critical economic challenges of preserving an ever-increasing amount of information in a world gone digital. The full report is available online at http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf. Much has been written on the digital preservation issue as a technical challenge. The Blue Ribbon Task Force report focuses on the economic aspect; i.e. how stewards of valuable, digitally-based information can pay for preservation over the longer term. It provides general principles and actions to support long-term economic sustainability; context-specific recommendations tailored to specific scenarios analysed in the report; and an agenda for priority actions and next steps, organised according to the type of decision maker best suited to carry that action forward. Moreover, the report is intended to serve as a foundation for further study in this area. In addition to releasing its report, the Task Force earlier this month announced plans for a one-day symposium, to be held on April 1 in Washington D.C. The symposium will include various representatives from the Executive Office of the US President, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum, Nature Magazine, Google, and other organisations for whom digital information is fundamental for success. The Blue Ribbon Task Force report focuses on four distinct scenarios. Each has vast amounts of preservation-worthy digital assets in which there is a public interest in long-term preservation: scholarly discourse, research data, commercially-owned cultural content (such as digital movies and music), and collectively-produced web content (such as blogs). The report categorises the economics of digital preservation into three ‘necessary conditions’ closely aligned with the needs of stakeholders: recognising the value of data and selecting materials for longer-term preservation; providing incentives for decision makers to preserve data directly or provide preservation services for others; and articulating the roles and responsibilities among those involved in the preservation process. The report further aligns those conditions with the basic economic principle of supply and demand, and warns that without well-articulated demand for access to preserved digital assets, there will be no supply of preservation services. The Blue Ribbon panel report cites several specific recommendations for decision makers and stakeholders to consider as they seek economically sustainable preservation practices for digital information. Search for more industry reports
Case Studies/Industry study reports > General information - Preservation / Archiving
Springer and Max Planck Society announce agreement - 09 Mar 2010
STM publisher Springer, Germany, and The Max Planck Society have announced an agreement that allows scientists working at the 78 Max Planck Institutes and research facilities across Germany access to content on Springer’s electronic platform SpringerLink. The agreement covers access for 2010 and 2011. The pilot project, begun in 2008 in conjunction with the last access agreement, which allowed researchers at the MPS institutes to publish using Springer Open Choice, has ended. Both parties have now committed to ongoing discussions with respect to coming to a further agreement on alternative publishing models. The pilot project for open access publishing has given both parties useful insights regarding alternative publishing models, and these insights will be the basis for the ongoing talks for a further agreement in this area. The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is an independent, non-profit research organisation in Germany that primarily promotes and supports research at its own institutes. Research activities of the Max Planck Society focus on basic research in natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Search for more STM information
Reference Tools > General information - STM information
Editor may have to quit as Elsevier looks to introduce peer-review for journal ‘Medical Hypotheses’ - 09 Mar 2010
STM publisher Elsevier has reportedly asked the editor-in-chief of the journal Medical Hypotheses to immediately step down or implement a series of changes in his editorial policy, including introducing a system of peer-review. Medical Hypotheses is currently the only Elsevier journal that does not have a system of peer-review. The editor-in-chief decides what gets published, and the manuscripts are edited only very lightly, according to media reports. An external advisory board convened by Elsevier has recommended the immediate setting up of a peer-review system. It has also suggested that articles pertaining to controversial subjects - such as those that support racism - should not be considered for publication. Medical Hypotheses faced criticism after AIDS researchers protested about an article by AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg. The paper, previously rejected by the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, asserts that HIV does not cause AIDS and that medical statistics and demographical data do not support the existence of a massive AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Bruce Charlton, the journal's editor-in-chief, has said that the editorial advisory board, as well as at least 150 scientists who have published in the journal, have "vehemently opposed" the changes. Elsevier has given him until March 15 to respond. The company has also said that it will not renew Charlton’s contract, which expires at the end of 2010. Search for more STM books/journals
STM Publishing
BioMed Central journal ranked highly by new 'SNIP' citation metric - 09 Mar 2010
Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases is its highest-ranking journal based on the SNIP metric, with a value of 1.31 (the median SNIP for the ~17,000 journals in Scopus is 0.52). This places the journal in the top 4 percent of all journals listed in Scopus. For comparison, the journal's Impact Factor of 3.14 makes it the 22nd most highly-rated BioMed Central journal by Impact Factor. The contrast between these two rankings demonstrates that caution is needed when interpreting citation metrics, as much depends on the algorithm used. The SNIP provides a valuable new means to identify high quality journals in fields which may not in general be highly cited. The Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is a new journal indicator based on citation data from Scopus. A journal’s SNIP can be thought of as similar to a normalised Impact Factor, which weights citations to adjust for the fact that some fields are more citation-rich than others. It is expected that SNIPs will allow for more effective comparison of journals between different fields. Search for more Manuscript tracking / Citation alert services
Peer review and Manuscript tracking / Citation alert services
Thieme’ Pocket Atlas of Chinese Medicine bags first prize at the PROSE Awards - 09 Mar 2010
STM publisher Thieme Publishing Group, Germany, has announced that The Pocket Atlas of Chinese Medicine has won first prize in the Nursing and Allied Health category of the 2009 PROSE Award. The annual award presented by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) recognises the best in professional and scholarly publishing. Entrants were judged by peer publishers, librarians and medical professionals. Written by a renowned team of international experts, The Pocket Atlas of Chinese Medicine offers a deep understanding of the underlying theory, characteristics, and fundamental concepts of Chinese Medicine, as well as its philosophical and cultural basis. The publication is projected as a must-have resource for students and practitioners of Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, and complementary medicine, including medical doctors in acupuncture training. The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the US book publishing industry. AAP’s more than 300 members include most of the major commercial publishers in the US, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies. According to the AAP, this year the prestigious awards received more entries than ever before in its 34-year history from over 60 professional and scholarly publishers across the US. Search for more STM books/journals
EE Times appoints Karen Field to oversee community-generated content initiatives - 09 Mar 2010
EE Times Group, part of United Business Media, has announced the appointment of Karen Field as Vice President, Community, beginning March 15, 2010. She will report to Paul Miller, CEO, EE Times Group and will be located in the company's Framingham, MA office. In this newly created position, Field will lead the EE Life site, a new social networking community for the electronics industry, which will be unveiled in Q2 of 2010. Specifically, Field will focus on developing content that resonates within the culture of the engineering community and will lead the charge across the new EE Times Group website as they implement social media strategies spanning the full product line up. Field brings more than 20 years of experience working in the electronic media industry at Reed Business Information, including Design News, Electronics Weekly, and EDN. A hallmark of her work has been the creation of highly unique content that leverages conventional and cutting-edge media and showcases community-generated content. EE Times Group will launch its restructured web solutions in Q2 of 2010 with EE Life as the core product for community engagement and will be featuring user generated content throughout the wider website from news and analysis through new products and 'how to' design solutions and Field will be central to this audience involvement. Search for more networking / collaborating platforms
Networking / collaborating platform
Dear Subscriber - 09 Mar 2010
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