Symyx Technologies, Inc., a US-based provider of technologies for R&D, has announced the release of Symyx Isentris Personal Edition scientific software. Designed for small to mid-size R&D organisations and for individuals, Isentris Personal Edition brings advanced scientific information management, exploration, and sharing capabilities to scientists without requiring an enterprise deployment.

As the successor to the ISIS desktop system (replacing ISIS/Base, ISIS for Excel, and ISIS/Draw), Isentris Personal Edition surpasses ISIS in meeting scientists’ needs for storing, searching, viewing, and sharing personal experimental results while still providing the powerful functionality of an enterprise scientific informatics system. By helping scientists share databases and associated files easily with colleagues, Isentris Personal Edition drives effective collaboration within and across partnering organisations.

Using the new and improved Isentris for Excel component of Isentris Personal Edition, scientists can manage, explore, and share chemical and biological information in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that maintain the integrity of chemical structures and reaction information. Researchers are free to use the power of Excel to sort, filter, analyse, and visualise scientific data and then easily share their Excel spreadsheets with colleagues and partners. Advanced features enable scientists to enumerate virtual compound libraries, analyse the effects of substituents on biological activities, and search chemical spreadsheets using structure searching and filtering techniques.

iCopyright, a US-based provider of intelligent copyright systems for digital content, has published a study according to which online publishers are losing significant revenue and, in many cases, the rights to their material, because of the way they implement ‘Article Tools’ on their web pages. Article Tools are common on almost every news and information website. They appear as links and/or icons that allow readers to print, email, save, share, post, and do other things with the articles.

The study found that users have become accustomed to using these tools to repurpose and redistribute articles, often for commercial purposes. Many users believe that Article Tools grant them licence to take and use the content without any restrictions. Usability testing of some of the most trafficked news and B2B content sites on the Internet found serious flaws in how their Article Tools are implemented.

The majority of users who participated in the study said they use Article Tools frequently to make copies, post on their website, and redistribute articles via email. Most said they would honour the publisher’s copyrights and use the content within acceptable guidelines, if publishers clearly communicated the guidelines. Those who regularly use content for commercial purposes said they would pay for the rights if they were priced right and could be transacted and delivered instantly.

The study findings and recommendations are outlined in a white paper that can be downloaded at http://info.icopyright.com/article-tools-whitepaper.asp.

Ovid, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that 60 ebooks from Clinical Publishing, an independent medical publisher based in the UK, are scheduled to be available on OvidSP in 2009. Many of the titles are already for sale and accessible via Books@Ovid, OvidSP’s ebook platform. All titles will be available to Ovid’s global customer base as an annual subscription or for one-time purchase.

An imprint of Atlas Medical Publishing, Ltd, Clinical Publishing specialises in medical colour atlases and medical reference texts for doctors, specialists, and trainees worldwide.

Key titles scheduled for availability on Books@Ovid include several titles from the Therapeutic Strategies series, including Therapeutic Strategies in Epilepsy and Therapeutic Strategies in Thrombosis; volumes in the Problem Solving series, such as Problem Solving in Cardiology and Problem Solving in Oncology; and others in the series, including Hypertension: Atlas of Investigation & Management, Ischemic Stroke: Atlas of Investigation & Management, and more.

First launched in 2004, Books@Ovid offers a streamlined, efficient search experience to a wide range of novice and advanced user types. Natural language searching makes queries quick and easy. Users can search ebooks simultaneously with ejournals and bibliographic databases, and can link directly to any other content resource referenced in a book. Important features include flexible search, browse, and results management features; inline abstracts; a variety of search limits; and downloadable MARC records to help librarians manage their online catalogue.

With the addition of Clinical Publishing, Ovid’s portfolio of ebooks publishing partners now totals ten. Other partners include Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (Ovid’s sister company within Wolters Kluwer Health), Oxford University Press, Springer Science + Business Media, McGraw-Hill, and Jones & Bartlett.

The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society, recently announced cost-saving measures in light of investment losses, declining ad revenues, and falling institutional print subscriptions to its journals and other publications. In addition to job cuts, the society has capped certain retirement health benefits and reduced general expenses across all operating units.

ACS Executive Director and CEO Madeleine Jacobs notes that although ACS saw the value of its unrestricted reserves fall starting in late 2008, from about $212 million to about $60 million, the society is liquid, with nearly $275 million in cash and investments. Declines in the capital markets and ACS's obligation to fund its pension benefits led to the dramatic drop in reserves that occurred. ACS has been able to restrain the decline in reserves by freezing accruals in the society's defined-benefit pension plan and by capping retiree health insurance.

The society's Publications Division took the biggest hit in job cuts. Of a total of 56 ACS employees who were laid off, 40 worked in the ACS Publications Division.

According to ACS Publications Division Director Brian Crawford, declining ad revenues for C&EN, especially classified job advertising, and cancellation of print subscriptions to ACS journals by institutional subscribers were the driving factors behind the division's cuts.

The American Psychological Association (APA), publisher of titles such as Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Psychological Bulletin, has developed a Wellcome-Trust compliant author-pays model. In return for paying an OA fee ($4000), APA will now deposit on behalf of the author, the final, published version directly into PubMed Central (PMC), where it will be mirrored to the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC).

Such papers will be licenced such that anyone may access, download, copy, display, and redistribute this article or manuscript as well as adapt, translate, or data and text mine the content contained in this document, as long as this is done for non-commercial purposes, and proper attribution is given.

Upon submission to an APA journal, Wellcome-funded authors will be asked to identify their manuscript as being Wellcome Trust funded. If the paper is accepted for publication, Wellcome funded authors will be required to complete a form to ensure that APA journals will deposit the manuscript in PMC.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) developer Aries Systems, US, has announced the general release of Editorial Manager and Preprint Manager Version 7.0. Workflow solutions from Aries Systems are used by more than 3,200 scholarly publications to process over a million scholarly manuscripts, abstracts and book chapters each year.

The new version of Preprint Manager enhances the ability of journals to transact issue workflows in tandem with individual manuscript processing. The solicited manuscript functionality enables journals to publish proprietary content that is not subject to open access deposit mandates. The enhanced ability to select, identify and manage solicited manuscripts in Editorial Manager Version 7.0 therefore assists publishers to proactively adapt to the changing publishing environment.

Additionally, Version 7.0 journals can configure a single sign-on capability for editors that collaborate on a group of journals.

The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters, US, has announced the annual Top 20 ranking of Japanese research institutions for all fields based on citation data of academic papers published from January 1998 to December 2008.

Among world research institution rankings, only the Japanese institutions were extracted and re-tabulated in order to identify the top 20 Japanese research institutions. Using the 22 categories defined in Essential Science Indicators, four categories - Material Science, Physics, Chemistry and Biology/Biochemistry - were identified where Japanese institutions were ranked within the top 5 and top 10 in the world.

It was observed that the overall number of both research papers and citations has been gradually increasing in the past few years, and that research output from Japan’s top research institutions has been growing more active. No.1 and No.2 national rankings in all four general categories are the same as last year. In addition, there is no change in the overall ranking up to the 13th place. According to ranking by category, there is no significant change to research institutions closer to the top of the Japanese rankings.

The government-affiliated research institutions such as Japan Science and Technology Agency (Independent Administrative Institution), Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Independent Administrative Institution), National Institute of Industrial Science and Technology (Independent Administrative Institution) remain strong in the rankings. In terms of world ranking, the University of Tokyo has been gradually moving up since its No.19 ranking in 2002. It was ranked No.11 this year, one position up from No. 12 in 2008. Tohoku University was placed No.83 in 2002 and ranked much higher up at No. 64 this year.

Bookshare, US, an online accessible library for individuals with print disabilities, has announced partnerships with leading publishers in the US. Two dozen publishers have signed agreements with Bookshare to provide digital content, which over time will add tens of thousands of books in accessible formats to the Bookshare collection. Publishers who have signed agreements with Bookshare include O’Reilly Media, Random House, Scholastic, HarperCollins, Brookings Institution Press, De Capo Press, Modern Language Association of America, The Hachette Book Group and Townsend Press.

Agreements with publishers, many of which include permissions to distribute worldwide, will add a wealth of accessible books to Bookshare, including academic, scientific and technical books; and textbooks for students in grades K-12, higher education, graduate school, and continuing education. By providing Bookshare with digital files, publishers can rely on the organisation to distribute books to qualified individuals and fulfill their compliance obligations under the Chafee Amendment of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 U.S.C. § 121).

Using proprietary conversion tools, Bookshare can easily convert EPUB (e-book standard) files and other formats received from publishers into accessible formats such as DAISY 3.0 (Digital Accessible Information System) and BRF (Braille Ready File), saving publishers the time and expense of producing accessible formats. A further benefit of partnering with Bookshare is the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that Bookshare adds to every book downloaded by a member to protect publishers’ copyright interests and guard against illegal sharing.

Bookshare’s collection includes more than 46,000 titles and is growing at a rate of over 1,000 books per month from contributions from publishers, universities, downloads processed from the NIMAC (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Center), and scanned books contributed by volunteers. The Bookshare library is expected to increase to over 100,000 books by 2012 with publisher and university contributions augmenting the books from the extended volunteer and nonprofit network.

The seventh edition of blogspeak is now online. Featured are Roy Tennant (Library of Congress Releases Official Linked Data Site); Philip Davis (Paying for Open Access Publication Charges); Stevan Harnad (Conflicts of Interest in Open Access); and Steve Helyin (The World’s Foremost Consultant on the Future of Publishing). A service of Knowledgespeak.com, Blogspeak includes blog posts relevant to the publishing industry, particularly STM publishing. Subscribers are invited to participate in the latest edition of blogspeak Here.

The BMJ Group, UK, has announced that every article published since the British Medical Journal’s first issue in October 1840 is now freely available online from bmj.com. Eighteen of the BMJ Group's specialist journals - including Heart, Gut and Thorax - are also available.

The archive includes some famous names and important articles which have purportedly changed the world of medicine. For instance, in 1847, James Simpson used the BMJ to publicise his work on chloroform, paving the way for modern anaesthetic techniques. And in 1867, an article by the young Joseph Lister introduced the concept of antiseptic to promote wound healing. At the turn of the 20th century, a study by Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross - two rivals in tropical medicine research - established the theory that mosquitoes transmit malaria. And, in the 1950s, the BMJ published two landmark studies that have transformed the way we live today. The first by Richard Doll and Bradford Hill confirming the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the second by Alice Stewart, showing a link between low level radiation and childhood leukaemia, which led to today's radiological safety standards. Other famous names from the archive include David Livingstone, Arthur Conan Doyle and Florence Nightingale.

Creating a complete and fully searchable BMJ archive has taken nearly a decade and was made possible by the US National Library of Medicine and the UK's Wellcome Trust and Joint Information Systems Committee. For the BMJ alone, this involved scanning over 824,000 pages, often from thin, friable paper.

For an introduction to the archive, a series of specially commissioned videos focussing on some of the important issues and individuals that have appeared in the journal's pages are now available at http://podcasts.bmj.com/themes/bmj/mp3/ archive_videos/BMJ_archive_the_stories.mp4

The American Chemical Society has announced the forthcoming launch of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Dr George C. Schatz, Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, will serve as the Editor-in-chief of the journal, the inaugural issue of which is planned for January 2010.

Articles published in this new journal are scientific papers of a limited length, allowing for concise reporting of results that are of immediate interest to the physical chemistry research community.

Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters will complement the ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry by offering readers a single source for the most urgent research results in all areas of physical chemistry. Available exclusively online, the journal serves the needs of the physical chemistry research community by offering advantages such as more rapid publication of letters; interdisciplinary scope; and new customised Web features and functionality.

Publisher linking services provider CrossRef, US, has announced that the American Psychological Association (APA) will implement CrossCheck, the plagiarism screening service powered by iThenticate. The Association is the 50th participant to implement the plagiarism service.

Launched in June 2008, CrossCheck is a cooperative service from CrossRef and iParadigms. It provides publishers with web-based text analysis and a growing database of scholarly publications against which to compare manuscripts and papers for duplication.

The CrossCheck database contains 13.8 million items from 23,000 journals, books, and conference proceedings. In addition to checking against documents from scholarly publishers, participants compare papers against relevant sources from the web and proprietary databases.

Building information modeling (BIM) solutions provider Reed Construction Data, US, launched its latest BIM offering, SmartBIM Spaces, at the recently concluded AIA 2009 National Convention and Design Expo. Reed also demonstrated the benefits of its upcoming release, SmartBIM QTO, at the AIA convention.

SmartBIM Spaces seeks to offer architects a simple way to view and download BIM objects specific to their projects. It also seeks to provide building product manufacturers with a targeted distribution method to get their products in the hands of architects during the design phase.

SmartBIM Spaces uses Reed's SmartBIM content, including manufacturer-specific and generic BIM objects, and packages it by project type (school, library, office building, etc.). These 'spaces' are delivered proactively, allowing designers to view products within the context of a specific project and download the objects needed to complete their projects.

Manufacturers can use SmartBIM Spaces as a targeted way to market their products to the design community and promote their BIM objects. By packaging their project-specific objects within Spaces, manufacturers make it easier for architects to locate the products and information they need. Manufacturer-specific BIM objects are available through the SmartBIM Object Creation Program. Manufacturers can have their products modeled as 3D, high-quality and highly parametric BIM objects for use in designing a building or project.

In addition to SmartBIM Spaces, Reed delivers BIM content to the market through SmartBIM Library, SmartBuilding Index and Autodesk Seek (http://seek.autodesk.com/).

Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing, US, and editors of its clinical reference tool, DynaMed, are making DynaMed’s latest information about Swine Influenza freely available to health care providers and institutions throughout the world.

The DynaMed topic on Swine Influenza consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis.

DynaMed is a point-of-care reference resource designed to provide clinicians with the best available evidence to support clinical decision-making. It is part of the suite of medical products owned and provided by EBSCO Publishing and is updated daily by monitoring medical literature sources.

Energy industry publisher Gulf Publishing Company, US, has announced the appointment of John T. Royall as President and Chief Executive Officer. The announcement was made by Christopher Brown, Director of Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC. Gulf Publishing Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Euromoney Institutional Investor, PLC.

As a successful publishing executive and business leader, Royall brings extensive experience in both print and digital media. He has been in business publishing for 22 years, with executive positions at Reed Business Information and Penton Media. Most recently he was Vice President of PennWell’s Offshore Group.

Gulf Publishing Company produces and distributes leading journals, industry research, databases, software, publications, conferences and events to meet the needs of the energy industry. The company's suite of products includes technical books, engineering software products, multi-media training products, specialised supplements and more.

The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries have filed comments with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York for the judge to consider in his ruling on the proposed Google Book Search Settlement. The associations have asked the judge to exercise vigorous oversight of the interpretation and implementation of the settlement to ensure the broadest possible benefit from the services the settlement enables.

Representing over 139,000 libraries and 350,000 librarians, the associations filed the brief as members of the plaintiff class because they are both authors and publishers of books. The associations asserted that although the settlement had the potential to provide public access to millions of books, many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values. The library values in question include equity of access to information, patron privacy and intellectual freedom. The court can mitigate these possible negative effects by regulating the conduct of Google and the Book Rights Registry the settlement establishes.

Under the settlement, Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild resolved their legal dispute over the scanning of millions of books provided by research libraries. The library associations are not asking the judge to reject the settlement. Instead, they are requesting the judge to carefully monitor the parties’ behaviour once the settlement takes effect.

Although the filing deadline for comments to the judge was recently extended by four months, the associations adhered to the original deadline to inform the public about an important and complex matter.

Pharmaceutical company Pfizer, US, has announced details of a membership agreement with open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, to cover publication costs for research articles published by its researchers.

Under this membership arrangement, Pfizer will centrally cover the publication fees for any researcher employed or funded by Pfizer when they submit a research article to one of BioMed Central’s over 190 peer-reviewed open access journals. By funding open access publication fees in this way, Pfizer seeks to make it easy for its researchers to make their research results universally accessible.

More than 300 leading research institutions participate in BioMed Central’s institutional membership scheme. A list of the latest Pfizer-funded research published in BioMed Central’s open access journals can be viewed on Pfizer’s member page on the BioMed Central website at http://www.biomedcentral.com/inst/48121/.

Serials Solutions, the e-resource access and management services arm of ProQuest, US, has added University of Calgary as a beta development partner for the Summon unified discovery service. Several new content providers, including BMJ, an international peer-reviewed medical journal and subsidiary of the British Medical Association, have also signed onto the Summon service. BMJ joins nearly 100 content providers along with key partners ProQuest and Gale – aggregators representing more than 4,700 publishers.

The Summon service addresses what research shows is a fundamental barrier between libraries and users: a simple, obvious starting point for searches. The service is being developed in close cooperation with library beta partners, with a goal of not only bringing the researcher back to the library, but providing a channel for greater return on the library's content investment. The role of the beta partners is to ensure the service is tracking against those goals, providing feedback from the field. Librarians, archivists and curators at the University of Calgary will initially test and use the Summon service. They will then move it to an open beta in May, getting feedback from faculty and student users. Other partners who are already testing include Dartmouth College, Oklahoma State University, University of Sydney, University of Liverpool and Western Michigan University.

The Summon service produces fast, relevancy-ranked, results through a single search against pre-harvested content. While the aggregated databases of ProQuest and Gale form a cornerstone for the Summon service’s content, new contributors are consistently being added to provide the most accurate reflection of the breadth of content available in any library – whether print or electronic.

The Summon unified discovery service will move from beta to commercial launch in July 2009. The hosted service is built with an open API that will allow it to be used with existing library Web sites, next-generation catalogues or campus systems with low impact on staff.

Scientific information services provider FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany, has entered into an agreement with US-based SequenceBase Corporation for promoting the USGENE in-house version more effectively in Europe. USGENE is a resource for life-science intellectual property professionals, providing unrivalled searchable access to all available peptide and nucleotide sequences from the published applications and issued patents of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This agreement adds to the already existing partnership between SequenceBase Corp. and FIZ Karlsruhe with respect to the offering of USGENE via the latter’s online-service STN International.

Under the new agreement, FIZ Karlsruhe will act as a sales agent on behalf of SequenceBase Corporation. In this capacity, FIZ Karlsruhe will sell and market the USGENE database in-house version to customers and prospective customers of the SequenceBase Corporation in enterprises and institutes throughout Europe. The database is also available via STN International.

Scientists working in drug discovery operations, academia, and life sciences can now benefit from the customised in-house version of the USGENE database. USGENE data are available in customised subscription formats to suit various in-house molecular biology patent information needs. The database can be implemented and integrated in other life science products such as Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Drug Discovery Platforms, Patent Portals, Web Host interfaces and other online information services. USGENE data can be provided in industry standard or customised data formats to suit particular in-house needs.

According to the customers’ needs, the USGENE database can be purchased by segments of data such as class, art unit, patent assignee, inventor, publication date, or any other desired fields. The entire back file from 1982 to date can be licenced; regular weekly updates are provided to subscribers within 3 days of publication by the United States Patent Office.

Life sciences informatics company Molecular Connections, India, has announced the availability of XTractor Premium, a knowledge management platform, for the biomedical research community. The product is projected to provide scientists with new and refined ways to access the latest scientific facts from PubMed. Pharmaceutical companies, researchers and scientists can use the platform to identify, verify and develop predictive relationships from PubMed Literature.

Leveraging the ability to transform data to knowledge and to assist experts is seen to be crucial to the success of research investigation today. XTractor Premium offers several enhancements over the beta version in managing large volume of published biomedical data to accelerate decision making.

The XTractor knowledgebase currently contains 150,000 relationships on biomarkers, clinical trials, pathways, knockout studies, mutations, drug interactions and disease mechanisms. The knowledgebase is updated everyday with manually annotated relationships from the latest PUBMED publications. Other premium features include semantic search functionality; concept linking; bibliographic search; and the option to save and export data in user-friendly formats.

Journal subscription services provider EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), US, has announced that following the recent success of its first wave of Open Days during the last two months, it will continue the 30-event series through November 2009, in major cities across Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.

These EBSCO-sponsored Open Days provide a convenient and beneficial communications exchange platform for all involved in the information supply chain - especially library directors, librarians, academic information managers, e-resources managers, serials and e-books acquisition specialists and corporate information professionals. As well, the Open Day series provides publishers exhibitor opportunities in which to share their e-content product information with attendees. A couple of publishers who have elected to exhibit during various Open Days include SAGE Publications, Ltd. and Project MUSE.

With numerous meeting, seminar and workshop options, attendees will have access to a multitude of topics relevant to the information services industry, such as industry trends, experiences and best practices, and products and services. EBSCO will also offer information and on-site demonstrations on the wide range of time - and cost-saving solutions that it offers. These include E-Package Renewals on EBSCONET; EBSCO Discovery Service; EBSCOhost Integrated Search; and the forthcoming ERM Essentials.

STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that Dr. David Goldmann has joined Elsevier Health Sciences as Vice President, Editor-in-Chief, First Consult. As Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Goldmann will be responsible for developing the overall content strategy and vision and leading the entire content production of First Consult and derivative products.

Dr. Goldmann is an internist and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He brings a wealth of experience in the medical field. He has held a number of editorial positions at the American College of Physicians (ACP), where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Physicians’ Information and Education Resource (PIER), an evidence-based, electronic medical knowledge resource; Associate, Deputy and Senior Deputy Editor with the Journal Annals of Internal Medicine; and Consulting Editor to ACP Internist and the ACP Foundation HEALTH TiPS patient education programme.

Part of the Elsevier Health Sciences Clinical Decision Support group, First Consult is an authoritative evidence-based and regularly updated clinical information resource for healthcare professionals. Designed for use at the point of care, it provides instant, user-friendly access to the latest information on evaluation, diagnosis, clinical management, prognosis and prevention.

Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that its ProVation Medical procedure documentation and coding software allows users to transition to the new ICD-10 code set with minimal expense, training or disruption of workflow. The product, which is seen to answer the call for healthcare technology vendors to play a proactive role in the switch to ICD-10, is claimed to be ready to accommodate the expanded code sets. Also, its implementation and training teams are prepared to support client organisations throughout the transition process.

After originally proposing a 2011 deadline, the US’ Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has set a 2013 compliance deadline for the adoption of ICD-10 by domestic healthcare organisations. Despite the two-year reprieve, healthcare organisations are already putting together their transition budgets and plans, a critical element of which is working with their technology vendors to ensure software and systems are ready for the switch.

According to a recent survey by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, 55 percent of hospital CIOs said they expected vendor readiness and cooperation to be one of the top hurdles in achieving ICD-10 compliance. Yet, 72 percent did not know if their vendors would include ICD-10 in annual software upgrades, and 60 percent said their vendors had not alerted them to implementation timelines.

ProVation seeks to replace dictation/transcription and streamline the coding and billing process. With deep medical content, it allows clinicians to quickly and completely document medical procedures and apply the appropriate CPT and ICD codes, as well as CCI edits, according to the company. ProVation is currently used by thousands of clinicians at more than 600 hospitals and ambulatory surgery centres, in specialties including cardiology, ENT, gastroenterology, general surgery, gynecology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, pain management, plastic surgery, pulmonology and urology.

The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced the latest release of ScholarOne Manuscripts (formally Manuscript Central). The upgrade includes the implementation of Cognos, a leading business intelligence and performance management tool.

The new reporting functionality in ScholarOne Manuscripts has the ability to change the way journals manage, evaluate, and report on peer review operations within a journal. The additional reporting features allow users to build custom ad-hoc reports, schedule automatically delivered reports, insert report calculations, and expedite pivot reports; drill into performance statistics such as turnaround time, accept/reject rates and geographic distribution of submissions; determine the timing, formatting and delivery method to distribute reports on-demand or on a schedule; and provide reports on journal publishing metrics to aid strategic decision making.

ScholarOne Manuscripts is a web-based peer review and submission application for scholarly publishers. It works by automating the manuscript submission to journals and allows for easy administrative, editing and reviewing capabilities.

E-resource access and management services provider Serials Solutions, US, has announced a series of medical resource enhancements to the Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks knowledgebase. Enhancements include the addition of over 1 million National Library of Medicine eBook MARC records and Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) data to KnowledgeWorks, as well as a new feature supporting the PubMed LinkOut service within the 360 Link OpenURL link resolver.

The Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks e-resource knowledgebase seeks to improve e-resource access and management at medical libraries. It now includes 1.2 million National Library of Medicine eBook MARC records, which will be included as a part of the Serials Solutions 360 MARC Updates eBooks service. Serials Solutions has also started development to include MeSH data within KnowledgeWorks. MeSH data will be added as a ‘subject browse’ option within the 360 Core A-to-Z list before the end of 2009.

Additionally, as an enhancement for the 360 Link OpenURL link resolver, Serials Solutions has begun to provide XML holdings data to PubMed LinkOut to enable libraries to connect patrons from PubMed citations to full-text anywhere in the library's collection. This is a free service available to subscribers of 360 Link.

Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, has launched a new journal, Asian Journal of Endoscopic Surgery. Masaki Kitajima, Vice President and Professor, International University of Health and Welfare, Tokyo, Japan, serves as Editor of the journal, the inaugural issue of which is currently available online.

A joint official journal of Asia Endosurgery Task Force and Japan Society for Endoscopic Surgery (JSES), the Asian Journal of Endoscopic Surgery publishes significant studies in the fields of endoscopic surgery. The journal also publishes review articles and meeting reports of symposia and congresses of related associations.

Asian Journal of Endoscopic Surgery welcomes original articles, case reports, surgical techniques and short reports, which are peer-reviewed by the editorial board. Letters to the Editor commenting on articles published in the journal or expressing views on topics concerning surgery are also welcomed. Special articles, including review articles are provided by the Editorial Board and invited authors.

The inaugural issue includes an original article entitled ‘Efficacy of preoperative ganadotrpin-releasing hormone agonist therapy for laparoscopic myomectomy’ by Yasushi Kotani and researchers from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Kindai University School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan. The study evaluated the efficacy of preoperative gonadotropin-realeasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) therapy. Another review article in the inaugural issue looks into the current status of laparoscopic gastrectomy in Japan. In addition, this issue also features the abstracts from the 11th World Congress of Endoscopic Surgery hosted by the JSES held on September 2008 in Yokohama, Japan.

Online information services provider Dialog, US, part of the ProQuest family of brands, has announced that corporate customers of Dialog will now be able to purchase a variety of ProQuest products through their Dialog sales contacts. The new initiative focuses on those ProQuest products that are most complementary to Dialog information products.

Dialog will be the exclusive sales agent of ProQuest products to corporate customers in North America. Corporations outside of North America can purchase these products through either ProQuest or Dialog, working with their established contacts.Among the ProQuest products that will have broader exposure through Dialog sales channels is Professional ProQuest Central, the aggregated full-text database. Other products include ProQuest's renowned Dissertations & Theses database, a source for emerging research comprising two million graduate works from 700 higher education programmes around the world, and CSA Illustrata, a solution that uncovers unique research found in graphics and illustrations.

Complementing Dialog's significant resources in health sciences is ProQuest Pharma Collection and Medical Evidence Matters, which allows users to assess therapy options by comparing outcomes in peer-reviewed literature. Further, customers managing documents throughout the research cycle will benefit from ProQuest's RefWorks tools for research management, writing and collaboration.

Library solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the bX recommender service is now available to libraries worldwide. Leveraging the networked research community, the bX service seeks to generate recommendations for scholarly articles based on the analysis of tens of millions of linking activities carried out by users at research institutions worldwide.

Libraries can use bX as a tool to offer users up-to-date, Web 2.0-type services. The recommendations are accessible through a library's SFX interface or through the interface of a local application of choice. Registration for bX, offered in a service model, is available online.

The new service is the result of years of collaborative research into advanced scholarly recommender systems conducted by the Ex Libris bX team and researchers Johan Bollen and Herbert Van de Sompel from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Based on data captured through a large-scale aggregation of link-resolver usage logs, bX is an extension of the OpenURL framework. Twenty research institutions across North America, Europe, Australia, Africa and Asia have already contributed their usage data to bX and tested the service with Ex Libris over the past months through an early adopter programme.

The Open Access Directory (OAD), a Wiki hosted by Simmons College, celebrated its first anniversary on April 30. Under OAD, community contributors create and maintain simple, factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship. Launched in 2008 and operated entirely by an international corps of volunteers, the OAD grew from six to 40 lists and has served more than 250,000 unique users.

The resource was designed by Robin Peek, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, and Peter Suber, Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, and Senior Researcher at SPARC.

The OAD will serve as a central component in the programme for the upcoming Open Access Week (October 19 to 23, 2009), which will feature educational resources that local hosts can use to customise events to suit local audiences and time zones. Two sample programme tracks, highlighting 'Author's rights and author addenda - For researchers,’ and 'Institutional Advantages from Open Access - For administrators,' have been released for participants to use to design or inspire their plans for the week.

Sample tracks point first to OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook), which delivers resources for multiple constituencies and awareness levels. Both OAD and OASIS resources are community-driven tools that invite registered users to expand and refine available content. The organisers of Open Access Week invite feedback on the sample tracks as well as contributions to OASIS and the OAD. Additional sample tracks will be developed with advice from registered Open Access Week participants.

Academic publisher SAGE has announced that four SAGE Reference titles have been included in Library Journal's annual Best Reference feature announced this month. The titles were chosen in four different categories – Sciences, Social Sciences, Business/Economics and current events.

The Library Journal Best Reference list honours the top reference titles that have been reviewed in the journal in the previous year. The titles reflect a wide diversity of subjects.

The four honoured SAGE Reference titles include Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change; Encyclopedia of Political Communication; Encyclopedia of Counseling: Changes and Challenges for Counseling in the 21st Century; and Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society.

The SAGE Reference Online platform hosts more than 80 authoritative and award-winning encyclopaedias. It provides the research community with resources packed with cutting-edge information in a variety of user-friendly formats.

Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Limited, UK, has announced that Reprint and Permissions for Emerald’s eBook content is now available through Copyright Clearance Center’s (CCC) Rightslink service. Rightslink is an online service that provides a content licensing solution for publishers.

By extending its partnership to the Rightslink service to cover both eBook and journal content, the company seeks to provide researchers with an extensive opportunity to identify and seek permission to reprint relevant content in a more efficient way. The new developments help create an easy and effective tool for eBook content users wishing to reuse copyrighted material from any of the 102 eBook titles, enabling lawful re-use, distribution or republication of Emerald’s copyright materials.

Rightslink is an online service that enables content users to purchase copyright permissions and reprints directly from content on the web or in database services. The service is expected to speed up the process for authors seeking guidance in relation to reprints, allowing them to locate the abstract of the article they wish to reuse in the Emerald database, select the rights required and receive a quick, immediate quote.

Nstein Technologies, Inc., a Canada-based provider of online publishing solutions for newspapers, magazines and online content providers, has announced the launch of WCM (Web Content Management) 4.1, a feature-rich upgrade to its content management system (CMS). Most notable among the additions is WCM Mojo, a portable, mobile back-office version of WCM designed to empower smart-phone equipped writers, journalists and editors to create, edit and publish content in the field.

Since its inception, Nstein WCM has focused on being the most editor-centric, intuitive and intelligent Web CMS on the market. WCM 4.1 continues that tradition, featuring a fully extensible drag-and-drop-enabled customisable dashboard that allows users to develop their own layouts from a pre-configured widget library.

Nstein's new mobile content management tool, WCM Mojo, is an optional, lightweight add-on client that connects seamlessly to WCM via newer smart phone browsers. This functionality allows writers, journalists and editors to create and edit stories, slideshows, manage contributions and follow editorial and behavioral statistics in real-time. Also, it allows editors to execute repetitive editorial tasks such as content approvals and content bundling while in transit.

Publishing software developer Content Data Solutions, US, has announced the release of its Web Publishing Solution (WPS) as Software as a Service (SaaS). WPS SaaS is being offered to reduce or eliminate the upfront financial investment typically required when implementing a content management system.

WPS, targeted at news, journal and book publishers, is projected as a comprehensive application for the creation, enrichment, management and delivery of content to the web and other publishing channels such as print, CD-Rom or E-Reader. WPS’ standard editing controls are similar to Microsoft Word, thus allowing quick adoption by users with little to no training.

WPS SaaS is seen to result in an immediate return on investment for businesses, allowing companies to publish content at an extremely low cost with minimal infrastructure costs. The built-in automated publishing process allows companies to publish information quickly and accurately with features such as future scheduling and expiration capabilities. This is expected to provide customers with timely and accurate information. WPS’ browser based solution has a built-in workflow feature. This is seen to allow authors, editors and content managers the ability to efficiently revise, approve and release documents in a collaborative environment, resulting in a vastly decreased publication to market cycle time and increased employee flexibility.

The Research Information Network (RIN) and the Repositories Support Project (RSP) are holding a free event to look at how researchers are responding to mandates to include the results of their research work in repositories. The event, scheduled for May 29 at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, will cover issues around both research funders' and institutional mandates (at institutional, subject-based and national levels), and ask how well these mandates are working in practice.

The meeting will be an opportunity to debate about how to make research outputs accessible and open, where appropriate, and how to engage researchers better in this process. The event is aimed at repository managers, senior librarians, research funders, publishers, learned societies and academic researchers.

Key speakers include Paul Ayris, Director, Library Services, University College London; Paul Davey, Engagement Manager, UKPubMed Central; Bill Hubbard, Manager, SHERPA, University of Nottingham; Paul Hubbard, Head of Research Policy, HEFCE; Robert Kiley - Head of e-Strategy, Wellcome Trust; Charles Oppenheim, Head of Department and Professor of Information Science at Loughborough University; and Julia Wallace - PEER Project. To book your seats visit http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/index.php?page=MandatesDay2009/index.php

Open access publisher Medknow Publications, India, has signed an agreement with Globethics.net, a global network of institutions and persons interested in different fields of applied ethics. Under the deal, both companies will cooperate in the acquisition, production, subscription, distribution, availability and marketing of online and print journals on applied ethics, worldwide, with a special focus on ethics journals from developing and transition countries.

The objective is to increase global access to these journals, especially via the Globethics.net Online Library and the journals' individual websites. Most of the journals in the project would offer immediate open access to the contents. The African Journal of Business Ethics will be the first journal to go full text online as a part of this project.

Medknow Publications is a publisher for academic and scientific, peer-reviewed, online and print open access journals. The publishing house pioneers in 'fee-less-free' model of open access publishing and provides immediate free access to the electronic editions of the journals without charging the author or author's institution for submission, processing or publication of the articles.