The Royal Society of Chemistry has announced the acquisition of ChemSpider, a free online service providing a structure centric community for chemists.

This acquisition complements RSC's existing leading role in online chemistry, including award-winning semantic mark-up technology and the release of the InChI resolver, recently launched in partnership with ChemSpider. Providing access to almost 21.5 million unique chemical entities sourced from over 200 different data sources and integration to a multitude of other online services, ChemSpider claims to be the richest single source of structure-based chemistry information.

RSC acquired ChemSpider with the aim to fulfil its strategic objective of disseminating knowledge to the chemical community and advancing the chemical sciences. In partnership, RSC and ChemSpider will provide innovative services on a reliable infrastructure to service the chemical community and bring new opportunities for publishing and cheminformatics that will radically improve the online research environment. The ChemSpider development team will continue to be located in the US and the ChemSpider website will be re-launched later in the year.

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, US, has announced that it is expanding its partnership with Amazon to offer select Wiley textbooks for sale through the Kindle DX. The large-screen Kindle DX, the latest addition to the Kindle family, will enable the delivery of textbooks on a wireless electronic reading device.

Wiley is in the process of determining which textbooks are best optimised for student use on the enhanced device and will announce more details on specific titles and pricing this summer as the books go live on the Kindle Store. Currently Wiley has over 9,000 of its Professional/Trade titles, which account for about one-third of the company’s titles in print, available on the Kindle 2.

Kindle is Amazon's portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper. More than 275,000 books are currently available via the tool.

Medical journal The Lancet has criticised the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for lacking transparency, making too many grants to recipients in rich nations and not focusing its resources on the greatest health needs. The latest edition of the journal has published an analysis of Gates Foundation grants from 1998 to 2007, along with commentary on the findings.

The analysis revealed that much of the foundation's research and development grants have been awarded to institutions and universities in high-income nations. It was observed that the foundation focused too heavily on selected diseases like malaria, even while other diseases may exact a greater toll. Particularly, the Lancet commentary directs toward a poor correlation between the foundation’s funding and childhood disease priorities.

The journal, however, praised the foundation for its contributions to global health. According to the report, general awareness and funding have been increased. The report specifically cites the foundation’s initial gift of $750 million made in 1999 to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), and the founding of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, as significant accomplishments.

In a statement released in response to the Lancet article, the Gates Foundation has welcomed this article and its findings. The foundation claims to be the world's largest private philanthropy organisation with assets of nearly $27.5 billion, as of April 1, 2009. It has three primary programme areas - global health, global development and US programmes.

E-research and educational publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, US, has announced that it is providing free access to Global Issues in Context and health and medical related e-books from the Gale Virtual Reference Library. With this move, Gale seeks to make reliable, expert information regarding the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the swine flue, readily available.

Librarians can install a widget (http://www.gale.cengage.com/flu/) on their homepage, allowing their community to access the information at the library or from any computer with an Internet connection.

Global Issues in Context now features a swine flu portal including editorial perspectives from international publications such as Africa News Service, Chicago Tribune and The Independent (UK). It also features dozens of podcasts from the WHO and Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and thousands of news articles. The resource also includes portals related to CDC, WHO, pandemic preparedness and influenza.

Through Gale Virtual Reference Library, various resources provide users with access to articles about the swine flu, other strains of influenza, emerging diseases, pandemic preparedness and other issues related to public health. The resources include the Encyclopedia of Genetics, Encyclopedia of Public Health, American Decades and Infectious Diseases in Context. Users can also read factual, historical accounts of previous outbreaks of the swine flu in 1918 and 1976.

These resources provide content for all levels of interest, from general information to more in-depth analysis for researchers or healthcare professionals.

Medical publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., US, has announced complimentary online access to all issues of its peer-reviewed publication, Journal of Women's Health, in recognition of National Women's Health Week (May 10–16, 2009). The offer can be availed of for the entire month of May at www.liebertpub.com/jwh.

Journal of Women's Health is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women. The journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women’s healthcare issues. The journal is the official journal of the American Medical Women's Association.

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is a fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in several areas of science and biomedical research. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is claimed to be the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide.

Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., UK, is participating at the ongoing EURAM 2009 Annual Conference being held at the ACC Arena in Liverpool, UK, May 11- 14, 2009. The Annual Conference provides an open, international and multicultural European forum for networking. This year's theme is Renaissance and Renewal in Management Studies.

During the conference, Emerald will hold an Author Workshop which will be led by several key speakers including Emerald academic adviser Professor Adrian Ziderman and Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor in Economics and Business Administration at Bar Ilan University, Israel. Based on Emerald's years of experience of working with the Editors of 200 journals these author workshops provide insight to help new or potential authors and give them the best possible chance of publication, helping authors progress successfully through the various stages from pre-submission of the manuscript, to revision and, finally publication.

Emerald will be sharing knowledge and experiences at the Workshop and providing insider information on topics like how to get started; how to target work more effectively; what Editors and reviewers actually look for and how to peer-review your own work. Delegates who would like to attend the Author Workshop can register prior to the event at the Emerald stand. Emerald will also present awards to the winners of the 2009 Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence. The awards were created to give recognition for the effort of all Emerald authors, with categories such as outstanding paper and leading Editor Award.

The US' National Science Foundation has announced a $2.18 grant for Dryad, a digital data repository designed to archive data that underlie published findings in evolutionary biology, ecology and related fields. The repository allows scientists to access and build on each other's findings.

The grant recipients are University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Metadata Research Center (MRC) in the School of Information and Library Science; North Carolina State University's Digital Library Program; Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Office at the University of New Mexico; Yale University's TreeBASE database; and National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESC), a collaborative effort involving UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke and North Carolina State universities.

NESC and MRC have been developing Dryad in coordination with a large group of journals and societies in evolutionary biology and ecology. With the new grant, the additional team members are contributing to the development of the repository. The work on the repository also coincides with Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday this year and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his The Origin of Species. Some of the data on Darwin's finches are included in Dryad.

Currently, a tremendous amount of information underlying published research findings is lost, researchers say. The lack of data sharing and preservation makes it impossible for the data to be examined or re-used by future investigators.

Dryad seeks to address these shortcomings and allow scientists to validate published findings; explore new analysis methodologies; repurpose data for research questions unanticipated by the original authors; integrate data across studies; and look for trends through statistical meta-analysis. The resource is being designed with a consortium of stakeholders who include representatives of more than a dozen journals in evolutionary biology and ecology. The consortium sets policy and is responsible for long-term financial sustainability. Dryad is intended to serve as a model for the many other scientific disciplines facing similar challenges in data preservation and sharing.

Not-for-profit organisation eIFL.net, the University of Kansas Libraries, the DRIVER project and Key Perspectives Ltd. are conducting a study as part of a cooperative programme between the organisations. The study aims at creating an inventory of current digital repository activities in developing and transition countries, at both the infrastructure and services level.

This survey has been adapted from the DRIVER Inventory study into the present type and level of OAI-compliant digital repository activities in the EU by Maurits de Graaf and SURF and from the European repository study by Alma Swan, Key Perspectives.

The results of this survey will be made available online via a Wiki. All participants in the study will receive an invitation to look at and comment on the results of this inventory for their own country. According to the organisations, this is the first time that such data will be collected about digital repository activity in developing and transition countries. It is hoped that the data will serve as important resource for promoting open access and repository development in these regions.

All repository managers in developing and transition countries are encouraged to participate. The survey is available online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Wdi_2buyQ_2b1wSDIrTQahrbQg_3d_3d

Specialist publishing group Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, is making the print version of Springer’s 150 years of publishing history freely available on the internet. The two-volume work Springer-Verlag: History of a Scientific Publishing House was published in 1992 to mark the publishing company’s 150th anniversary. The volumes appeared in print in English and German at the time. The online version of this publishing history will now be available in both languages on Springer’s online platform www.springerlink.com.

The first volume explains how Springer-Verlag started in 1842 as a publisher's bookstore in Berlin and describes the publishing activities of the Springer family: from political writings to German literature (Theodor Fontane, Jeremias Gotthelf) to a scientific publishing house.

The second volume looks at the company's development between 1945 and 1992 and its international expansion: New York, Vienna, London, Paris, Milan, etc. The managing director and owner at the time, Heinz Götze, was particularly far-sighted in stepping up activities in Asia and setting up new offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Delhi. The foundation was already laid back then for close contact with academics and scientists in China, where a publishing office was opened in 2007 in Beijing.

Healthcare publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has teamed up with the Copyright Clearance Center's (CCC) Rightslink system to automate online ordering of copyright permissions.

Rightslink claims to be the most widely used web-based licensing application, supporting more than 11,000 journals, magazines and newspapers, as well as thousands of books online. Users of content published by LWW will now be able to instantly obtain permissions to reuse and distribute copyrighted content.

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. By choosing Rightslink to license the content of its nearly 275 periodicals, LWW seeks to move the management of permissions requests from a time-consuming manual process to an efficient, automated and secure online ordering system. This is expected to accelerate the processing time and enable the company to focus on requests that are more complicated and need special consideration.

Storage and management services provider EMC Corporation, US, has announced a partnership with publisher John Wiley & Sons, US, to produce Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing and Protecting Digital Information. Information Storage and Management (ISM) is projected as the definitive reference on the full spectrum of storage technologies, for those who must understand how to efficiently store, manage and protect digital information — from students, to IT professionals in the field, to senior technology decision makers.

To best address the modern datacenter, which is typically comprised of multiple technologies from numerous vendors, this comprehensive technology book takes an 'open' approach to information storage and management, focusing on concepts and principles, rather than product specifics. ISM is written by a team of storage industry experts from EMC, who leverage the company’s 30 years of experience with storage technologies, and is edited by G. Somasundaram, Director, EMC Education Services and Alok Shrivastava, Senior Director, EMC Education Services.

The publication's 40 contributing writers cover the evolution of storage technology, including traditional deployment, consolidated storage networking and storage virtualisation, while also addressing the most prevalent storage technologies, including direct attached storage (DAS), networked attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SAN), content addressed storage (CAS), and IP SAN. Various business continuity solutions using local and remote replications technologies are explained, along with backup, recovery and archival techniques. ISM also includes the current trends in information security and management of information storage, making ISM a necessary reference for today’s IT professional. The book's companion website http://education.emc.com/ismbook provides updated information on information storage technology trends, as well as additional learning aids.

ISM follows EMC's popular Information Storage and Management curriculum, which helps technology professionals achieve the industry-leading EMC Proven Professional certification.

Medical news service MedPage Today, US, has announced that it has been named the Best Overall Web Publication by the American Society of Healthcare Publication Editors (ASHPE) in ASHPE's 2009 annual awards competition. MedPage Today provides 24/7 real-time coverage and continuing medical education credit to physicians and other clinicians.

A first-time entrant, MedPage Today took the top spot and earned the Gold Award in the ASHPE competition's Online Category. A panel of well-respected business journalists and academics judged the entries against the publication's mission, the relevance to the category for which it was being considered, and its significance to the publication's target audience.

An authority on evolving trends in the healthcare publishing sector, ASHPE works to foster the highest ethical standards in management and rewards excellence in publication development and editorial performance. The organisation conducts its annual awards competition to recognise healthcare publications that demonstrate outstanding achievement in the four main categories of Editorial, Graphics, Online, and Overall Publication, and 33 subcategories.

The complete list of the 2009 winners can be found online at www.ashpe.org.

Niche information services provider United Business Media Limited, UK, has announced that Nigel Wilson has tendered his resignation as Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer. Also, he has stepped down as a member of UBM’s Board. The move follows his decision to join Legal and General Group Plc.

To ensure an orderly transition to his successor, Nigel will continue as UBM’s Chief Financial Officer until he takes up his new post in September. However Nigel will step down as a member of the Board with immediate effect. UBM will conduct a search for Nigel's successor over the course of the summer.

UBM focuses on worldwide information distribution, targeting and monitoring; and, the development and monetisation of B2B communities and markets. UBM's businesses inform markets and serve professional commercial communities -from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewellery traders, from farmers to pharmacists - with integrated events, online, print and business information products.

The eighth edition of blogspeak is now online. Featured are Janet D. Stemwedel (When big pharma pays a publisher to publish a fake journal...); Ben Parr (Is Real-time the Future of the Web?); Stevan Harnad (The Freedom to Publish and the protection of Copyright); and Colin Smith (Open Access and author-publisher relationships: loyalty or apprehension?). 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 HathiTrust Digital Library, a partnership among some of the US's largest academic research libraries, has launched a new digital catalogue search that delivers nearly 3 million full-text records through an Internet browser. The new service provides access to the collections of premier research libraries in the US.

Admission for the public to examine archives at the most prominent research libraries is an ongoing effort for HathiTrust to build a digital archive of library materials converted from print, co-owned and managed by participating academic institutions. HathiTrust is also currently finding ways to use large-scale full-text searching, which will provide researchers with a mechanism to search within the works and across the entire repository. Blending the latest technology with purpose of sharing knowledge, the service is building a community with the common goal of openly distributing information.

Launched in October 2008, the HathiTrust Digital Library includes the 12-university consortium known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), the 11 university libraries of the University of California system, and the University of Virginia. HathiTrust partners began including digital content from Indiana University and the University of California in late April. The addition of digital content from these institutions increases the number of books and journals in the repository by an estimated 500,000 volumes per month. Before adding these materials, content was exclusively from collections at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin.

Catalogue records of the HathiTrust Digital Library are also available to local libraries, which can download and incorporate HathiTrust records into a local catalogue. Many institutions, including the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado, have already successfully integrated the content.

The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Higher Education Academy have welcomed the recent publication of the HE in a Web 2.0 World report. The report looks at the projected future trends in the use of technology in higher education.

A committee of inquiry was set up after discussions between the Academy and JISC examined the online experiences of young people currently entering higher education, and how this impacts on their studies. Findings from the report show that students typically spend four hours a day online, a figure that looks set to rise as teenagers make increasing use of Web 2.0 technology in their daily lives. One of the challenges for the higher education sector is therefore to ensure that staff can keep pace with the advancing technology which many of their students rely on every day, using the technology to enhance the student learning experience.

This report provides an insight into the knowledge and experience students have of social web technologies. Through their collaborative work, the Academy and JISC will support college and university staff in their use of Web 2.0 technology, to help them become proficient users of a range of appropriate technologies.

The Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters has announced that academic publisher SAGE has extended its contract with ScholarOne Manuscripts (formerly Manuscript Central) as its online peer review system.

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.

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

CPM Resource Center (CPMRC), an Elsevier company, and The Shams Group (TSG) have partnered to provide small- and medium-sized hospitals with next-generation nursing and interdisciplinary documentation that integrates with their current health information systems.

Through this new partnership with TSG, CPMRC seeks to bring its evidence-based clinical content and interdisciplinary documentation to the hundreds of hospitals that use TSG’s software solutions to better leverage their MEDITECH and other HIT systems. CPMRC has developed an integrated content solution for interdisciplinary care coordination and documentation that includes evidence-based Clinical Practice Guidelines for medical and surgical diagnosis as well as human response conditions.

CPMRC provides evidence-based clinical content products and practice transformation services that assist healthcare organisations in creating a healthy work culture and interdisciplinary integration based on the CPM Professional Practice Framework that supports and advances professional practice and appropriate standardisation of care.

TSG provides innovative services and software solutions to hospitals. Over the past 20 years TSG has provided services to over 400 small-to-medium-sized hospitals, particularly those with MEDITECH systems, successfully leveraging legacy systems through portal technologies. The company’s browser-based portal applications including a recently rolled-out Physician/Clinician Portal are being well received in the marketplace.

GenomeQuest, Inc., a US-based provider of biological sequence search, content and analysis services, has announced the release of a Digital Gene Expression Workflow designed to enable researchers working with next-generation sequencing data. The Digital Gene Expression Workflow is the second such workflow to be delivered by GenomeQuest that allows researchers to analyse hundreds of millions of raw reads and explore the results in their web browser within the GenomeQuest web-application.

The Digital Gene Expression Workflow is fully cross-platform, working with Illumina, SOLiD, Helicos and 454 reads. The workflow is enabled by GenomeQuest’s high-speed commercial-grade algorithms, data management structure, and powerful compute cluster to deliver results within hours.

GenomeQuest is a sequence data management company providing applications and services to search, manage and mine the world’s sequence data. The company’s flagship product, GenomeQuest, is a web-based sequence data management platform that enables users to exploit genomic information resources including the latest sequencing tools and worldwide biological sequence reference databases.

Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing, US, has released a new resource for corporate sustainability professionals. Sustainability Reference Center is a comprehensive full-text database covering all aspects of sustainability.

Sustainability Reference Center is an expert collection providing full-text coverage of information relevant to many areas integral to sustainability including environmental stewardship; ‘Green’ issues and initiatives; recycling; renewable energy; resource conservation; sustainable business practices; and waste reduction. Additionally, it includes complete coverage of more than 800 publications - journals, monographs, magazines, and trade publications - all dealing with sustainability-related issues. The database offers tens of thousands of additional sustainability-focused articles, benchmarks, and best practices, selected from thousands of trade and industry publications.

The Reference Center also provides examples of sustainability practices from corporations worldwide. Much of the content is available in a searchable PDF format making it simple for corporate users to take advantage of this rich resource. Designed for corporate sustainability experts and information professionals, the database is designed to provide users with quick and easy access to vital information including complete full text with images, tables, charts, and other graphical content from hundreds of key titles.

The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) 2009 conference will be held from June 9-10, 2009, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Organised by the NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), the conference will examine how publishers, librarians and researchers can work together to create structures for managing and communicating scientific data.

Conference attendees will be able to meet the speakers - 14 data management experts from Europe, US and Canada; learn how digital libraries and e-publishers can accelerate scientific discovery; understand how your organisation can benefit from emerging eScience strategies; and network with sponsors and colleagues from government, publishing, information and library communities.

More information on the conference is available at www.icsti2009.org.

Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two open-source software platforms for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly material, have announced the launch of the DuraSpace Organization. Through this initiative, Fedora and DSpace seek to jointly provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve and provide access to digital content. DuraSpace will aim to sustain and grow the founding partners' flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace.

The new organisation will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit mission. It will be led by an executive team consisting of Sandy Payette as Chief Executive Officer; Michele Kimpton as Chief Business Officer; and Brad McLean as Chief Technology Officer.

DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the web and to new requirements from existing and future users. The first new technology to emerge will be a web-based service named ‘DuraCloud.’ A hosted service, DuraCloud seeks to leverage the cost efficiencies of cloud storage and cloud computing, while adding value to help ensure longevity and re-use of digital content. DuraSpace Organisation is developing partnerships with commercial cloud providers who offer both storage and computing capabilities.

DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with both communities and, when possible, develop synergistic technologies, services and programmes that increase interoperability of the two platforms. It will also support other open source software projects including the Mulgara semantic store, a scalable RDF database.

Academic publisher SAGE has announced that the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) has launched a new genre of research papers at the ongoing 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2009). IJRR data papers will facilitate and encourage the release of quality, peer reviewed datasets to the robotics community.

Published by SAGE, IJRR claims to be the oldest and the most highly read scholarly publication on robotics research. The introduction of data papers will enable authors to share original experimental data and provide the means to overcome a significant barrier to entry in robotics which currently slows down development in the field.

Data papers will be fully peer reviewed, and the papers will appear in the print version of the journal, ensuring that they can be cited in the same way as research papers. Eventually, IJRR will provide an archival service to authors, hosting all datasets and their supporting websites, thereby providing extensive value over time to the robotics research community.

In addition to the new data papers, SAGE launched a revamped multimedia site for the journal. The first robotics journal to host multimedia alongside their articles in 2001, the updated site has an improved look, feel and ease of access for all supplementary data. Access to supplementary data remains free to authors, and accessible to all. Each extension is peer-reviewed to ensure only the highest quality and relevant material is accepted into IJRR.

Cornell University Library, a US-based academic research library, has announced that it will no longer require its users to seek permission to publish public domain items duplicated from its collections. Instead, users may now use reproductions of public domain works made for them by the library or available via web sites, without seeking any further permission.

Cornell, as the producer of digital reproductions made from its collections, has in the past licensed the use of those reproductions. Individuals and corporations that failed to secure permission to repurpose these reproductions violated their agreement with the library.

The immediate impetus for the new policy is Cornell's donation of more than 70,000 digitised public domain books to the Internet Archive (details at www.archive.org/details/cornell).

Institutional restrictions on the use of public domain work, sometimes labelled 'copyfraud', have been the subject of much scholarly criticism. The Cornell initiative goes further than many other recent attempts to open access to public domain material by removing restrictions on both commercial and non-commercial use. Users of the public domain works are still expected to determine on their own that works are in the public domain where they live. They also must respect non-copyright rights, such as the rights of privacy, publicity and trademark.

Cornell will continue to charge service fees associated with the reproduction of analog material or the provision of versions of files different than what is freely available on the web. All library websites will be updated to reflect this new policy during 2009.

Energy publisher Hart Energy Publishing, US, has announced the launch of the Developing Unconventional Gas Video Center at www.dug2009.com/shop, where keynote and panel presentations can be purchased and viewed online from Hart's Developing Unconventional Gas (DUG) conference held in April in Fort Worth, Texas. Videos from the A&D Workshop: Unconventional Gas that preceded the conference are also available at this website.

Each segment offers streaming video of the presentation; downloadable slides; a one-page overview written by Hart's editors; and a streaming video of the post-presentation press conference, where the speakers and panelists fielded questions from Hart's editorial team and participating delegates.

The videos of keynotes and panels can be purchased individually, or special package pricing is available for all the videos from the DUG conference or the A&D Workshop. Site visitors can also see which videos are the most viewed by their peers and competitors.

Federated search services provider Deep Web Technologies, US, has announced the appointment of Maxine Swisa as the new Vice President of Engineering.

Swisa joins Deep Web Technologies with 25 years of experience in information technology. In her role as VP of Engineering, she will drive the technology strategy and the development of Deep Web Technologies' 'next-gen' federated search software. Prior to this, she was Chief Information Officer for a Fortune 1000 public company.

Swisa blends technological expertise and operating know-how to leverage cutting-edge strategies to deliver outstanding products. She has a history of leading teams to build scalable, flexible, and cost-effective information technology platforms, application frameworks, and data management systems.

STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has issued a public statement over its role in the marketing of the Vioxx anti-arthritis drug. The publisher acknowledged that it had failed to meet its disclosure standards in producing a publication sponsored by US pharmaceutical group Merck.

In a statement issued by the company, Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division, has said that the global publisher is conducting an internal review but believe this was an isolated practice from a past period in time. He further stated that the company will continue to partner with all scientists and clinical investigators, including those in the pharmaceutical industry, to help communicate the findings of high-quality, peer-reviewed medical research.

Elsevier produced several issues of a magazine called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine between 2003 and 2005. The magazine carried articles promoting Merck products Fosamax and Vioxx. The company, however, failed to state that the publication was sponsored by Merck. Elsevier is part of the Reed Elsevier group, which produces the Lancet, the medical journal that has accused Merck of selling Vioxx after it became aware of the drug's heart risks.

Merck has been a subject of much controversy as regards disclosure of cardiovascular events linked to Vioxx. In 2008, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that Merck regularly prepared scientific studies by itself or farmed them out to medical publishing companies. According to the report, the company hired research scientists to claim authorship, even if their involvement was minimal. The reports frequently were penned by ghostwriters and some – on Vioxx studies – minimised the risk of death, the report claimed.

Financial ties between doctors, medical researchers and the drug industry is a known fact in the industry. Highly regarded doctors and researchers have also faced a great deal of criticism because of their financial arrangements with pharmaceutical companies. The latest Elsevier incident is seen to mark a fresh twist in a long debated controversy on how pharma companies influence academic journals by paying for large numbers of reprints of articles favourable to their drugs for distribution to doctors.

Merck described the publication as a 'complimentary journal' comprising articles on its drugs from peer-reviewed publications, which mentioned its funding for the studies and a 'hypothetical cardiovascular risk' associated with Vioxx.

Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have announced that the 19th biennial SPARC-ACRL forum on emerging issues in scholarly communication will be held at the Chicago meeting of the American Library Association in July. Co-sponsored by SPARC and ACRL, the forum will explore 'Rough waters: Navigating hard times in the scholarly communication marketplace.'

Libraries have long been grappling with constrained collection budgets. The economy and its impact on library and higher education budgets are projected as the most urgent concern for the library community today. This forum will take a bird’s eye view of the scholarly communication marketplace and suggest tactics for navigating through tough times.

Speakers will revisit the economics of the scholarly communications marketplace, offer concrete strategies that libraries can deploy now to begin to offset financial pressures, demonstrate positive efforts from the publishing community, and offer a global view of new opportunities to advance change and thrive in future.

Key figures in UK education and research recently met at the British Library to explore the tensions and opportunities surrounding the role of copyright law in an increasingly digital knowledge economy. A panel drawn from the fields of publishing, libraries and higher education provided a range of perspectives on how copyright might best support innovation, education and research in the online environment.

The debate was chaired by the Chief Executive of the British Library, Dame Lynne Brindley. Other speakers included Dr. Annette Davidson of the University of Edinburgh, speaking about access to content for academics and researchers; Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England); Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of BECTA; and Kate Harris, Divisional MD of Oxford University Press, offering the publishing perspective.

The event was the latest in a series of discussions and debates facilitated by the British Library. The Library is seeking to promote a wide-ranging and balanced public debate on how intellectual property regulation can best serve the public interest in the digital age.

Ovid, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that it is providing hospitals and healthcare centers around the world with free 30-day access to the Ovid MEDLINE's database and CABI's Global Health database on the OvidSP platform. The move is projected to help physicians, pediatricians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals combat the current H1N1 flu outbreak that is seriously affecting thousands of people globally.

As a leading aggregator of medical content, Ovid also invites other publishers to join its efforts to support immediate access to important medical and scientific resources so healthcare workers can quickly and effectively respond to the outbreak. In addition, UpToDate, Ovid’s sister company within Wolters Kluwer Health, is also supporting the global fight against H1N1 by providing free access to professional and patient articles. UpToDate is allowing free access to two professional topics and one patient topic via its marketing website, www.uptodate.com.

MEDLINE, produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, is a widely used bibliographic source for current biomedical research dating back to 1948. Updated daily, MEDLINE includes more than 18 million records drawn from more than 3,900 journals and other publications in over 70 countries. The OvidSP implementation of MEDLINE provides researchers and clinicians with fast access to precise and comprehensive answers to their search queries.

CABI's Global Health claims to be the only bibliographic, abstracting and indexing database available to public health research and practice. Indexing journals and other full-text publications produced in more than 150 countries in 50 languages, the database contains a growing list of more than 2 million bibliographic records. Users will find hundreds of bibliographic records with specific information on swine flu in humans.

LibLime, a US-based provider of open source library software, has announced a partnership with Syndetics Solutions to provide enriched bibliographic content to users of the Koha open-source integrated library system (ILS). Syndetics Solutions is a supplier of descriptive content designed exclusively for library catalogues. Its services enable libraries to link to more than 15 million data elements including cover images and a variety of data element matching on more than 6 million ISBNs and UPCs.

Syndetic Solutions contracted with LibLime to integrate Syndetics enhanced bibliographic content with the Koha ILS. Additionally, LibLime has signed an exclusive contract for enhanced content through Syndetics, whereby LibLime will promote and help distribute Syndetic Solutions' enhanced bibliographic information to LibLime customers.

LibLime educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. It then facilitates implementation of open-source in libraries by providing development, customisation, support and training solutions - tailored to each library's needs.

Molecular Autism, a new journal published by open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, is now accepting submissions. The journal is edited by Professors Joseph D Buxbaum of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Simon Baron-Cohen of University of Cambridge. They will be supported by an expert international Editorial Board.

Molecular Autism seeks to be the major forum for research into the molecular basis of autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions. The journal will focus on research that relates causal and risk factors with these conditions, leading to model systems and novel therapeutics. This will include studies of genetics, neuropathology, neuroimaging, biomarkers, and molecular neurobiology.

The primary focus is on conditions in the autism spectrum (including Asperger syndrome), but the scope also encompasses molecular research into related neurodevelopmental conditions such as specific language impairment, dyspraxia, and specific or general developmental delays; and into related medical syndromes such as fragile X syndrome, tuberous sclerosis, and Rett syndrome.

Market research and data services provider Research and Markets, Ireland, has announced the addition of the "Publishing Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed" report to their offering.

Publishing Addiction Science is a comprehensive guide for addiction scientists - especially novice researchers - facing the complex process of publishing in scholarly journals. Written by an international group of addiction science journal editors and their colleagues, the guide tackles such issues as choosing a journal, publishing qualitative research, responding to reviewers reports, becoming a reviewer yourself, and appropriate responses to ethical issues common to addiction science publishing.

International in its scope, and now in a thoroughly revised, expanded and updated second edition, the publication gives special attention to the challenges for researchers from developing and non-English-speaking countries. Publishing Addiction Science is cosponsored by the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors and the Society for the Study of Addiction.

Research and Markets provides the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. The company hold '1000's of major research publications from most of the leading publishers, consultants and analysts.