Internet search services provider Google, Inc., US, is facing growing opposition in Europe to its legal settlement in the US with book publishers and authors, media reports have indicated. This is expected to create a fresh challenge to a deal that could help determine the future structure of the digital books business.

While limited only to book rights in the US, the proposed settlement, which is awaiting court approval, has aroused concern among European publishers. These publishers fear they will lose some of their rights to millions of European works held in university libraries in the US, which have been drawn into Google's book-scanning project. Under the US legal deal, unless copyright holders opt out of the arrangement, large segments of the works will be displayed by Google to US-based Internet users, while access to readers in Europe and elsewhere are blocked.

There has been strong opposition to the terms, which are the same as those applying to copyright holders based in the US, from publishers in Germany. This comes ahead of a US court hearing in early October to determine whether to formalise the settlement. Syndicat National de l'Edition, the French publishers' association, said the settlement would be particularly unfavourable to non-US publishers, given that all out-of-print titles would be automatically included in Google's digital library unless copyright holders opted out.

Google countered that its book search service complies with international copyright laws and that it is in no case calling into question the copyright of authors and publishers outside of the US. The company is likely to face more opposition when a lawsuit brought by French publishers goes to trial next month.

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US-based journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and scientific video journal Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) have announced a partnership for joint production and publication of scientific videos online. This partnership seeks to enhance scientific articles published in Science through video demonstrations of experimental techniques. JoVE is a scientific journal that publishes video articles of biological experiments from academic institutions including Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley.

Under the partnership, which is currently in its pilot phase, Science will select papers suitable for the video enhancement, and will identify author groups willing to help shape the video demonstrations. JoVE will then work with the authors to create the actual demonstrations, using the company's platform for geographically distributed video-production. According to Stewart Wills, Online Editor at Science, direct, in-article video demonstrations should increase the value of Science research to its main audience, working scientists and students.

The first video in the programme documents an innovative method for visualising and mapping the success or failure of immune control in viral infections, work published by Qingsheng Li et al. in Science's March 27, 2009 issue. The paper and associated video can be found at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/323/5922/1726. Access is free of charge for users who register with the site. The video and detailed protocol notes are also available at the JoVE site at http://www.jove.com/index/Details.stp?ID=1561.

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Medical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital (CFMCH) has selected its ProVation MD software for procedure documentation and coding. The software will be used to document the more than 2,000 Gastroenterology and Pulmonary procedures performed annually at the Houston-based hospital.

ProVation MD software, available in a full range of medical specialties, replaces dictation and transcription and allows physicians to efficiently document procedures at the point of care. ProVation software produces complete, coding-ready and image-enhanced procedure notes that result in greater efficiency, increased profitability and clinician satisfaction. Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital is a 180-bed hospital located in Houston, TX.

Created by clinicians, ProVation MD software produces complete procedure documentation that results in greater efficiency, streamlined workflow and clinician satisfaction. The software interfaces seamlessly with patient demographic and other healthcare IT systems, allows images taken during the procedure to be integrated directly into the report, and has market-leading query/reporting capabilities for quality or other initiatives. ProVation MultiCaregiver software delivers GI nursing documentation, with the ability to interface with vitals monitors and allowing caregivers to capture procedure data throughout the continuum of care.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) has announced that it has published its Annual Report online for the first time. The 2008 ACS Annual Report has been published exclusively on the Web in a multimedia format. ACS has been working diligently towards a greener environment to reduce the use of paper in everyday activities whenever possible.

As users browse through the site (www.acs.org/annualreport), they will find all of the traditional features of an ACS annual report including the Society's financial information, yearly highlights, and officers' message. In addition, ACS has launched a companion Web site to help ACS members and potential members navigate its various programmes and resources. Called ACS Now More than Ever (www.acs.org/now), the Web site groups all of the Society's programmes and services into four categories: advance, collaborate, learn and lead.

Under the advance tab, members can learn about ACS's career programmes, enroll in a short course, or find out about grants. The lead tab helps members find out how to join the ACS Legislative Action Network and contribute to educational programmes like Project SEED, which provides high school students with a first-hand research experience. The website also features videos and real-time polls.

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Online submission system provider Aries Systems Corporation, US, has announced that the American Nuclear Society journals will be deploying Editorial Manager for online submission and peer review.

The Editorial Manager online submission system is used by several scholarly journals and processes tens of thousand of manuscripts per month. In March 2009, EMH Swiss Medical Publisher Ltd announced an agreement to deploy Aries' Editorial Manager online peer-review system to journals published by EMH. The project began with deployment of Editorial Manager to two of the publisher's leading journals - Swiss Medical Weekly (SMW) and Kardiovaskulare Medizin.

The American Nuclear Society is a not-for-profit, international, scientific and educational organisation. It was established by a group of individuals who recognised the need to unify the professional activities within the diverse fields of nuclear science and technology.

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Information service company EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), Netherlands, has developed an open source software development kit (SDK) for developing clients and servers for the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI). The SDK will assist content providers in implementing SUSHI – a key requirement for being compliant with Release 3 of the COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) Code of Practice for Journals and Databases.

The SDK includes .Net classes that will facilitate working with COUNTER 3.0 data and SUSHI 1.6 services. Whether the intended solution is a SUSHI client or server, these classes will provide the groundwork to allow developers to focus on the logic rather than implementing the standard. The SDK, which contains documentation, source code, a sample client, and a sample server can be found at http://code.google.com/p/ebscosushisdk/.

SUSHI will be an integral part of EBSCO’s Usage Consolidation module, a new service that is being added to ERM Essentials, the company’s e-resource management system.

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Integrated media firms Ziff Davis Enterprise, US, and JAZD have announced the launch of the TechDirect directory for global enterprise IT buyers. Built and powered by JAZD, TechDirect is projected to offer comprehensive information on technology vendors and their products, along with product comparisons, downloadable specifications, pricing and marketing literature. It is expected that buyers will use these pieces of information at specific points in the purchasing process.

TechDirect will also integrate editorial content, peer-to-peer community/review features, and additional vendor information from other Ziff Davis Enterprise brands. These include eWEEK.com, an enterprise IT news site, and WebBuyersGuide.com, which houses a library of white papers, case studies, research reports and other tools. TechDirect is scheduled for launch in Fall 2009.

While Ziff Davis Enterprise offers enterprise IT editorial content and engagement solutions, JAZD offers online, B2B, directory-driven marketplace platforms.

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Academic publisher SAGE has announced that Methodspace – the social network for the research methods community – has passed more than 2000 members in less than six months after launch.

Launched in March by SAGE, Methodspace facilitates online discussion about all aspects of research methodology. Registered users can participate in discussions about methodology issues and controversies; find out about relevant conferences and events; and discover and review new resources in methods, including free book chapters and journal articles.

The site has attracted an international community of professional and scholarly researchers from more than 100 countries and from a broad range of disciplines, including quantitative, qualitative and mixed research methods. Users represent PhD students; researchers; lecturers; medical professionals; teachers; and business professionals.

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Higher education publisher Cengage Learning, US, has announced that it will enter the print textbook rental market with the Fall 2009 launch of CengageBrain.com - a single destination providing students with the choice to rent or purchase the company's diverse array of learning solutions. CengageBrain.com will serve as the expanded version of the current iChapters.com. Cengage Learning is the first higher education publisher to offer a print textbook rental option directly to students, with titles available at a cost of 40 to 70 percent less than the suggested retail price, addressing customer demand for additional lower cost options.

The site will launch in December 2009 with an initial offering of several hundred titles for rent, followed by a more comprehensive roll-out of titles available for rent in July 2010. CengageBrain.com will serve as a one-stop shop offering students yet another choice when acquiring course materials, in addition to the current options of purchasing print textbooks, e-textbooks, individual e-chapters and audio books. The site will also include Cengage Learning's broad range of homework and study tools, features a selection of free content and offers discounts for purchasing multiple products.

The rental process will be simple and convenient for customers. Students who choose the rental option will have immediate access to the first chapter of the book in e-book format and will also have a choice of shipping options. Once the rental term is complete, students can either choose to print a return label from CengageBrain.com and ship the textbook back, or purchase the title.

CengageBrain.com is the latest innovation from Cengage Learning, the first higher education publisher to offer a full-choice, direct-to-consumer online retail outlet and the first to sell e-textbooks by the chapter. The company has pioneered the development and delivery of a range of unique print and digital learning solutions, such as 4LTR Press, The Watch and Aplia.

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Digital content products and technologies provider ebrary, US, has announced a first-of-its-kind programme that brings libraries, corporations, and other organisations the best cost savings of the year on full-text e-books from leading publishers across the globe.

Under the Publisher Half-Off Sale programme, institutions around the globe can save 50 percent off list price when they purchase as few as 15 to 25 backlist titles from a single participating publisher through December 15, 2009. The vast majority of these titles are unavailable in Academic Complete or other ebrary subscription products. To date, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, IGI Global, Springer, Taylor & Francis, University of North Carolina Press, and Wiley have joined the programme, with additional publishers expected to participate shortly.

ebrary offers a growing selection of more than 170,000 digital books, handbooks, reports, maps, journals and other valuable content from over 350 of the world’s leading publishers under flexible subscription, purchase, and usage-based models. Additionally, the company offers e-publishing services for customers to cost-effectively distribute their own PDF content online on ebrary’s servers or their own. With this new initiative, ebrary is offering an opportunity for libraries, corporations, and other organisations to purchase and own authoritative content at discounted rates from an esteemed group of renowned publishers. Simultaneously, the company is providing participating publishers with new revenue opportunities for their backlist selections.

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Publisher Taylor & Francis Group (T&F), UK, and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology have announced their partnership to publish the Society’s flagship publication - Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (JVP).

The first issue of the journal appeared in 1981 and had 422 published pages. The total pages published yearly has increased steadily since then, but recent increases have been dramatic, leading to an all time high of 1,245 published pages in 2008. Currently, the contributors to the journal are scientists from the across the world.

The past few years have seen numerous changes, many in response to the increases in the size of the journal. These include the introduction of the online submission and review process, changes in format and cover, reorganisation of the editorial structure, and the introduction of a copy editor. Nevertheless, the increases in the size of the journal have placed a significantly increased financial burden on the society and its members. Similarly, the journal’s current format of four issues/year and the continued pressure from the numerous papers that are being submitted for publication each year have resulted in a large backlog of manuscripts.

The new publishing deal is expected to provide numerous advantages to the journal and to the Society. T&F is looking to bring to the Society and JVP its marketing skills and extensive connections to numerous scientific and educational institutions, as well as improved contact with the media. Among the most important positive changes, all at no extra cost to the Society, are a change from four to six issues a year; an increase in the number of pages published annually; a decreased time to publication; elimination of much of the backlog of manuscripts by the end of 2010; significant improvements in the proofing process of accepted manuscripts; a budget of 24 color pages each year subject to the editors’ discretion; and an annual supplementary memoir issue (maximum of 200 published pages).

Contributors to the journal will continue to receive a free PDF of their paper, which may be distributed to colleagues but not posted on the Internet, and will also receive 50 offprints at no additional cost.

T&F will also contribute toward an annual prize for JVP, the criteria to be decided by the editors and the Society. JVP will continue to be archived at BioOne and at JSTOR as at present, while T&F plans to create a similar archive that will be available through InformaWorld. The new arrangement will begin with the first issue of 2010.

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Nielsen Book, operator of the UK ISBN Agency and provider of product information, transaction and sales measurement services for the English language book industry worldwide, has announced its listings policy for e-books. This is in response to the International ISBN Agency recently issuing a policy statement on the use of ISBNs for e-books. The International ISBN Agency had restated the requirement in the ISBN standard that each different format of an electronic publication requires a separate ISBN. It had also newly legitimised the application in some circumstances of ISBNs to e-book products by resellers and distributors to ensure the continuity of trade systems across the supply chain.

According to the new Nielsen policy, e-books will only be listed on the Nielsen Book database and in Nielsen Book products and services if they are identified in accordance with the ISBN standard. All digital products including e-books should be listed with all appropriate aggregators. ISBNs that refer to a generic “master” record providing information not on a tradable product in a specified format, but rather on a package of content tradable in a number of different formats, will not be eligible for inclusion on the Nielsen Book database.

Nielsen Book is adopting this policy to support what it firmly believes to be supply chain best practice.

According to the company, hardwiring bibliographic and identification practice to the limited requirements of current initiatives and experiments runs the risk of storing up inhibitors to future flexibility and adds potential costs of system re-engineering down the line. On these grounds, it recommends that publishers adopt the most flexible policy now on product identification.

Nielsen Book has strongly recommended that publishers globally adopt the International ISBN Agency recommendations.

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Reed Elsevier has announced the appointment of Ben van der Veer RA as a non-executive director of Reed Elsevier PLC and of Reed Elsevier Group plc with effect from September 3, 2009, and as a member of the supervisory board of Reed Elsevier NV, subject to approval by Reed Elsevier NV’s shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting to be held on September 3, 2009. He will be appointed to the audit committees, effective the same date.

Ben van der Veer held the position of chairman of the executive board of KPMG in the Netherlands from 1999 – 2008 and was a member of the KPMG International board and management committee. He is a member of the supervisory boards of AEGON NV, TomTom NV and Siemens Nederland NV.

Reed Elsevier is a world leading publisher and information provider targeting the science and medical, legal and risk management, and business to business sectors. The company provides high value and flexible information solutions to professional users, with increasing emphasis on internet delivery.

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The latest edition of blogspeak is now online. Featured are Kent Anderson (Google Knol — Vanity Publishing Fails Again); John Timmer (Print, beware! Publishers are "on the road" to pure digital); John Blossom (Enterprise Publishers Confront Fallout from Earnings); and Gideon Burton (Is Open Scholarship Too Risky for Young Scholars?). 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

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, has announced that it is on track to register the 50 millionth unique chemical substance on September 7. The CAS REGISTRY claims to be the most comprehensive and high-quality compendium of publicly disclosed chemical information. This milestone comes only 9 months after CAS registered its 40 millionth substance.

REGISTRY is the only integrated comprehensive source of chemical information from a full range of patent and journal literature that is curated and quality controlled by scientists working around the world. For more than 100 years, CAS scientists and colleagues in several nations have meticulously analysed and indexed publicly disclosed global scientific information to build up the unique REGISTRY resource that provides not only chemical names, the unique CAS Registry Number, and vital literature references but also ancillary information such as experimental and predicted property data (boiling and melting points, etc.), commercial availability, preparation details, spectra, and regulatory information from international sources.

CAS scientists follow rigorous criteria that maintain high quality and reliability of information in its REGISTRY. Scientists identify reputable sources and use consistent analysis before registering a substance. REGISTRY is available to scientists through CAS' product, SciFinder, and its STN family of products. With these advanced search and analysis technologies, CAS helps scientists find reliable information that is vital to their research process.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced the latest release of its database Prous Science Integrity, developed in response to demand from synthetic chemists in pharmaceutical and fine chemical companies.

The redesigned Organic Synthesis Knowledge Area within Prous Science Integrity allows researchers to directly retrieve intermediates and reagents, as well as synthesis schemes, to pinpoint key characteristics of synthesis route components in seconds. New visualisations and filtering methods plus incorporation of the latest industry standard chemical taxonomony (InChIs) are expected to enable new research approaches that save time and provide insights. All these new capabilities can be applied to the foundation of 19,000 schemes of synthesis and over 85,000 structure-searchable intermediates. These are projected to make Prous Science Integrity a key resource to synthetic chemists in the pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals industries.

With this enhanced support, pharmaceutical synthetic chemists can expect to easily identify competitor activity, evaluate newly designed synthetic routes and locate suppliers of selected intermediates. Chemists at fine chemicals companies will be able to identify what new drugs are in development and at what phase. This may give them the opportunity to promote their existing chemicals, develop new intermediates or highlight alternative steps in a synthesis scheme.

The upgrade is the first of several planned phases over the next year that are designed to increase the depth and breadth of information and add new features, while continuing to provide high-quality content.

Prous Science Integrity seeks to seamlessly integrate biological, chemical and pharmacological information on more than 300,000 compounds with demonstrated biological activity, plus tens of thousands of synthesis intermediates and over 125,000 patent family records. Updated daily, this database is designed to support the drug discovery and development activities for thousands of pharmacologists and medicinal chemists as well as other scientific researchers.

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The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the standards and trade association for digital publishing, has announced that the maintenance activities associated with the EPUB standards will start this month. The DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) Consortium will provide leadership and resources to assist in the maintenance for the EPUB standards. The working group charter was unanimously approved by the IDPF membership.

The EPUB standards are open and living specifications. The members of the working group will assist with corrections and improvements to the EPUB standards that will lead to wider adoption and greater accessibility.

One of the long-term goals of the IDPF is to achieve content interoperability between Reading Systems. Wide, complete and correct adoption of the EPUB standards will provide a significant boost for all involved. This includes publishers, conversion companies, distributors, sales channels, interface developers, and consumers.

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Education materials publisher McGraw-Hill Education, US, and online textbook rental company Chegg.com have announced the launch of a pilot shared-revenue programme. Under the initiative, McGraw-Hill will provide new print textbooks directly to Chegg for its online rental business. This first-of-its-kind collaboration will provide McGraw-Hill with a new revenue stream and allow Chegg to expand the supply of textbooks that students can rent from its service.

Traditionally, McGraw-Hill has received payment only for the initial purchase of a textbook by a distributor or bookstore. These channel partners typically resold the products to students and bought them back at the end of the semester to resell again. Under this agreement, McGraw-Hill will share in the rental revenues throughout the life of each McGraw-Hill title in the pilot programme.

Online textbook rentals have been growing in popularity for years, and certain McGraw-Hill titles have been available through Chegg's online textbook rental service since Chegg began nationwide operations in 2007. This agreement creates a first-ever direct working relationship between a publisher and textbook rental company, wherein Chegg will source all of its rental inventory directly from McGraw-Hill. The agreement also creates a rental-revenue-sharing pilot covering a series of 25 McGraw-Hill Higher Education titles available for rental on http://www.chegg.com/.

In a similar move, higher education publisher Cengage Learning recently announced that it will enter the print textbook rental market with the Fall 2009 launch of CengageBrain.com - a single destination providing students with the choice to rent or purchase the company's diverse array of learning solutions. CengageBrain.com is the latest innovation from Cengage Learning, the first higher education publisher to offer a full-choice, direct-to-consumer online retail outlet and the first to sell e-textbooks by the chapter.

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Society publisher EDP Sciences, France, has announced that more than 20 publications produced and distributed by the company have an Impact Factor (IF), and the combined efforts of the editorial offices and the resources made available to them over the past several years have yielded excellent results. The IF figures have shown continuous growth in the short term and especially the medium term.

Some of the year’s most gratifying achievements include Astronomy & Astrophysics with Impact Factor 4.153; Veterinary Research with Impact Factor 3.060; Annals of Forest Science with Impact Factor 1.554; EPL with Impact Factor 2.203; and Agronomy for Sustainable Development with Impact Factor 1.649.

Each year, Journal Citation Reports, ISI Web of Knowledge announces the latest Impact Factors. Impact factor is a measurement of the frequency with which peer-reviewed journals are cited by other researchers. It is evaluated according to the number of citations of the papers published therein, and helps to assess the relative importance of a journal, particularly when comparing it to others in the same field.

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The Radiological Society of North America recently unveiled a new look and layout for the Radiology (radiology.rsna.org) and RadioGraphics (radiographics.rsna.org) homepages and articles. Along with newly designed tables of contents and a flexible, three-column design, RadioGraphics and Radiology share other new features designed to improve viewing of online contents and facilitate article searches.

Journal articles now include links to a number of social networking/sharing sites including myRSNA.org, complore.com, citeulike.org, facebook.com, digg.com and delicious.com. Links are located in the middle column. Also, users can move their mouse over the table of contents and search results to get instant pop-up previews of article abstracts without leaving the page.

Figure and table thumbnails can now be enlarged from within an article. Under a tag-along navigation functionality, the navigation box follows along as the user scrolls down the article page. With better positioning of the title and abstract, along with quick previous/next links, the sites are projected to offer easier scanning and reading.

The RadioGraphics homepage has some additional changes to its appearance such as reorganised links; a streamlined and consolidated services section (including a separate category for CME Resources); and new features including, “In This Issue,” which spotlights selected articles from the journal’s Quality Initiatives, Informatics and Education Exhibits sections.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that an H1N1 influenza channel has been added to the Elsevier Global Medical News (EGMN) wire service division of the International Medical News Group. The H1N1 channel was created to meet physicians' continuing needs to keep up-to-date with the news about the spread of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, as well as the new diagnostics, vaccines, clinical trials and treatments for H1N1 infections.

Elsevier Global Medical News is the daily syndicated medical news wire service of the International Medical News Group (IMNG), which has been providing medical specialty news for the past 40 years. The EGMN division was launched in January 2006 and its syndicated news now appears in 30 countries as part of its clients’ websites and intranets. It is the medical specialty news provider to Elsevier's MDConsult, MedConnect and OncologySTAT. Offering original news written for physicians and divided into therapeutic areas or ‘channels,’ EGMN is produced by more than 60 journalists with on-site reporting from over 450 medical meetings, breaking news, journal summaries and feature stories from medical experts.

EGMN's H1N1 news content is also available on the Lancet’s H1N1 site, www.thelancet.com/H1N1-flu. The Lancet's H1N1 Resource Centre is the result of a collaborative effort by the editors of over 40 Elsevier journals and 11 learned societies who have agreed to make freely available on this site any relevant content.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that they have joined the InChI Trust, a not-for-profit organisation to expand and develop the InChI Open Source chemical structure representation algorithm. The algorithm provides a consistent, credible and compatible way for databases of chemical structures to be linked together for the benefit of users of chemical information around the world.

Support of the InChI initiative and the adoption of InChI's within Prous Science Integrity will further chemistry users' ability to integrate information across multiple sources and communicate this information in a consistent way across the globe.

Prous Science Integrity seamlessly integrates biological, chemical and pharmacological information on more than 300,000 compounds with demonstrated biological activity, plus tens of thousands of synthesis intermediates and over 125,000 patent family records. Updated daily, this unique database is designed to empower your drug discovery and development activities.

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Content solutions and services provider Really Strategies, US, and DocZone, the industry’s first SaaS XML content management system, has announced the keynote speaker for the 2009 RSuite User Conference to be held October 6, 2009. Howard Ratner, CTO, Nature Publishing Group (NPG), will be the featured keynote speaker for the event.

Howard is in charge of all US operations and has global responsibilities for web development, web services, content services, production and manufacturing, and information technology across all NPG products. NPG is a leader in exploring and implementing new technologies, and recently announced the implementation of MarkLogic Server as its XML repository. At the RSuite User Conference, Howard will illuminate the opportunities that are revealed to publishers once content management is implemented throughout an organisation.

RSuite is a browser-based content management system that facilitates the creation, management, re-use, and distribution of XML, media files, and other document formats (Word, PDF, InDesign, etc). The RSuite user community has blossomed over the past year. At this year’s conference, existing customers, including Cengage Learning, MIT, ASTD, IGI Global, and others, will detail the process and benefits of implementing RSuite.

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Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, a US-based provider of test preparation services, has entered into a partnership with science and technology magazine Scientific American to bring select content from the magazine to its MCAT course materials.

Designed to teach challenging content related to the medical school entrance exam, the colour diagrams and 3-D figures (infographics) will be used for Kaplan’s MCAT Review Notes in biology, physics, general chemistry and organic chemistry. Kaplan’s new MCAT course materials with enhanced content from Scientific American will be available in both print format and online, beginning August 21. Through this partnership, students enrolled in a Kaplan MCAT course will receive a five-month subscription to Scientific American.

Published by Nature Publishing group, Scientific American is brought out in 19 foreign language editions with a total circulation of more than 1 million worldwide. It is targeted at business executives, opinion leaders, policy makers, academics and well-educated general consumers.

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Medical publisher Handbooks in Health Care Company (HHC) has announced a tie-up with Rittenhouse Book Distributors, a US-based health sciences books distributor, to offer informative and easy-to-access medical content via video website www.youtube.com.

The campaign, entitled ‘The Experts in Medicine Series,’ will be featured on both the Rittenhouse and HHC websites (www.rittenhouse.com and www.hhcbooks.com). Additionally, the videos will be searchable on YouTube. The series showcases medical authors discussing contemporary topics in medicine while previewing the text of their latest titles published by HCC.

Now in its 30th year, HHC, a division of Associates in Medical Marketing Company Inc., has purportedly sold millions of copies of over 100 original, pocket-sized handbooks in almost every major therapeutic category and disease state. According to the company, all HHC books cater to today's busy physician, nursing professionals and pharmacy professionals.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) are co-hosting a Forum, ‘An Age of Discovery: Distinctive Collections in the Digital Age.’ To be held from October 15–16, 2009, in Washington, DC, the Forum builds on the work of the ARL Special Collections Working Group. The aim is to focus attention on opportunities available in the digital environment for leveraging the strengths of special collections, making them more widely accessible. The co-hosts seek to bring together librarians, archivists, and others with responsibilities for stewarding special and distinctive resources, and to identify strategies for advancing this goal.

The forum is open to all. In particular, directors of research and academic libraries, archives, and historical societies are encouraged to attend, along with other staff members who have responsibilities that encompass special collections.

Programme sessions will address why are special collections important? exploring the value proposition; collaborative strategies to build cross-institutional collections; special collections as laboratories for researchers and students; integrating special collections into the enterprise; and what changes with Digital Content?

The Forum website speaker and programme details are available online at http://www.arl.org/events/fallforum/forum09/index.shtml.

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Symyx Technologies, Inc., a US-based provider of technologies for R&D, Inc. has announced that the Symyx Available Chemicals Directory (ACD) has moved from quarterly to monthly updates of supplier catalogues. Continuously improving the update frequency of ACD enables scientists to identify the optimal set of compounds for their synthesis or library with increased confidence that those compounds will be available at the indicated prices from the selected suppliers.

Symyx ACD claims to be the most widely integrated and accessible commercial compound directory in the world. ACD information consolidates sourcing information from over 870 compound suppliers and is available to scientists through the applications they use every day. With ACD, scientists can access up-to-date chemical property, availability, and pricing information in the context of their workflows through in-house, custom applications or standard applications such as Symyx Notebook, Symyx Isentris, ISIS and Symyx Logistics lab informatics software. Scientists can also access ACD sourcing information via smartphone applications and the Symyx-hosted DiscoveryGate and DiscoveryGate Web Service platforms.

Used by researchers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical and agrochemical sectors worldwide, Symyx ACD is a meticulously curated chemical sourcing database containing over one million unique chemicals (including 2D and 3D structures), over three million products, and over six million packages offered for purchase in bulk and research quantities.

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Scientific publisher RSC Publishing, UK, the publishing arm of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has announced the 2010 launch of a new journal Chemical Science. Researchers from across all the chemical sciences will now have a new dedicated home for presenting findings of exceptional significance. Professor David MacMillan of Princeton, USA will serve as the Editor-in-Chief. He will lead an international team of Associate Editors to drive the scientific development and quality of the content of the journal.

Making the announcement at the RSC booth at the ACS Fall 2009 National Meeting in Washington, Editorial Director Dr James Milne described the new venture as a milestone in the development of the RSC publishing portfolio. The new peer-reviewed journal will publish most significant cutting-edge research in the field of chemical sciences. It will build on the successes of related RSC flagship journals Chemical Communications and Chemical Society Reviews, both of which enjoy an international reputation for high quality, high impact content and speed of publication.

From launch until December 2011, the current issue of Chemical Science will be freely available online for all readers via the website www.rsc.org/chemicalscience. Free institutional online access will also be available to registered users.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has expanded its non-English full-text scholarly content with the release of Fuente Académica Premier. This database represents a rapidly growing collection of Latin American, Portuguese and Spanish-language periodicals. Fuente Académica Premier includes full text for more than 650 scholarly publications and all collection of academic books from 18 countries that will grow to more than 75.

Researchers looking for more international full-text coverage will find all major subject areas covered with particular emphasis on agriculture, biological sciences, economics, history, law, literature, philosophy, psychology, public administration and sociology. Search functionality is enhanced through the incorporation of author-supplied keywords in Spanish.

This new resource builds on the coverage of EBSCO’s well-received Fuente Académica database. Fuente Académica Premier provides additional academic books, scholarly journals and a deep backfile which goes back to volume one, issue one for some titles. Much like other EBSCOhost databases, Fuente Académica Premier makes it possible for institutions to access expanded coverage as their needs and budgets warrant.

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Online publishing services provider Semantico Ltd., UK, has announced that the Royal Marsden Manual Online, an online learning and reference product developed by Semantico in partnership with Wiley-Blackwell has been shortlisted for the ALPSP Publishing Innovation Award.

The Royal Marsden Manual Online extends the usefulness of the standard reference work on nursing good practice by employing Web 2.0 User Generated Content (UGC) in enabling local trusts to add their own Trust-specific procedure guidelines. Users can comment on procedures in the Manual and add extra information which carries their attribution and contact details. A sophisticated back-end puts control and workflow in the hands of the individual Trust, enabling administrators to manage the workflow process and set their own schedules for review.

The ALPSP award for Publishing Innovation is in recognition of a truly innovative approach to any aspect of publication. Applications are judged on their originality and innovative qualities, together with their utility, benefit to their community and long term prospects. The winner of the award will be announced on September 10, 2009, at the ALPSP International Conference Dinner at the Oxford Belfry.

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Open access publisher BioMed Central, UK, has announced that Investigative Genetics, a new open access journal, is now accepting submissions. The journal will be overseen by co-Editors-in-Chief Bruce Budowle (University of North Texas Health Science Center, USA), Manfred Kayser (Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam, Netherlands) and Antti Sajantila (University of Helsinki, Finland). They will be supported by an expert Editorial Board.

Investigative Genetics publishes articles on the development and application of molecular genetics in a wide range of science disciplines with societal relevance. These include forensic issues and legal medicine, evolutionary, anthropological and historical studies, as well as epidemiology and biosafety.

The journal aims to provide a venue for novel, cutting-edge research and technological developments that will, through the application of molecular genetics, answer questions of past and present life, enhance life quality, and provide a safer living environment. In addition, articles addressing the important issues of statistics, validity, reliability, and ethics related to the use and understanding of genetics will be published.

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XML content server provider Mark Logic Corporation, US, has announced that Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Companies, is using MarkLogic Server to power LNG TraderNet (www.platts.com/NaturalGas/Real-Time Information/lngtradernet). LNG TraderNet is a web-based service that provides members of the LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) community with the latest market intelligence and analytical tools on the physical energy markets. Utilising MarkLogic, Platts is expected to drive internal cost savings and more effectively price, package and monetise its energy and metals information.

LNG TraderNet puts the latest data covering the global LNG market within reach, including Platts' real-time news, pricing and analytical services. It features a comprehensive range of resources, including fundamental market data, decision-support tools and news from Platts' global editorial team. As the foundation for the LNG TraderNet service, MarkLogic Server takes the XML created as part of Platts' newsletter production process and inserts metadata from a taxonomy to tag the textual content. This enables Platts to take the content that was previously locked in static PDFs and relate it to other contextual information to help them provide these value-added services.

MarkLogic Server has also provided Platts with custom publishing capabilities that allow users to extract excerpts of stories, or an entire article, for inclusion in an existing or newly created custom report. Moreover, now Platts can expect to provide its customers with new search and Web 2.0-style features that allow for the ranking of search results by relevance and/or the number of previous views; relate search results to pricing assessments and other markets fundamental data, such as weather; permit users to save searches for future use and create RSS feeds from those searches; numerically rank the quality of stories and post comments; and enable the automatic creation of lists that include the most-frequently mentioned keywords, such as trading regions. Searches can also be refined to drill down and return only results that include the original search terms and selected keywords.

McGraw-Hill Platts selected MarkLogic Server because it was looking for a comprehensive solution to better manage the execution of digital content assets and streamline its go-to-market processes. Before, Platts' content was tethered to different products and locked within collections of PDF files. Since MarkLogic supports loading content "as-is," Platts unlocked its business information and eliminated the need for costly and time consuming transformations of content. Mark Logic customers can easily combine XML content, documents, books, messages and user generated content into a single centralised repository. The simplified infrastructure is projected to enable Platts to benefit from a completely new web delivery application that delivers a more aggregated approach to content management.

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