Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced that it is now offering site license access to Investigación y Ciencia, the Spanish-language edition of Scientific American, as well as its sister publication, Mente y cerebro, and archives. All titles, available in Spanish, will be hosted on the Investigación y Ciencia platform, http://www.nature.com/libraries/IyC/index.html.
Both Investigación y Ciencia and Mente y cerebro include articles from Scientific American in Spanish as well as brand new articles published by the Spanish speaking community. Together with Scientific American, Investigación y Ciencia complements the consumer media portfolio NPG offers to site license customers in the Spanish speaking scientific community.
The NPG sales team will offer site license access to government, corporate and academic customers. A current site license subscription includes access to the current year and the previous 4 years in PDF format. The archive site license collection is available as a one time purchase and includes access to Investigación y Ciencia (content back to 1996 PDF format) and Mente y cerebro (content back to 2002 PDF format).
Founded in 1976, Investigación y Ciencia is the best-selling consumer science magazine in Spanish speaking countries. Mente y cerebro, a bimonthly magazine, is the Spanish-language edition of Scientific American Mind. It features articles based on neuroscience and focuses on topics such as Alzheimer's, drug addiction, memory, artificial intelligence, and learning. Both magazines are published by the Spanish publishing house, Prensa Científica. Licences and customer support will be continued to be handled directly by the Prensa Científica team.
The Investigación y Ciencia portfolio is the latest in archive offerings from NPG. The Spektrum der Wissenschaft portfolio, for German-speaking customers, is hosted on the Spektrum platform, http://www.spektrum.de. Scientific American's complete archive, back to volume 1, issue 1 in 1845, is available on nature.com. The Nature archive 1869-1996 is also available on the nature.com platform.
Project MUSE has announced that 2013 pricing is now available for the UPCC Book Collections, along with several new purchase options and a new current-content subscription offering. Project MUSE is a collaboration between libraries and publishers, providing full-text, affordable and user-friendly online access to a comprehensive selection of prestigious humanities and social sciences journals.
The UPCC collections include scholarly books primarily in the humanities and social sciences from more than 80 university presses and related not-for-profit publishers, and will make available more than 23,000 digital books by the end of 2013. Among the additional purchase options available to libraries are a new Subject Collection offering, Ecology and Evolution, for which both backlist and frontlist collections will be available, and current collections in Language and Linguistics, a subject area previously only available in an archive collection.
MUSE is also introducing a new set of Area Studies Collections, including African Studies, American Studies, Asian and Pacific Studies, Jewish Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Russian and East European Studies. These cross-disciplinary collections bring together books that facilitate in-depth examination of the historical, cultural, political, and social forces shaping the region of interest.
A further new option for accessing the UPCC scholarship on MUSE is a Current Subscription offering, which provides faculty and students with unlimited full-text access to more than 7,500 books published in 2011, 2012, and forthcoming in 2013. With affordable tiered subscription rates, libraries may choose to subscribe as a method for examining ebook usage at their institution, and determining which collections and books would be best suited for permanent acquisition. An Archive Subscription is also available, providing unlimited access to over 16,000 UPCC books published in 2010 or earlier for a very reasonable fee.
MUSE and UPCC will also be introducing a title-by-title book purchase option, in partnership with YBP Library Services, in the first quarter of 2013. This will allow libraries to supplement collection purchases as well as build a customised collection from the ground up, utilising YBP's acquisition and collection management services.
Seventeen additional publishers will be contributing content to the UPCC Book Collections on MUSE during 2013. These include the University of North Carolina Press, The MIT Press, University of Illinois Press, University Press of Florida, Louisiana State University Press, Catholic University of America Press, Presses de l'Université du Québec, and the Central European University Press. Title lists for newly available UPCC collections should be ready shortly.
Libraries seeking pricing or other information on the UPCC Book Collections on MUSE may complete our request form, indicating areas of specific interest, at http://tools.muse.jhu.edu/order/quote, or contact muse@press.jhu.edu.
Information services provider EBSCO, US, has released serials price projections for 2013. The report, based on surveys of a wide range of publishers and reviews of historical serials pricing data, provides serials price projections that will assist information professionals as they make budgeting decisions for the upcoming renewal season.
EBSCO anticipates the overall effective publisher price increases for academic and academic/medical libraries for 2013 (before currency impact) to be in the range of 5 to 7 percent.
Within the academic library and academic publishing markets, this past year in many ways represented the continuation of trends previously addressed by EBSCO in previous Serials Price Projection reports. For the 2013 subscription year, it is expected that library budgets will continue to be under pressure. Large publishers will continue to aggressively push the Big Deal, while smaller publishers will work hard to maintain their share of the remaining funds. Also, packaged content will continue to be preferred over individual subscriptions, but the share of budget demanded by packages plus annual price increases will result in modest acceleration of package cancellations.
The report notes that the open access (OA) movement appears to be gaining momentum. While the concept of OA publishing has been in the market for the past decade, the model has gained traction in recent years due to a confluence of factors, including improvements in technology and digital publishing; governmental and funding policies regarding the broadest possible access to scientific research; and the budget crisis within academic libraries for subscription content.
Most library budgets are not expected to rise by the same annual percentage as publisher price increases. Interested parties may visit www.ebsco.com to read EBSCO's 2013 Serials Price Projection Report in its entirety.
Energy and metals information provider Platts, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., US, has introduced a valuation mechanism that will bring greater clarity and specificity to thermal coal pricing based on ash content. Ash is the non-combustible residue left after coal is burnt.
Platts now applies a 'normalization' value, expressed as a percentage of total price and in US dollars per metric ton, to each 1 percent of additional ash content in thermal coal within the published standard range of 17 percent to 23 percent. This makes apparent the premium and discounts that can arise within a single grade of coal, because coal, though like-kind in quality, can vary by individual chemical properties.
Prior to this innovation, the Platts assessment process considered ash content in the 17-23 percent range and normalised to a standard specification of 20 percent. The methodology change applies specifically to Platts' price assessment process for FOB Newcastle 5500 NAR 17-23 percent ash, an assessment for thermal coal loaded free on board (FOB) at Newcastle, Australia with an energy-producing calorific value 5500 kilocalories per kilogram and delivered seven- to 45 days forward on a net-as-received (NAR) basis.
Platts FOB Newcastle 5500 NAR 17-23 percent was first launched in January to address the industry's need for a global benchmark for lower calorific thermal coal produced and consumed in the Asia-Pacific region.
Platts publishes more than a dozen daily and weekly thermal coal assessments for Asia and other regions, serving the price information needs of thermal coal producers, power producers, cement manufacturers, coal traders and ship brokers. The Platts FOB Newcastle 5500 NAR and other coal assessments are published in Coal Trader International among other publications and services.
Platts' price assessment methodologies for coal have been developed in consultation with a cross section of key industry players and draw upon Platts' century of experience in benchmark price reporting in the energy markets. Assessments reflect transactions and bids and offers as determined between buyers and sellers in the open spot market.
ICIS, a provider of European spot gas benchmark pricing information, has announced that it is widening its price reporting coverage. It will now provide readers with an additional 33 price assessments and indices for seven continental hubs, including the Dutch TTF, both German hubs and the Austrian CEGH.
The enhanced gas coverage has been developed in response to the ongoing expansion of the spot gas markets in Europe, both at established hubs and in emerging gas markets.Users of the enhanced coverage will benefit from access to 11 new assessments for the Dutch TTF hub, including additional month-ahead, quarter-ahead and season-ahead prices. With this new coverage, ICIS now provides the widest range of TTF price points in the market.
A monthly index for the Italian PSV and a unique day-ahead assessment for the Czech market offers readers greater access to developing markets.
ICIS has developed the enhanced gas coverage to provide a complete market view on European price movements, and aid readers in making sound business decisions.
