YOUR GO-TO INTELLIGENCE RESOURCE FOR THE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Research and education organisation the American Botanical Council (ABC) has reportedly obtained rights to the popular herbal database HerbMed and its enhanced professional version HerbMedPro. These databases are frequently used as a research tool by academic researchers, healthcare professionals, institutions, government agencies, industry, consumers, and others. While HerbMed is available for free at http://www.herbmed.org/, HerbMedPro is accessible through subscription or licensing arrangements from ABC.

Under the acquisition deal, Jacqueline C. Wootton, president and executive director of the Alternative Medicine Foundation and founder of HerbMed, will retain her position as editorial director of both databases, while ABC will assume control of the administration, financing, and marketing of the database. Also, ABC will enhance the maintenance and further development of both HerbMed and HerbMedPro.

HerbMed was initiated in 1998, and the original website provides public access to information on nearly 30 of the most widely used medicinal herbs, as well as a pay-per-day option to access the entire larger HerbMedPro database. HerbMedPro is a continuously updated database of categorised information on herbs. There are currently 211 herbs in the database, searchable by both common name and Latin binomial. The information within the database is classified according to key categories and subcategories, allowing users to more easily find data relevant for their needs. HerbMedPro briefly summarises virtually all publicly available research information on each herb and provides links to corresponding abstracts in PubMed, the US National Library of Medicine's freely available interface for MEDLINE, or to other online research resources such as BioMed Central, Cochrane Collaboration Reviews, and World Health Organization monographs.

HerbMedPro access will be available to ABC members at the Academic level and above as part of their ABC membership benefits. Additionally, HerbMedPro will be available on a pay-per-day basis, a new feature designed for journalists and researchers seeking information on specific herbs for academic papers and news stories.