Baker & Taylor, the premier worldwide distributor of digital and print books and entertainment products, announced today that its board of directors has named longtime executive George Coe as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer and President.

Mr. Coe brings 34 years of extensive experience leading and transitioning companies to becoming leaders within their industries. These companies have served public, K-12, academic, corporate and law libraries worldwide. Since 2000, he has served as President of Baker & Taylor’s Library & Education division. Prior to Baker & Taylor, he served as Vice President and General Manager of Brodart Books, Library Automation and K-12 software management divisions.

Mr. Coe will replace Arnie Wight, who retired January 15 after a distinguished 34-year career with the company. Mr. Wight will assume the role of Non-Executive Chairman of the Board and will also work as a consultant for Baker & Taylor to support the leadership transition and the execution of strategic plans.

Mr. Coe has been instrumental in developing many of Baker & Taylor’s important programs, such as digital media and econtent platform delivery services, data analytics and outsourcing capabilities in collection development and technical services. He has helped direct many of the company’s strategic initiatives, including industry partnerships and acquisitions that have contributed to Baker & Taylor’s growth as the leading supplier.

“Baker & Taylor is the leading provider of books, media, technological products and services to customers throughout the world, and I look forward to working with our excellent team to continue to enhance Baker & Taylor’s innovative solutions for our retail, library and education customers.” Coe continues, “I am proud to lead Baker & Taylor at a time when exciting changes are taking place in all of the markets we serve.”

Mr. Coe serves on several industry-related boards, most notably the Board of Visitors for the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science, as well as the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations, which is a division of the American Library Association. He is also a member of the Urban Library Council, and has served on development committees for ALA and the Public Library Association.

Howard Ratner, well known in the scholarly publishing community for his leadership work in technical services and standards, has been appointed as Executive Director of the new CHOR, Inc. not-for-profit organization. As Director of Development, Ratner successfully led the CHORUS (Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States) proof of concept — a conceptual design framework — and in under two months, launched the CHORUS pilot, the first service from CHOR, Inc.

CHORUS is a not-for-profit public-private partnership to increase public access to peer-reviewed publications that report on federally funded research, as required by the February 2013 Office of Science & Technology Policy memo. Over 90 publishers, societies and other organizations are now showing their support for CHORUS as signatories.

“Howard has done an excellent job of taking CHORUS from concept to pilot very quickly, as well as working tirelessly to engage with key stakeholders from the communities CHORUS will serve – funding agencies, publishers, libraries, institutions and scholarly societies,” said Susan King, SVP of the American Chemical Society’s Journals Publishing Group and Chair of the CHOR, Inc. Board. “His appointment as CHOR, Inc.’s inaugural Executive Director reflects the Board’s confidence in Howard’s ability to launch CHORUS as a sustainable solution to the White House’s calls for increased public access to research.”

Ratner has a strong history of successful collaboration in the development of new services and technologies in scholarly publishing. He played a key role in the establishment of the Digital Object Identifier and CrossRef, the collaborative service that enables reference linking among the world’s scholarly publishing platforms. CrossRef recently launched FundRef, which serves as a key component service of CHORUS. Ratner was also active in the development of CLOCKSS, the joint venture providing a sustainable, geographically distributed dark archive for web-based scholarly publications. CLOCKSS’ archiving solution is among the preservation alternatives CHORUS is exploring to offer participating organizations. He co-founded ORCID, the registry which uniquely reaches across disciplines, research sectors and national boundaries in cooperation with other identifier systems. ORCID provides supporting technology to CHORUS.

Ratner is President-Elect of the Society for Scholarly Publishing and previously held roles as Chief Technology Officer, Executive Vice President for Nature Publishing Group and Director, Electronic Publishing and Production, Springer.

In a changing academic environment, discoverability of scholarly content demands cooperative efforts across the communications supply chain. A new SAGE white paper, out today, summarizes the current discovery landscape for scholarly communications, advocates for cooperative efforts across the industry, and proposes specific recommendations for discoverability improvement for librarians, publishers, and service providers.

“This white paper draws upon novel insights contributed by16 international experts about the scholarly ecosystem of publisher content, research tools, and library systems. The experts make predictions about new cross-sector partnerships as researcher workflows evolve,” stated lead author Mary Somerville. “Our recommendations advance the common goal of furthering discovery, access, and usage of scholarly publications and creative work.”

Authors Mary Somerville, PhD and Lettie Conrad, MA propose actionable recommendations for all involved in scholarly communications in order to achieve collaborative improvement of discoverability. The recommendations are based on the following four themes:

• Standards: All sectors should participate in ratified standards to ensure that cooperation is part of business-as-usual routines.
• Transparency: Standards compliance is critical for successful discovery, and the development, implementation, and enforcement of these standards require open relationships across the industry.
• Metadata: Quality metadata, observing ratified standards, enables successful discovery of scholarly content, products, and services.
• Partnerships: Opportunities exist for new discovery innovations across the industry, such as linked open data and cross-publisher discovery tools.

This new white paper, titled “Collaborative Improvements in the Discoverability of Scholarly Content: Accomplishments, Aspirations, and Opportunities” is SAGE’s second white paper on discoverability of academic work. An update to the first study, the paper addresses recent accomplishments and new opportunities for reinventing conventions and relationships among libraries, publishers, and service providers. A presentation of the findings will be made next week at the 2014 ALA Midwinter Meeting.

“From research methods to quality of content, ease of discovery, and scholarly communication, SAGE is dedicated to supporting all aspects of the research process,” stated Stephen Barr, President of SAGE International. “As the scholarly environment is continuously changing, we are delighted to be releasing a second white paper on the discoverability of scholarly content. We are confident that its findings will be helpful to librarians, researchers, content providers, and publishers alike.”

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of information for businesses and professionals, today unveiled its strategy for the next generation Web of Science, the world’s most trusted citation index for the world’s most important scientific and scholarly literature. A new, user-friendly interface, expanded content and convenient open-web links substantially enhance the Web of Science and its position in the global scientific research community. This industry gold standard covers science, social science, and arts & humanities citation indexes, covering the most important citation activity with the core Web of Science and domain specific and regional indexes spanning research for well over 150 years.

“Our analysis shows customers associate most with the Web of Science as the platform of choice to conduct critical scientific research and to make high-value decisions,” said Gordon Macomber, managing director of Thomson Reuters Scholarly & Scientific Research. “To better serve our growing client base, we are launching the next generation Web of Science as our premier search and discovery platform, and InCites as our comprehensive benchmarking and evaluation platform. These steps demonstrate our commitment to providing our customers with the trusted and authoritative content and tools to make strategic decisions.”

The addition of the SciELO Citation Index, covering Latin America, Spain, Portugal and the Caribbean, exemplifies the content expansion of the core citation databases in Web of Science. The platform also hosts and provides access to the Chinese Science Citation Database and, later this year, will host the Korean Journal Database; these latter two sources bring expanded citation metrics and impactful regional content to the world’s largest and most authoritative citation resource.

The Scholarly & Scientific Research group at Thomson Reuters also announced its mission to make Web of Science content and records easily accessible to researcher end users via links from open-web platforms, such as Google Scholar. This is a significant step toward simplifying the scientific search process for researchers who begin in an open environment.

“Open-web linking, alongside our simplified and powerful user interface, increases the visibility and accessibility of the Web of Science and ultimately the value it delivers to subscribers,” said Chris Burghardt, vice president, Thomson Reuters Scholarly & Scientific Research. “This supports the goal of making Web of Science easily accessible to researchers at all levels of their career and within their existing workflows.”

New open access (OA) functionality was also introduced on the platform. Articles from journals that are entirely OA now have indicators on them for easy identification. Users can also apply search filters to target only open access journals in their searches.

Learn more about Web of Science and InCites, the company’s customized, web-based research evaluation solution that allows users to analyze institutional productivity and benchmark output against peers worldwide.

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, announced today that the Ministry of Health (MOH) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has launched nationwide open access to UpToDate^®, providing nearly 80,000 physicians and nurses with access to its acclaimed clinical decision support resource.

“The MOH, in line with its Patient First strategy, is working to ensure a higher and more consistent quality of care and better health outcomes, two strategically important goals of the Ministry of Health,” said Dr. Mohammed R. Alyemeni, the Deputy Minister for Planning and Health Economics. “UpToDate helps us realize these goals by equipping all clinicians with ready access to the most current best practices and expert-authored clinical recommendations to make the best decisions for patients.”

 Starting in January of 2014, the five-year national access partnership with Wolters Kluwer Health provides UpToDate to healthcare professionals at over 250 Ministry of Health Hospitals, 100 private hospitals, military hospitals, national guard hospitals, universities, the Saudi Digital Library, as well as all clinics and primary care centres in the Kingdom. 

“The Ministry’s dedication to improving healthcare in Saudi Arabia is strengthened by providing nationwide access to the most current and comprehensive clinical information for treating patients,” said Denise Basow, MD, Vice President and General Manager, UpToDate at Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions. “We look forward to supporting the Saudi Ministry of Health as a trusted source of evidence-based medicine that enables clinicians to answer questions at the point of care.”

Throughout the kingdom, access to trusted, evidence-based medical information covering more than 10,000 clinical topics in over 20 specialties will be available to every Internet user via several methods: the Ministry of Health Portal (http://www.moh.gov.sa), the UpToDate website (http://www.uptodate.com/contents/search), the UpToDate Mobile app for iOS, Android, and Windows 8, and directly within hospitals’ Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems that support UpToDate integration.

Arvind Subramanian, President and CEO, at Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions said, “Working with ministries of health and other major government agencies is an essential part of our mission to improve care everywhere.” Subramanian added, “For an organization that is driven by innovation and customer focus, the national rollout of UpToDate in Saudi Arabia serves as a showcase of how we can partner to leverage web, EMR and mobile access technology on a national scale to help more doctors with clinical decision-making.”