Matt Cockerill to leave BioMed Central/Springer BioMed Central mission and branding to remain unchanged

September 17, 2013

Matt Cockerill, the Managing Director of BioMed Central, is leaving the company at the end of the year.

Springer acquired BioMed Central in 2008, catching the publishing community unawares, and the STM publisher has expanded its open access activities greatly in the five years since the acquisition. Support from BioMed Central has been crucial in allowing Springer to rapidly develop a portfolio of SpringerOpen-branded open access journals. Open access is now at the heart of Springer’s strategy, and with BioMed Central delivering an increasingly substantial fraction of the company’s growth, the time is right to fully integrate BioMed Central into Springer to ensure that the full potential of open access publishing at Springer can be achieved. In the new structure, BioMed Central’s Publishing Director, Deborah Kahn, and Commercial Director, Bev Acreman, will report directly into the corresponding parts of Springer’s global organization.

“This is a natural next step for BioMed Central,” said Matt Cockerill, “I am very proud of what the team at BioMed Central has achieved since we launched the first journals in 2000. BioMed Central’s continuing success has played a key role in demonstrating the viability of the open access publishing model. BioMed Central is now mature enough to operate successfully as an integrated part of Springer, and I look forward to pursuing further personal and professional interests knowing that the company is in good hands.”

“Going forward, BioMed Central’s mission will not change, nor will the brand, nor will the approach to authors. BioMed Central will continue to do what is best for open access and Springer owes a debt of gratitude to Matt, who has nurtured BioMed Central from infancy to the leading position it holds today. I would like to thank Matt personally not only for his outstanding achievements at BioMed Central, but also for continually challenging Springer Management and for encouraging creative thinking,” said Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media.

Royal Society of Medicine Goes Electronic with ClinicalKey

September 17, 2013

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced an agreement with The Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) to provide its 21,000 members with electronic access to thousands of peer-reviewed medical and surgical journals and reference books.

The RSM will be able to offer its members access to more than 540 journals, including The Lancet, and 1,060 books, including titles such as Gray’s Anatomy and Netter’s Anatomy, through Elsevier’s ClinicalKey or via the RSM’s online library catalogue.

The RSM’s decision follows a review of its library strategy, which emphasizes making such information available electronically to meet the demands of its members.

By utilizing ClinicalKey’s content, the Society will ensure that multiple members are able to access reliable clinical reference material at any time, and away from the physical library building. This will assist them in their studies and support them in their clinical work enhancing the care they give to their patients. Members will also be able to access, download, store and, if necessary, print an article or chapter whenever they require, including in the hospital setting.

“The library is cited as a key reason for members joining the RSM,” said Wayne Sime, Director of Library Services at the Royal Society of Medicine. “Therefore it is imperative that we provide trusted information in the format that they require to support them in their roles as medical professionals.”

“Digitization is taking place across virtually every aspect of the NHS, so it makes sense that the RSM and its members support this trend and reap the benefits of doing so by using a solution like ClinicalKey that is cost effective while providing maximum content.”

The RSM library, which has more than 600,000 volumes, aims to be virtually electronic by January 2014, with the exception of its historical archive and rare books collection.

“Whilst we recognize that the Library has a role to play as a custodian of history, since we embarked on our digital journey in 2007, we have seen a doubling in footfall as our books and journals have achieved higher visibility,” Sime said. “This leads us to believe that libraries, like the RSM’s, must innovate in this way in order to succeed.”

By using ClinicalKey the RSM expects to realize significant reductions in storage and labor costs associated with retrieving and maintaining archive copies. It will also ensure material is preserved despite it being used by thousands of people for training, research and decision support. Members will also be able to take advantage of new study space that will take the place of the paper-based journals.

“The RSM’s library is the jewel in our crown,” said RSM President Sir Michael Rawlins. “This new initiative will allow our members – globally – much easier access to our collection. The benefits will be for both them as well as the patients they serve.”

In addition to online access to hundreds of books and journals, ClinicalKey also will provide members from across the world with more than 13,000 medical and surgical videos for clinical training, a database of clinical guidelines and more than 3,000 drug monographs in Elsevier’s Clinical Pharmacology.

“ClinicalKey is already providing medical professionals in many countries with a platform to answer questions posed within a clinical care context,” said Tim Hawkins, Managing Director, Clinical Solutions, Elsevier UK and Northern Europe. “Opening up access to the RSM’s 21,000 members across the world will mean that even more students, graduates and medical professionals can access immediate, online comprehensive and trusted information at the touch of a button. We look forward to continuing to work with the RSM and its members on their digital journey.”

Launched in April 2012, ClinicalKey provides online access to medical reference materials, including the most current clinically relevant evidence-based answers, as well as expert commentary, MEDLINE abstracts and select third-party journals. Its clinical reference search engine is powered by Elsevier’s Smart Content and tagged with EMMeT (Elsevier Merged Medical Taxonomy), which enables ClinicalKey to understand clinical terms and thus discover medical content that is the most relevant, plus find related content that would be missed by other search engines.

PeerJ receives the 2013 ALPSP Award for Publishing Innovation

September 17, 2013

We are pleased to announce that PeerJ received the 2013 ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) Award for Publishing Innovation at their annual meeting on Sept 12th. The competition was strong, with 32 entrants and 5 finalists (PeerJ, Altmetric, Drama Online, FigShare, and Nature ENCODE) and so PeerJ was honored to be selected as the winner.

PeerJ was announced in June 2012 with the goal of establishing a highly credible, high quality, peer-reviewed Open Access journal for as low a cost as possible. This has resulted in the creation of a model which provides authors with lifetime memberships for $99, giving them the ability to freely publish their open access articles for the rest of their life. By doing so, PeerJ is demonstrating that it doesn’t have to cost thousands, either through subscription charges or Open Access fees, to publish quality science.

This award (alongside earlier recognition from the Chronicle of Higher Education, as one of the “Top 10 Tech Innovators of 2013”) shows that the PeerJ mission has traction, and that more experiments like it are desired in scholarly publishing.

Experience the innovation of PeerJ now at https:peerj.com

Royal Society of Chemistry integrates new online metrics monitoring into its scientific journals

September 13, 2013

The Royal Society of Chemistry has integrated a new system for monitoring article-level metrics into a selection of its scientific journals.

The metrics are provided by London-based start-up Altmetric. The new service extracts online mentions of scholarly articles from social media, newspapers, blogs and other sources and collates them into reports that can be used by publishers, institutions, funders and researchers to showcase the uptake, visibility and societal impact of their articles.

This partnership between the Royal Society of Chemistry and Altmetric will enable published authors and their readers to track mentions of their articles in five journals initially: Energy & Environmental Science, Dalton Transactions, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Chemical Society Reviews and Lab on a Chip.

Individual article pages for these five journals will now have ‘metrics’ tabs that display the colourful Altmetric ‘donut’ badges. These badges indicate how much and what kind of attention each article has received. When clicked, the Altmetric badge leads into an article details page that displays the number of times the article has been mentioned in social media, newspapers, blogs, and other online sources. The conversations, discussions, and mentions themselves also appear alongside the article-level metrics.

An example of the Altmetric ‘donut’ badge for an Energy & Environmental Science article

Richard Kidd, Business Development Manager at the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “We are committed to providing the best service to our authors and readers, who are increasingly using social channels to monitor scientific developments and to share their research interests. Article-level metrics represents a shift from measuring the impact of a journal to the impact of an article. We hope to be part of the evolution of publishing by implementing Altmetric, initially in these selected journals.”

He continued: “We’re pleased to be working with Altmetric. There are new and exciting methods for tracking the impact of scholarly research, and using Altmetric enables us to listen to our authors and readers and to help us understand the value that these metrics provide. We’re excited to see both the data this generates and to see the reaction from our community.”

The Royal Society of Chemistry is also involved as a pre-pilot partner in KUDOS, which will enable authors to maximise the reach of their research.

Euan Adie, founder of Altmetric, said: “The Royal Society of Chemistry has a long history of innovation in publishing and we’re delighted to be involved in their article-level metrics initiative. We hope that chemists will gain many insights from Altmetric data, especially since we track a substantial number of academic-led chemistry blogs that produce some very high-quality scientific discussions.”

Patients and Carers Granted Access to Over 300 Wiley Journals

September 13, 2013

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., has announced it will join patientACCESS, a new program which offers low-cost access to medical and scientific research articles to patients and caregivers. From September 2013, 310 Wiley journals will join the international collaboration between publishers, the Association of American Publishers, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (PSP), The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), and the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).

Six publishers are participating in the launch phase of patientACCESS. In addition to Wiley they are the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Elsevier, SAGE, and Wolters Kluwer Health. Technological support is coming from the CCC.

Patients and caregivers will be able to access relevant research papers via RightsLink^TM, CCC’s point-of-content licensing program. Papers will be emailed to requestors within 24 hours, following a one-time registration step to verify their status as a patient or caregiver. Wiley will offer papers from the selected journals without charge, while CCC will levy an administrative fee of $3.50 for processing and delivering the paper.

Wiley journals within this project include Annals of Neurology (Impact Factor: 11.193), Obesity Reviews (Impact Factor: 6.87) and Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (Impact Factor: 5.422). A full list of Wiley journals included in the patientACCESSprogram is available.

“Patients often turn to the internet to seek out the latest information related to their medical condition. However, the information they find can be unverifiable, unreliable, and potentially misleading.” said Jen Holton, Associate Director of Global Rights UK, Wiley. “patientACCESS makes peer-reviewed research available to patients or their caregivers, with the reassurance and peace of mind that any information or developments in treatments they may find there has been written by experts in their field and rigorously reviewed prior to publication in one of our top ranking journals.”

“We are pleased to be involved in this exciting initiative,” said Tracey Armstrong, CEO, Copyright Clearance Center. “CCC is all about providing content licensing solutions that make it easy for people to share valuable information while respecting copyright.”

Find out more about patientACCESS on the dedicated website.

Springer and the Acoustical Society of America collaborate to publish books

September 13, 2013

Springer and the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) announced that they will collaborate to publish new books to bring important research to scientists and practitioners in the area of acoustics, as well as provide members of the ASA with a dedicated venue to publish their work.

All types of books, from SpringerBriefs to textbooks and authored monographs, will be part of this new effort. The aim is to publish books across the whole range of current research in acoustics, and because of this, these titles can appear in any of Springer’s book series where appropriate. The review and approval of book projects will be overseen by an editorial board approved by the ASA Executive Council.

Acoustics covers a wide range of study, from noise control and oceanography, to bioacoustics and musical and architectural acoustics. The society’s imprint – ASA Press – is the first book imprint dedicated to encouraging new books in acoustics. The intention is for titles to reflect the full range of cutting-edge work currently being undertaken in this area.

Allan D. Pierce, Editor-in-Chief for the ASA, remarked, “The Acoustical Society of America is very excited about this opportunity. We have published books in the past, but having new books on timely topics in acoustics is something that we haven’t focused on as much as we could have. The collaboration will give our members a forum to publish books on key topics of current interest, and we are confident that Springer is the perfect publisher for such an undertaking.”

“We are thrilled that the ASA chose Springer to publish books on acoustics, and we are looking forward to the opportunity to bring important research in this field to readers everywhere,” said Liesbeth Mol, Editorial Director Physics for Springer. “Given our publishing expertise and wide range of services, we are confident that ASA members – as well as other researchers – will benefit from bringing these capabilities to bear on this new venture.”

The mission of the Acoustical Society of America (www.acousticalsociety.org) is to increase and diffuse the knowledge of acoustics and promote its practical applications. The ASA is recognized as the world’s premier international scientific society in acoustics, and counts among its more than 7,000 members professionals in the fields of bioacoustics, engineering, architecture, speech, music, oceanography, signal processing, sound and vibration, and noise control.

Harvard Business Review Press and EBSCO Sign Exclusive Agreement

September 13, 2013

An agreement between EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and Harvard Business Review Press will allow EBSCO to create summaries of Harvard Business Review Press’ books by the world’s leading business thinkers, including John P. Kotter, Clayton Christensen, W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, Michael Watkins, Linda Hill, Vijay Govindarajan, A.G. Lafley, and Roger Martin.

Summaries of all the very latest Harvard Business Review Press books will be available exclusively from EBSCO Business Book Summaries™ starting in January 2014, along with summaries of Harvard Business Review Press’ all-time best-sellers. In addition, EBSCO subscribers will be able to buy Harvard Business Review Press e-books directly through the EBSCO portal.

“This new partnership expands the reach of Harvard Business Review Press titles and enables professionals across the globe to engage with our content through book summaries and EBSCO’s integrated e-book platform,” says Sarah McConville, Publisher, Harvard Business Review Press. “We are pleased to be partnering with EBSCO to provide even more options for our readers to access the content we publish whenever they need it.”

Harvard Business Review Press provides business professionals with ideas, insights, and best practices to help them lead their organizations more effectively. From ‘disruptive innovation’ and ‘core competence’ to ‘primal leadership’, ‘blue ocean strategy’, and ‘playing to win’, many of the ideas first published in Harvard Business Review Press books have influenced managers and organizations worldwide—and changed the way they do business. Harvard Business Review Press is a part of the Harvard Business Review Group, which also includes the flagship Harvard Business Review magazine, 12 international licensed editions, and digital content and tools published on HBR.org.

Business Book Summaries^™ enhance the book reading experience and give readers timely, applicable information to put the book’s key ideas into practice. Business Book Summaries^™ are used by organizations to augment leadership development programs, close competency gaps, and improve overall business acumen of their managers, directors, and executives.

Vice President of Product Management Tad Goltra says that the addition of books from Harvard Business Review Press to Business Book Summaries will further enable executives to keep abreast of the latest business thinking. “Harvard Business Review Press publishes innovative and important business books, and adding them to Business Book Summaries and EBSCO’s integrated e-book platform will provide employees with important resources that can help spur creative thinking and improve decision making.”

Business Book Summaries^™ includes thousands of top business books from the last 20 years with new book summaries added daily, an iPhone app, and audio summaries of selected titles. For more information on Business Book Summaries, visit http://www.ebscohost.com/learning-resources/business-book-summaries.

Elsevier Publishes Seven Books on New and Future Developments in Catalysis

September 11, 2013

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced publishing seven new volumes of New and Future Developments in Catalysis edited by Steven Suib. These will be first presented here in Indianapolis at Chemistry in Motion, the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting held September 8-12.

The seven volumes compile the latest ideas regarding biofuels and the production of chemicals with less damage to the environment, as well as a comprehensive summary of past, current, and future research on efficient, sustainable and clean catalytic processes. Editor Steven Suib is a leader in solid-state catalysis and renewable energy systems in the US with 450 articles and 40 patents to his name. He has also authored multiple books on the topic of catalysis and serves as an editor for Elsevier journal Microporous and Mesoporous Materials.

The full titles of the seven new volumes are:

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Catalytic Biomass Conversion

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Activation of Carbon Dioxide

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Solar Photocatalysis

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Catalysis for Remediation and Environmental Concerns

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Catalysis by Nanoparticles

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Batteries, Hydrogen Storage, and Fuel Cells

New and Future Developments in Catalysis: Hybrid Materials, Composites, and Organocatalysts

All titles listed above are available through the Elsevier Store or can be found on ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and almost 20,000 book titles.

This week Elsevier also launched a Chemical Reaction Books Portfolio on ScienceDirect. The custom-curated online portfolio includes 474 books with foundational and applied content across three sub-disciplines: chemistry and polymers; oil and gas; and pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Handpicked by pharmaceutical and biotechnology editors from Elsevier and Reaxys, it offers chemists and business stakeholders technical, economic and commercial resources to lead research and development, while maximizing productivity, efficiency and discovery.

Alexander Street Press Grows Evidence-Based Acquisition Forms Agreement With Leeds Metropolitan University

September 11, 2013

Following the recent launch of its evidence-based acquisition (EBA) model, Alexander Street Press has forged an agreement with England’s Leeds Metropolitan University, establishing the publisher as a key resource for metrics-driven curation of library materials.

Effective immediately, patrons of Leeds Metropolitan’s library will have unlimited access to Alexander Street Press’s complete suite of academic video titles—more than 23,000 titles—for one full year. At the conclusion of this period, university staff will use Alexander Street’s detailed metrics to evaluate the most-viewed titles and select those they’d like to incorporate into their permanent collection.

“It is fitting that Leeds Metropolitan University has made the strategic decision to use EBA to advance their streaming video holdings,” said Gareth Bish, UK and Ireland Sales Manager at Alexander Street Press, “particularly because this institution was instrumental in helping Alexander Street validate this new business model, which in turn helped make it available for libraries worldwide. This agreement signals Leeds Metropolitan’s commitment to improving the quality of the student experience and to supporting staff across the university with innovative teaching and learning resources.”

This agreement follows an inaugural deal made with Dundee University, and will further pave the way for libraries worldwide to add the most highly sought-after content to their library collections in a precise, cost-effective way. And because all video content within Alexander Street Press’s databases is carefully selected by expert editors, library administrators can rely on the quality and relevance of all materials to the academic populations they serve.

Claire Williams, Head of Learning Resources at Leeds Metropolitan University, said, “Access to this collection fits with our strategy of providing electronic access to established and innovative resources. The collection is already drawing interest and favorable responses from academic staff, who plan to use the material in teaching.”

For more information about Alexander Street Press’s evidence-based acquisition model, please contactsales@alexanderstreet.com.

CAB International provides free access to 77 recently published CABI books through Research4Life

September 11, 2013

CAB International (Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International) announced today they will be provide free access to 77 recently published CABI books through Research4Life, a global UN-publisher initiative providing free and low cost access to researchers in developing countries. The recent editions on agriculture, plant and veterinary science will be available to eligible institutions as part of AGORA, Research4Life’s Global Online Research in Agriculture programme.

Launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2003 in partnership with major publishers, AGORA is celebrating its 10^th Anniversary providing researchers, students, policymakers, non-profits and agriculturalists in developing countries with free and low cost access to a unique digital library in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. CABI is a founding member of the AGORA programme, joining as part of its commitment to furthering knowledge management in international development.

The over 70 books offered by CABI include titles published from 2008 to 2010, giving users access to critical peer reviewed information. These books will be added to the current online resources available through AGORA. Currently, over 2200 institutions have registered for access to AGORA which provides access to over 3400 journals, up to 2000 e-books, and up to 20 other information resources. covering agriculture, fisheries, food, nutrition, veterinary science and related biological, environmental and social sciences in public institutions across the world.

Trevor Nicholls, CEO of CABI, said, “A key part of our mission is to strengthen access to research knowledge, especially in the world’s poorest countries. As a world class publisher in agriculture and the environment, we’re delighted to offer free resources to the researchers who need it most, through this global open initiative.”

“This latest addition of books from CABI’s high quality selection is a further generous contribution to AGORA from one of the founder publisher partners,” said Stephen Rudgard, AGORA programme manager, FAO. “The collection will be greatly appreciated by users.”

Additionally, CABI provides free health-related books to HINARI Access to Research in Health Programme – one of the other four Research4Life Programmes – launched and managed by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2002 which enables low and middle income countries to gain access to biomedical and health literature.

Copyright Clearance Center Joins Gold Open Access Infrastructure Program

September 11, 2013

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization creating global licensing, content and Open Access (OA) solutions that make copyright work for everyone, has joined the Gold Open Access Infrastructure program, based in the United Kingdom.

The aim of the program is to establish dialogue and agreement among all key stakeholders on technical infrastructure challenges and to promote consideration of improvements to the systems, standards, and metadata supporting open access academic journal publishing. Other group participants include representatives from publishing, academia, and standards organizations.

The Gold Open Access Infrastructure initiative is derived from the Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, better known as the Finch Report, which outlines principles for a transition in the UK to open access, with a prominent role for “Gold OA.”

Gold OA involves transactions and workflows among authors, publishers, funders, and universities. As a result, significant work on metadata and interfaces is needed to ensure satisfaction of stakeholders’ needs and emergence of a capable and efficient Gold OA market.

“There is a risk that, without some coordination, opportunities for agreement will be lost, leading to a fragmented domain with high transaction costs and inefficiencies for publishers, and a poor level of service for authors, universities and funders,” said Roy Kaufman, Managing Director of New Ventures for CCC. “As a provider of Article Processing Charge (APC) collections and related services for many publishers, we welcome an opportunity to collaborate with all stakeholders on the development of standards to aid in the process.”

CCC, named one of “10 to Watch” by information industry analyst Outsell in its 2013 Open Access Market Report, has been helping publishers improve the author experience in collecting APCs for over six years, and welcomes efforts toward standardization and transparency. CCC also recently joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), which offers a forum for bringing together the entire open access community. CCC hosts webinars and podcasts on many aspects of Open Access and works with organizations such as the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) on creating standards around Open Access

Human Kinetics and the IMF break into China market on eReading platform built by Publishing Technology

September 11, 2013

Publishing Technology today announced that its longstanding clients, Human Kinetics and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have joined a new sales representation and distribution venture in China. The agreement is a result of Publishing Technology’s local alliance with CNPIEC, the China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Corporation, and its significant new CNP eReading platform.

Content from Human Kinetics and the IMF will be made available to Chinese institutions and libraries on the recently-launched CNPeReading.com site, hosted locally by the largest and most highly-developed government-sanctioned publication import and export group in the country. CNP eReading currently carries over 200,000 individual book titles from more than 300 international publishers. Combined with sales and marketing support from CNPIEC, the site will instantly extend the reach of both publishers’ content into this rapidly growing market, attracting potentially millions of new readers.

CNPIEC’s strong relationships with national librarians and institutions will provide Human Kinetics and the IMF with up-to-the-minute market information while an experienced local sales team will help them to maximize revenues immediately. Furthermore, the platform engineered by Publishing Technology with DRM-based copyright protection and custom features designed specifically to meet the needs of Chinese institutions will enable local librarians to quickly order, purchase and access content on behalf of researchers and end-users.

Cathy Willis, Marketing Manager at the IMF, commented: “The IMF’s global economic analyses are of great interest to researchers and the academic community in China. Moreover, we believe that the IMF’s high quality research and analysis on China and Asia will be of particular interest to audiences in the region. Broadening our successful partnership with Publishing Technology to improve our access to readers in China was a natural choice for us. Publishing Technology knows us and our content, and through CNPIEC has acquired a significant route into the world’s premier growth market.”

Speaking on the partnership, Barry Johnson, International Development Director at Human Kinetics, also said, “A vast and relatively untapped opportunity for us, China is a market that we have been keen to break into for a long time. Knowing that we will have access to a wide array of metrics, from data reports that show how our content is being accessed to relevant and accurate market information, gives us the confidence we were looking for to make it happen.”