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George Lossius appointed to China Book International (CBI) Advisory Board

Publishing Technology CEO, George Lossius, has been nominated and accepted onto the prestigious CBI Advisory Board, days ahead of the Beijing International Book Fair.

Speaking of his appointment, Lossius stated: “This appointment is a genuine honour and I am extremely proud. We have spent the last few years getting to know the Chinese market, understanding its needs and launching products and services that are designed to encourage greater cross-culture collaboration. I strongly believe that there are endless opportunities in China and I look forward to working alongside the esteemed board members to explore them further.”

AAP releases statement on OSTP deadline for federal agencies’ public access plans

Today marks the deadline for US federal agencies with $100+ million in R&D expenditures to submit their plans to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) outlining how they will expand public access to the output of the research they fund. The submissions are being made pursuant to the OSTP directive issued February 22, 2013.

In response to the directive, a number of publishing organizations are collaboratively developing the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS), with support from the Association of American Publishers. CHORUS is a public-private partnership for a framework to increase public access to peer-reviewed publications that report on federally-funded research. CHORUS would provide a full solution for agencies to comply with the OSTP memo while building on publishers’ existing, proven infrastructure; avoiding duplication of effort; minimizing taxpayer cost; and ensuring the critical sustainability of the scholarly communication system.

AAP, which stated its support of the OSTP process on February 22, released the following statement today:

“As the OSTP reaches today’s milestone, AAP remains supportive of its work to expand public access to federally-funded research and we look forward to continuing our ongoing involvement in this thoughtful process.

“We are pleased that CHORUS, the public-private partnership framework being developed by publishers to help agencies meet the OSTP directive, is actively evolving. More than 70 organizations representing all segments of scholarly publishing and service providers have joined as signatories. Its Proof of Concept will be released on August 30 and a Pilot will be underway by the end of September. In developing CHORUS, publishers have benefitted from engagement with the agencies, universities and other organizations. AAP believes the CHORUS concept is poised to serve as a true platform for innovation on behalf of all these groups and their interests.

“At a time when the desire to expand public access to knowledge is challenged by economic, technological, operational and other forces, fresh thinking and collaboration are fundamental. The publishing community welcomes renewed opportunities to work with OSTP and all stakeholders in moving these shared goals forward.”

CHORUS General Factsheet
CHORUS Update – News and FAQ

Springer launches ‘full book download functionality’ on SpringerLink and Springer for R&D

STM publisher Springer recently introduced the ‘full book download functionality’ on SpringerLink and Springer for R&D in response to the high demand for this feature by authors, researchers and library customers. This new functionality allows users to download all chapters of a book in one go.

Next to this feature, users can view an eBook on SpringerLink and Springer for R and D through the LookInside, and download the individual chapters as PDF and or in HTML format. The chapter level and full book PDF is available to subscribed users without restrictions. The LookInside always shows some sample pages to unsubscribed users, and the full chapter to subscribed users.

The full download functionality will only be made available when the user has access and the book in question is not a reference work or exceeds 100 chapters.

Thomson Reuters Launches ScholarOne Journal Triathlon to Recognize Top Scholarly Publications

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced a scholarly community e-program, the ScholarOne® Journal Triathlon, to celebrate and recognize the innovative accomplishments of research journals. The Triathlon begins Monday, September 9.

The inaugural ScholarOne Journal Triathlon is a virtual tournament designed to have journals compete in three categories: agility, speed and endurance, attributes essential for successful publications. The competition will comprise of the following events and honor the scholarly community’s most innovative journals:

·          Swim (Agility): the ability of a journal to validate it is accepting the right papers

·          Bike (Speed): how quickly a journal implements ways to increase its efficiency

·          Run (Endurance): the longevity of a journal and how it seamlessly adapts its processes to stay competitive in an ever-changing industry

Beginning Monday, September 9, nominations can be made via Twitter @ScholarOneNews and on the ScholarOne Journal Triathlon web page. Anyone from the publishing or scholarly communities is eligible to vote. The top three journals receiving the most votes in each leg of the competition will move to the finals, to compete for the coveted spot of Journal Triathlon Champion. As Champion, the journal will receive a speaking slot at the ScholarOne User Conference, among other things. Complete contest details and terms and conditions can be found on the contest website and @ScholarOneNews.

“The ScholarOne Journal Triathlon seeks to recognize and reward scholarly journals demonstrating excellence in agility, speed and endurance,” said Jasper Simons, vice president of Thomson Reuters Scholarly and Scientific Research. “We are excited to host this unique competition to raise awareness for the innovative work taking place within the scholarly research community.

The competition coincides with the upcoming release of Thomson Reuters ScholarOne Web Services, the industry’s only scalable, enterprise-wide solution for integration with peer-reviewed recommendations based on the Web of Science®.

ScholarOne Web Services will allow publishers and associations to maintain competitive advantage by integrating internal tools and industry platforms using ScholarOne’s standard application programming interface (API) for single sign on and linking to external resources, such as ORCID and FundRef for standardized, consistent data exchange. Users will also be able to extend their connectivity with Reviewer Locator, cutting-edge functionality that will search Thomson Reuters Web of Science® for uniquely qualified peer reviewer recommendations.

Learn more about ScholarOne and for the latest news on the competition, follow the Journal Triathlon on Twitter @ScholarOneNews  and via the ScholarOne Journal Triathlon Blog.

Nielsen signs agreement to acquire Bowker Business Intelligence and Commerce Solution products

Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, and ProQuest affiliate R.R. Bowker, a leading provider of bibliographic information and management solutions, have signed a definitive agreement for Nielsen to acquire Bowker’s Business Intelligence and Commerce Solutions products. This acquisition will build on Nielsen’s existing global book intelligence by adding enhanced offerings in transaction services and sales measurement and analysis.

Bowker’s industry-leading Business Intelligence and Commerce Solutions products will be integrated into Nielsen’s book portfolio upon completion of this acquisition. Nielsen will soon be able to measure the impact of eBook sales in the U.S. and UK and provide insights and trends around the volume and value of books sales by various demographic criteria. Nielsen will also be able to offer for the first time a B2B service and the importance to hire a 3rd party that enables retailers to source and order books throughout the English-language book market.

“We are committed to elevating the global book industry’s understanding of print and digital book measurement and discovery within an evolving media landscape,” said Jonathan Nowell, President,Books, Nielsen. “Bowker has developed first-rate book analytic solutions, which offer a great complement to Nielsen’s existing solutions for the book industry. We are excited to welcome Bowker’s team to Nielsen and we will work together to provide our clients with the measurement, tools, insights and linked commerce (click this site) solutions needed to exceed their current and future expectations.”

“Our commitment at Bowker and ProQuest is to develop solutions that streamline the workflow of our customers,” said ProQuest CEO Kurt Sanford. “By bringing together Nielsen and Bowker analytic services, book publishers will receive the critical data they require to navigate the transition to digitalfirst publishing, through one tool set from one source, significantly simplifying the collection of business intelligence.”

Bowker will continue to play a key role for book publishers by powering and transforming book discovery. Working closely with its affiliate ProQuest, Bowker will focus on facilitating and enhancing book discovery through technology solutions, such as Syndetic Solutions™ and Summon®, and through identifier services (including ISBNs and ISNIs).

This acquisition of select Bowker products underscores Nielsen’s desire to advance the holistic understanding and supply chain efficiency of the global book industry. Bowker products that will be available as part of the Nielsen Book portfolio include:

  • Business Intelligence products: PubTrack ™ Digital, PubTrack™ Christian, PubTrack™ Higher-Ed, and Bowker Market Research Books & Consumers, Global Ebook Monitor, and custom research
  • Commerce Solutions products: PubEasy® and Pubnet®

The Nielsen Book portfolio currently includes BookData, BookNet, Registration Agencies and BookScan.

Creative Commons CC0 waiver to become part of BioMed Central’s Copyright and License Agreement

The Creative Commons CC0 waiver will become part of theBioMed Central Copyright and License Agreement on Tuesday 3rd September. For articles submitted from this date, CC0 will apply to data in all articles published by BioMed Central or Chemistry Central journals.

So what do we mean by open data, what does the Creative Commons CC0 waiver cover, and why this is of interest to you?

Open data relates to the fact that the open communication of scientific research involves more than just the final results of research being published in an article in an open access journal. Sharing the underlying data is an increasingly important part of the research and publication process. BioMed Central aims to provide leadership in supporting scientific communities in the sharing of underlying scientific data, publishing it in standard formats, and supporting re-use and further analysis, which helps facilitate the discovery of new knowledge.

Our updated Copyright and License Agreement will mean that the Creative Commons CC0 waiver applies to data (e.g. in tables and additional files, graphical data points, and bibliographic data). CC0 is data-specific, and the Creative Commons attribution license (CC-BY) will continue to apply generally to articles published in BioMed Central journals.

This change to our standard copyright license will make published data clearly and unambiguously available for sharing, integration and re-use without legal restrictions, for the benefit of science. Attribution licenses have been strongly discouraged for scientific data as they may obstruct future sharing and integration of data on a large scale, such as was required for the Human Genome Project. At BioMed Central we believe that there is much valuable data in the published literature, for data mining and many other applications, and it should therefore be considered a scientific resource.

The change to our standard copyright license follows a public consultation we held in towards the end of 2012. Respondents to the consultation were six to one in favour of introducing the Creative Commons CC0 public domain waiver for data. As part of the consultation we also received a number of questions, such as the relevance for patient privacy or a potential effect on citations? We provide our answers in a new article published in BMC Research Notes.

Open access to research publications reaching ‘tipping point’

The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers—so-called ‘open access’—was confirmed today in a study funded by the European Commission. This new research suggests that open access is reaching the tipping point, with around 50% of scientific papers published in 2011 now available for free. This is about twice the level estimated in previous studies, explained by a refined methodology and a wider definition of open access. The study also estimates that more than 40% of scientific peer reviewed articles published worldwide between 2004 and 2011 are now available online in open access form. The study looks at the EU and some neighbouring countries, as well as Brazil, Canada, Japan and United States of America.

By making research results more accessible, open access can contribute to better and more efficient science, and to innovation in the public and private sectors. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, said: “These findings underline that open access is here to stay. Putting research results in the public sphere makes science better and strengthens our knowledge-based economy.”

The study looked at the availability of scholarly publications in 22 fields of knowledge in the European Research Area, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States. In several countries and disciplines more than 50% of papers are now available for free. Free availability of the majority of articles has been reached in the fields of general science and technology, biomedical research, biology and mathematics and statistics. The fields where open access availability is most limited are the social sciences and humanities and applied sciences, engineering and technology.

A recent European Commission Communication (IP/12/790) identified open access as a core means to improve knowledge circulation and thus innovation in Europe. Therefore, open access will be mandatory for all scientific publications produced with funding from Horizon 2020, the EU’s Research & Innovation funding programme for 2014-2020. The Communication recommended that Member States take a similar approach to the Commission in their domestic programmes.

Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn stressed that the European Commission is promoting open access in Europe, including for the results of its own research funding: “The European taxpayer should not have to pay twice forpublicly funded research. That is why we have made open access to publications the default setting for Horizon 2020, the next EU research and innovation funding programme.”

Background

The study was undertaken by Science-Metrix, a research evaluation consultancy. The study included the 28 EU Member States, as well as Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Iceland, Norway, Turkey, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, Japan and United States of America. Two other reports by the same group were also released today, examining open access policies and the issue of open access to data.

Concerning open access policies, the report found that the majority of 48 major science funders considered both key forms of open access acceptable: open access publications in journals (referred to as “gold” and “hybrid” open access) and self-archiving (referred to as “green” open access). More than 75% accepted embargo periods – that is the gap between a publication and it becoming freely available – of between six to 12 months.

The third study found however that there are currently still fewer policies in place for open access to scientific data than for open access to publications. Open access to research data is rapidly evolving in an environment where citizens, institutions, governments, non-profits and private companies loosely cooperate to develop infrastructure, standards, prototypes and business models. Under Horizon 2020, the EU’s Research & Innovation funding programme for 2014-2020, the Commission will also start a pilot on open access to data collected during publicly funded research, taking into account legitimate concerns related to the grantee’s commercial interests, privacy and security.

The Commission will make open access to scientific publications a general principle of Horizon 2020. As of 2014, all articles produced with funding from Horizon 2020 will have to be accessible:

  • articles will either immediately be made accessible online by the publisher (“gold” and “hybrid” open access) – up-front publication costs can be eligible for reimbursement by the European Commission; or
  • researchers will make their articles available through an open access repository no later than six months (12 months for articles in the fields of social sciences and humanities) after publication (“green” open access).

Links

Links to the three studies:

http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Availability_2004-2011.pdf

http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Policies.pdf

http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_EC_OA_Data.pdf

Horizon 2020 website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm

Edanz appoints Benjamin Shaw as COO

Benjamin Shaw has been appointed chief operating officer (COO) for Edanz Group Ltd, a leading author services company based in Japan and China. He will also retain his role as the managing director for China.

Benjamin joined Edanz in 2006 to help establish the Edanz Beijing office. He has managed all aspects of Edanz operations in China, from sales and marketing to editorial, customer service and web products. Under Benjamin’s leadership Edanz has become a trusted brand among China’s research and STM publishing communities. He has been a driving force behind Edanz global partnerships with leading publishers and the company’s global expansion. Benjamin has led the establishment of the Edanz author workshop programs that now assist scientific and academic communities across Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to overcome barriers to publication. He is one of the architects of the Edanz Journal Selector and the online Author Academy.

Kerry Greer, Edanz founder and president said: ‘Benjamin brings to his new role in Edanz his creative drive, a deep understanding of the needs of the worldwide author community, and an awareness of the emerging role of technology in meeting those needs. As COO Benjamin will ensure that Edanz grows its intermediary role between authors and their institutions, and STM publishers.”

Benjamin said: ‘It has been exciting to be a part of the Edanz story over the past 7 years. I look forward to the next chapter as we develop new tools and services to support authors in overcoming the language and structural barriers they face when seeking to share their research findings. I also look forward to strengthening collaboration with our international publishing partners as they seek to address the challenges faced by their authors in non-traditional markets.’

Elizabeth Jones Joins EBSCO Information Services as VP, Medical Product Management & Chief Content Officer

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), provider of point-of-care decision support tools, has announced the hiring of Elizabeth Jones as Vice President of Medical Product Management and Chief Content Officer. In her new role Jones will oversee the EBSCO Health Medical Product Management department in addition to managing the Medical Editorial Teams of clinical reference tools such as DynaMed™ andCINAHL®.

Prior to joining EBSCO, Jones held several senior level leadership roles in healthcare publishing. Most recently Jones served as Senior Vice President and Publisher at the American Medical Association, where she led and managed the AMA Publishing Group, including JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association together with the nine JAMA specialty journals) and American Medical News. Jones spearheaded the transformation of the peer reviewed journals to the JAMA Network, harnessing the collective power of the individual journals under one branded platform, better integrating the community of authors, reviewers and readers. Before working for the AMA, Jones was the Executive Vice President and General Manager at Wolters Kluwer Health/LWW.

DynaMed is an evidence-based clinical decision support tool that is updated daily and provides doctors and other healthcare providers with clinically organized summaries at the point of care. The creators of CINAHL, the gold standard for nursing and allied health research, also created Nursing Reference Center™, EBSCO’s point-of-care resource for nurses providing reference materials for research and for use with patients, continuing education for nurses and opportunities to strengthen nursing skills.

EBSCO’s Executive Vice President of Product Management Stratton Lloyd says Jones brings with her an indispensible array of knowledge to EBSCO’s increasingly expanding health product line. “Betsy is a clinical information powerhouse. Her content expertise and industry knowledge will play an important part in the expansion of EBSCO Health services such as DynaMed and Nursing Reference Center and help EBSCO as we focus on additional content, improved access and new clinical areas.”

Jones says the move to EBSCO comes at a time when the company is making a concerted effort to expand the content it provides and her expertise is right in line with that initiative. “EBSCO is ready to take its expertise in reference content and its decades of experience in search and change how healthcare providers incorporate evidence-based medical information into the way they treat their patients. The success EBSCO has had in introducing point-of-care resources and the impact these resources have had on patient care is just beginning and I am looking forward to being a part of these efforts to better inform doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers.”

Several studies have shown that DynaMed provides the most useful information to healthcare professionals at the point of care. DynaMed ranked highest among 10 online clinical resources in a study in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology and was also rated highest it its category by healthcare providers in a report on clinical decision support resources by KLAS, a research firm that specializes in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. DynaMed also was also shown to be the most current point-of-care reference tool in a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ)

Brill expands Brill Open to include monographs and edited volumes

Brill extends Brill Open, its Open Access model, to include books.

As a major publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Biology and International Law, Brill is committed to enhancing access to academic content in any sustainable way. Since its academic book publications are a cornerstone of the program, it is extending Brill Open to include monographs and edited volumes.

Brill Open offers authors the choice to make their research freely accessible online in exchange for a Publication Charge. Brill Open is made available to authors only upon acceptance of their manuscript for publication. This requires a positive outcome of the peer review process and Brill’s editorial decision making. Titles published in Brill Open undergo the same rigorous peer review and uphold the same high-quality publication standards that Brill is known for. Brill Open is a sustainable, high-quality and accessible mode of publication.

Brill Open is available for books accepted for publication under Brill and its imprints. Authors retain copyright of their work in exchange for a Book Publication Charge (BPC). Upon receipt of the BPC, the title will be made freely accessible on Brill’s Online Books and Journals platform under a Creative Commons license: CC-BY or CC-BY-NC. The type of license determines the applicable rights and the level of the Book Publication Charge (BPC). For an overview of the current BPCs see: brill.com/brillopen.

All Brill Open book titles are listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), of which Brill is a proud sponsor, and are available through all Brill’s regular trade channels.

Brill believes in sustainable models that enhance the quality and dissemination of academic content. For this reason Brill is participating in a number of Open Access initiatives, among others the OAPEN pilot study into the effects of Open Access on books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

British Library to partner with National Library of Singapore to digitise Malay manuscripts

Today (19 August) at the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) 2013 meeting, Roly Keating the British Library’s Chief Executive signed an agreement with Mrs Elaine Ng the Chief Executive Officer of the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore to put an extensive range of materials of interest to Singapore online.

The project will digitise the British Library’s collection of Malay manuscripts, together with early maps of Singapore and archival material relating to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles – the British official responsible for the founding of the city of Singapore.

The project is possible thanks to a kind donation of £125,000 from William and Judith Bollinger which will fund the digitisation work for 5 years and is part of an on-going project between the British Library and the National Library Board of Singapore. The first stage of the project, now underway, will digitise over 100 Malay manuscripts and letters from seventeenth to nineteenth century resulting in over 16,000 high resolution images.

Collection highlights include:

  • A sumptuously illuminated manuscript of an ethical guide for rulers, ‘The Crown of Kings’, Taj al-Salatin, copied in Penang in 1824
  • The announcement of the British capture of the island of Java from the Dutch in August 1811, signed by Thomas Stamford Raffles
  • An illuminated royal Malay letter written in gold ink in Singapore in 1857 from the ruler of Johor, Temenggung Ibrahim, to Emperor Napoleon III of France
  • A manuscript of the most famous Malay historical chronicle, the ‘Malay Annals’, Sejarah Melayu, copied in Melaka in 1873

These rare materials are being digitised in the British Library and will be available on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts online, as well as the National Library Board of Singapore BookSG website. To date these items could only be viewed by visiting the British Library’s reading rooms at St Pancras – this project will make them freely accessible online to people with an interest in Malay manuscripts across the world.

Mr Gene Tan, Director, National Library Singapore, said, “This collaboration allows the National Library to explore the wealth of information in the British Library’s Southeast Asian collection, especially materials which are of interest to Singapore. Our users will be able to easily access rarely seen documents relating to the rich history and culture of Singapore and the region. It has also been a most rewarding experience for our staff to have the opportunity to engage with the collection and work with colleagues at the British Library.”

Annabel Gallop, Lead for Curator Southeast Asian Studies at the British Library said, “Thanks to the generosity of the Bollinger family we will be able to make the British Library’s collection of Malay manuscripts available to researchers across the world. It is fantastic to be able to work with colleagues at the National Library Board of Singapore to ensure that all those with an interest in Malay cultural heritage are able to view them. We look forward to working with the NLB as the project progresses”.

Associate Professor Hadijah bte Rahmat, Deputy Head of the Asian Languages and Culture Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Singapore, lauded this initiative to make historic Malay manuscripts more accessible. She said, “The project is a huge boost to researchers, academics and anyone with a keen interest in the history, culture and literature of the Malay Archipelago. I’m excited to view the digitised materials online, and I’m sure they will encourage more research on the rich heritage of the Malay world.”

Materials at High Temperatures joins Maney Publishing

Maney Publishing is pleased to announce it has purchased Materials at High Temperatures, and will begin publishing the journal from 2014, in its materials science & engineering list.

Published quarterly, Materials at High Temperatures serves the needs of designers and engineers who develop and use materials for high temperature applications, often in extreme or aggressive environments. It publishes peer-reviewed contributions relating to high temperature applications in the power, aerospace, chemical engineering, processing and furnace industries.

Materials at High Temperatures is known for its coverage of the effects of high temperatures on corrosion, oxidation, fatigue, creep, strength and wear in alloys, intermetallics, ceramics, refractories and composites, together with the important topics of materials modelling, design and lifetime prediction. The journal has a policy of emphasising the links between research and actual or potential service applications.

Editors Professor John Nicholls and Dr Peter Skelton comment on the new publishing arrangements: “We are very pleased that Materials at High Temperatures has been acquired by Maney Publishing. In addition to publishing its own journals, Maney works closely with professional societies and institutions throughout the world, and is publisher for the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and ASM International, amongst others. Its international marketing activity, publishing technologies, and experience in the publishing of research journals in materials science will undoubtedly benefit the journal.”

Mark Simon, Publishing Director, welcomes the acquisition: “Materials at High Temperatures is a significant addition to our portfolio of materials science and engineering journals, in a subject of importance to a number of critical technologies. The active community researching the behaviour of materials in high temperature and other extreme environments demonstrates the strong potential for future development of the journal. We look forward to taking the journal to the next level of international dissemination, online usage, and citation. In the immediate future, it will benefit from our online submission and peer-review system (Editorial Manager) and Maney Online, the new electronic platform that we are launching in November.”

For further information about this title visit www.maneypublishing,com/journals/mht

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