Thomson Reuters Whitepaper Tackles Issues of Uniform Access to Global Scholarly Data and Accelerating the Pace of Research and Innovation

August 13, 2013

The volume of scholarly and scientific research data available is projected to grow by a factor of 44 over the decade from 2010 to 2020, going from 0.8 zetabytes (ZB) to more than 35 ZB (1 ZB = 1 trillion gigabytes). In response to this unfathomable amount of information, the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters convened a Forum of industry experts to discuss issues and potential solutions for the scholarly challenges ahead. It published its first output today in a whitepaper titled “Unlocking the Value of Research Data,” where Forum experts discuss the complexity of the issue and offer recommendations for the future.

Challenges outlined in the paper include:

1. Providing uniform access to a broad variety of research outputs, including limitations in making the data available, searchable and retrievable

2. The quality of the data and filtering content not yet subject to conventional peer review

3. Ways to incent researchers to ensure their works are accounted for and attributable

4. Open access and knowing what is to be copyrighted versus what is part of the public domain

5. The transformation of publishers from a pay-to-read to a pay-to-publish model

6. New forms of research assessment

The whitepaper highlights a number of organizations currently working to address these challenges, including figshare, the Research Data Alliance (RDA), the International Council of Science (ICSU) Data Publication Working Group, and Thomson Reuters with its Data Citation Index. The changing scholarly landscape will affect publishers, funders, authors, researchers and other stakeholders.

“Taming the tsunami of data that is to come in the next decade is a critical issue for everyone involved in scholarly and scientific research,” said Jasper Simons, vice president of product and market strategy for publishers and associations, Thomson Reuters Scientific & Scholarly Research and leader of the Industry Forum. “Thomson Reuters is pleased to be working with experts from across this field to delve into these matters and collaboratively find solutions. We are all to benefit from the solutions that unfold, as they will accelerate the pace of future research and innovation.”

The Forum recommends creating a consortium of publishers and associations to develop standards that will guide new modes of communicating and sharing data. The Thomson Reuters Data Citation Index is a step in that direction by providing new ways to share data; it gives users a comprehensive view of the genesis of a research project and the ability to influence the future paths it may take while minimizing the duplication of work and speeding scientific research.

Read the Thomson Reuters Industry Forum whitepaper on Unlocking the Value of Research Data. Other topics the Forum will cover include Open Access, Content Enrichment, Post Publication Peer Review and Research Workflows.

White House honors American Chemical Society member and Nobel science laureate

August 13, 2013

Nobel laureate Mario J. Molina, Ph.D., a 42-year member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society, is among 16 individuals named by President Obama to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor — the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Other recipients of the 2013 award, which will be presented at a White House ceremony later this year, include former President Bill Clinton; Ben Bradlee, of Washington Post-Watergate fame; baseball great Ernie Banks; country music legend Loretta Lynn; and Oprah Winfrey.

Established 50 years ago by President John F. Kennedy, the award recognizes meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

“The Presidential Medal of Freedom goes to men and women who have dedicated their own lives to enriching ours,” President Obama said in announcing the awards. “This year’s honorees have been blessed with extraordinary talent, but what sets them apart is their gift for sharing that talent with the world. It will be my honor to present them with a token of our nation’s gratitude.”

ACS president Marinda Li Wu, Ph.D., congratulated Molina on behalf of the ACS’ more than 163,000 members.

“The National Medal of Freedom recognizes individuals whose extraordinary talent has enriched society,” Wu said. “Mario Molina has done that in so many ways. Molina demonstrated how an immigrant to the United States could make Nobel Prize-stature contributions to science. He later helped to raise awareness about global climate change among news media, the public and policy makers. We are proud of him, and offer our congratulations to Mario and his family.

Molina, a Mexican immigrant, has been an active ACS member, attending ACS National Meetings & Expositions, organizing and participating in symposia and diversity activities. “ACS membership and participation are truly valuable to me,” he has said. “Membership keeps me in touch with my peers and aware of exciting research.” Molina’s ACS honors include the 1998 ACS Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology.

He shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with F. Sherwood Rowland, Ph.D., and Paul J. Crutzen, Ph.D., for helping save the world from the consequences of ozone depletion. Molina is with the University of California, San Diego. He is also director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment and is a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Molina, Rowland and Crutzen established that substances called CFCs in aerosol spray cans and other products could destroy the ozone layer. The ozone layer is crucial to life on Earth, forming a protective shield high in the atmosphere that blocks potentially harmful ultraviolet rays in sunlight. After a “hole” in that layer over Antarctica was discovered in 1985, scientists established that it was indeed caused by CFCs, and worked together with policymakers and industry representatives around the world to solve the problem. The result was the Montreal Protocol, which phased out the use of CFCs in 1996. The Montreal Protocol is known as one of the most successful international agreements.

In the face of widespread opposition from companies that used and made CFCs, Molina and Rowland became scientist-activists. The stakes for Earth and its people were high. Molina has said that they didn’t feel it was enough to just report their findings. They had to do something about the situation. He became a crusader for the environment, drawing attention to the effects of CFCs and, more recently, global climate change.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Study explores effects of review setting on scientific peer review

August 12, 2013

Research findings published today in PLOS ONE report that the setting in which a scientific peer review panel evaluates grant applications does not necessarily impact the outcome of the review process. However, the research found that the average amount of discussion panelists engage in during the review is reduced. The investigation examined more than 1,600 grant application reviews coordinated by the American Institute of Biological Sciences Scientific Peer Advisory and Review Services (AIBS SPARS) on behalf of a federal agency over a four-year period.

The researchers compared two years when grant applications were reviewed using an in-person peer review panel to two years when panels were conducted via teleconference or videoconference.

Funding organizations routinely bring experts together to review research grant applications. A process known as scientific peer review, the goal of these panels is to identify the best research applications.

“There are no studies exploring whether the review setting significantly alters the quality of the peer review process,” stated Dr. Stephen Gallo, the lead author of this study and Technical Operations Manager for AIBS SPARS.

“Our goal is always a reliable and high-quality peer-review process. It is important that we understand the strengths and weaknesses of different peer review methods,” said Scott Glisson, Director of AIBS SPARS and an author of this study.

The findings appear in “Teleconference Versus Face-To-Face Scientific Peer Review of Grant Applications: Effects on Review Outcomes” published in PLOS ONE.

“Little difference was found in most of the review metrics between face-to-face and teleconference settings,” said Gallo. Application scoring was only modestly affected and reviewers used the full scoring range regardless of review setting. The reviewer ratings were highly reliable in both settings.

Often, the greatest anticipated difference between in-person and teleconference panels is the amount of time allocated to discussing applications. This study found teleconference or videoconference panels allocated less time to application discussions than in-person panels.

“This is a first of its kind study that provides valuable data to help research program managers select appropriate models for conducting peer review,” said Glisson.

More research is needed. “We should know whether the reduced amount of discussion and peripheral interactions that occur in a teleconference setting influence the final panel outcomes, and, ultimately the productivity of the research that is funded,” said Gallo.

Informa’s Primal Pictures launches iPad version of Anatomy & Physiology Online Learning Tool

August 12, 2013

Informa’s 3D anatomy software company Primal Pictures has launched an iPad enabled version of its award-winning Anatomy & Physiology Online subscription, the most complete and medically accurate interactive 3D model of the human body and its systems.

The new version, Anatomy & Physiology Online for iPad, is touch screen enabled, allowing users to rotate anatomy views and add or remove anatomical layers, all with the swipe of a finger.

The iPad version includes the most popular features of Anatomy & Physiology Online, which has been widely adopted in higher education as an anatomy textbook replacement or enhancement. The product provides interactive, 3D views of human anatomy with integrated physiology content. Users can rotate images, peel away layers, and add or remove anatomy from the 3D images.

They can also view narrated animations, movies, and illustrations of physiology, dissection slides and access an audio pronunciation guide. Each section includes learning objectives, with topical content appearing on the same page as the interactive images, slides, movies, and animation.

“This resource makes complex anatomical images more understandable, and delivers information in a format that has become the default learning environment for today’s tech-savvy students,” said Warren Berman, Assistant Professor of Biology, Community College of Philadelphia, and a faculty reviewer for Primal Pictures. “Colleges are moving curricula online at a record pace, and customers have been eagerly requesting an iPad version of Primal’s best-selling product.”

Primal Pictures developed its 3D models using medical scan data to create a highly detailed and accurate model that showcases the interrelations of body systems. Its range of 3D human anatomy titles are already used by more than 500,000 students and 70,000 educators at over 700 colleges and universities around the world. Students can access the products from any web-enabled device. Instructors can review and track data on student usage and study time and can adjust or modify the online lectures and discussions accordingly.

F1000Prime and Public Library of Science collaborating on article-level metrics

August 9, 2013

Faculty of 1000’s F1000Prime (http://f1000.com/prime) article recommendation service has partnered with Public Library of Science (PLOS), a leading nonprofit open access publisher and advocacy organization, to provide enhanced information to researchers on the impact of their published articles. The full press release can be read here: http://f1000.com/resources/F1000-PLOS_collaboration_PR.pdf.

‘F1000Prime recommended’ badges and scores have been added to all PLOS journal articles that have been selected for inclusion in F1000Prime by F1000’s Faculty of peer-nominated life scientists and clinicians. Adding F1000Prime scores to PLOS’s sophisticated article-level metrics (ALMs) gives authors of important articles more information on the impact of their work and its recognition by respected scientists, and will help guide readers to expert commentaries on important papers.

Please contact Faculty of 1000 if you have any questions about this partnership at press@f1000.com.

Elsevier Announces its Collaboration with Hungarian National Consortium

August 8, 2013

Elsevier, announced it has signed a license agreement with the Hungarian National Consortium for access to Elsevier’s entire Backfile Collection for all Hungarian academic and research institutions.

The Backfile Collection on ScienceDirect provides access to journals back to the start of their publication. Access to this collection comes in addition to existing access to Elsevier’s broadest journal offering, the Freedom Collection. As a result, all Hungarian researchers now have access to the entire range of articles available on ScienceDirect. Expanding access to scientific information fits the Hungarian National Consortium’s strategic goal to improve the global research ranking position of Hungarian research, researchers and institutions.

Professor István Klinghammer, Minister of State for Higher Education at the Hungarian Ministry of Human Resources, said, “We are very happy to be the first country in Central Eastern Europe to have access to the entire range of Elsevier journals which closes the knowledge gap and promises to strengthen the global competitiveness of Hungarian research.”

“Broad access to scientific publications has a positive impact on research output,” said Endre Béky, Regional Director for Central Eastern Europe at Elsevier. “Scientists who read more scholarly articles tend to publish more, which enhances their international visibility, increases their opportunities for international collaboration and expands the probability of acquiring the necessary research funds.”

Copyright Clearance Center Adds Eight Publishers to Get It Now

August 8, 2013

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization creating global licensing and content solutions that make copyright work for everyone, has announced the addition of eight new publishers to its award-winning Get It Now academic solution. The new publishers are Advanstar Communications, Inc., HealthCom Media, IGI Global, Intellect, Project Hope/Health Affairs Journal, SPIE, Springer Publishing Company, and W.S. Maney & Son, Ltd.

In July, CCC had announced the addition of five publishers to Get It Now: ME Sharpe Inc., Human Kinetics, Akademiai Kiado, Cognizant Communication and World Scientific Publishers. These additions bring the total number of publishers participating in the service to over 70.

Also, in July CCC announced the integration of OCLC’s ILL Fee Management (IFM) Service, which officially went live August 1. OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. The OCLC IFM service helps libraries reduce administrative costs by allowing users to pay – and be paid for – ILL lending charges through their OCLC invoices. The service reduces the workload and time spent generating invoices and writing checks. It also supports reciprocal ILL agreements among libraries. The integration of Get It Now and IFM requires ILLiad v8.4.2, the mediated workflow of Get It Now, and the Get It Now add-on for ILLiad v2.1.

Used at over 175 institutions, Get It Now provides library patrons with immediate fulfillment of full-text articles from unsubscribed journals – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“As requested by our Get It Now customers, we are pleased to add more publishers from the healthcare and research fields, both domestic and international,” said Tim Bowen, CCC Director, Academic Products & Services. “While our title list is strong in the Scientific, Technical, and Medical space, Get It Now is beneficial to all types of academic institutions given the substantial amount of humanities content also available.”

To encourage the use of IFM with Get It Now, CCC and OCLC are offering a promotional campaign for ILLiad libraries. For each Get It Now article request placed and paid for through IFM between August 1 and November 30, 2013, institutions will automatically be entered into a raffle to win one of two $250 “Vernon Bucks” gift certificates from Vernon Library Supplies.

Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems now published by Springer

August 7, 2013

Springer is now publishing the Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems, a new journal in partnership with the Brazilian Society for Automatics (SBA). Formerly known as Controle and Automação, the new journal will publish six times per year, and all articles will be available on Springer’s online platform, SpringerLink (link.springer.com).

The Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems covers industrial automation, addressing such topics as Circuits and Systems; Control Theory and Applications; Discrete Event Systems; Education in Control, Automation; and Electronic and Biomedical Instrumentation. The journal combines theoretical developments and application studies involving state-of-the-art research. In doing so, the Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems offers a truly interdisciplinary forum in industrial automation, intelligent systems, robotics, control theory and power systems.

“The Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems inherited a high profile and long academic tradition since it will now be replacing Controle & Automação, and is further distinguished by the fact that it will now be truly international through this collaboration with Springer,” said Ivan Nunes de Silva of the University of São Paulo, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief. “For forthcoming issues of the Journal, we invite researchers in related areas to submit their best, truly innovative and rigorous work to the Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems.”

Charles Glaser, Springer’s Executive Editor for Applied Sciences, USA, remarked, “We are very pleased to be able to collaborate with the SBA on the publication of Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems. The 24^th volume of this journal is the result of an evolution toward an international, interdisciplinary forum for the highest quality research. This content fits well into the core of our engineering publishing program and is an extremely valuable addition to our journal collection. We look forward to working with the SBA, toward our mutual success.”

Making it less of a trial to find important medical evidence: Faculty of 1000 launch F1000Trials

August 6, 2013

Faculty of 1000 has launched a new product, F1000Trials (http://f1000.com/trials), an effective way to be alerted to new clinical trial-related articles specifically designed for the needs of practicing physicians and clinical researchers. The press release (http://f1000.com/resources/F1000Trials_Launch_PR.pdf) includes comments from Prof Peter Sandercock (University of Edinburgh, and Principal Investigator on several major clinical trials) and Dr Ben Goldacre (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and award winning writer).

F1000Trials is a continually updated, comprehensive database of randomized controlled trial articles (including early phase oncology studies), as well as systematic review and meta-analysis articles, drawn from over 300 key general and specialist medical journals (http://f1000.com/trials/about#journal-list). The F1000 Faculty Members (http://f1000.com/trials/thefaculty) provide expert assessment of newly published articles and write reviews of the majority of these articles, recommending the most noteworthy by assigning star ratings and providing reasons for the recommendation.

Other features of F1000Trials (http://f1000.com/trials/about) include:

· Threaded publication trail – links to trial registries and other PubMed-indexed articles about the same trial

· Links to related articles

· Powerful drug search engine that also enables searching by disease and condition

· Identification of trials that change clinical practice and trials with negative results

F1000Trials is in its beta phase, and is currently free to access to anyone who registers on the website. Faculty of 1000 invites all people interested in improving how we access and communicate information about clinical trials to try out F1000Trials and send their feedback.

New Agreement Between EBSCO and NetAdvance Provides Japanese-Language Content to EBSCO Discovery Service

August 6, 2013

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and NetAdvance today have announced an agreement allowing metadata from NetAdvance’s JapanKnowledge collection to be added to EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) — providing unparalleled access to world-renowned content in all subject areas, for researchers at every level.

The content from JapanKnowledge includes an extensive collection of Japanese-language content geared for educational institutions, researchers and businesses. The metadata offers Japanese language dictionaries (Japanese, English-Japanese, Japanese-English and English-English), two dictionaries of current words, a dictionary of scientific terms as well as a biographical dictionary. The content also includes a 30-volume encyclopedia, the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (the largest encyclopedia in English about Japan), a news database that covers Asia and the European Union, full-text books, a database of video recordings from 1908-2005 and a database of dissertations from the humanities departments of six universities in Japan

NetAdvance General Manager Mr. Masashi Tanaka emphasized “JapanKnowledge is a frequently and widely used database at educational and research institutions both in Japan and overseas. Inclusion of JapanKnowledge metadata into EDS, I believe, will be quite significant, because the variety of valuable Japanese material aggregated in the growing JapanKnowledge collection will be of benefit to the global users.”

EBSCO has continually worked to increase global content in EBSCO Discovery Service and the addition of NetAdvance’s metadata to EDS significantly expands the global reach and will serve as a unique and valuable resource for EDS users.

NetAdvance is part of a growing list of publishers and other content partners that are taking part in EDS to bring more visibility to their content. Partners include the world’s largest scholarly journal & book publishers including Elsevier, Wiley Blackwell, Springer Science & Business Media, Taylor & Francis Informa, Sage Publications, Nature Publishing, IEEE, ACM and thousands of others. Partners also include content providers, such as LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters (Web of Science), JSTOR, ARTstor, Credo Reference, Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, ABC-CLIO, The HathiTrust and many others.

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

EBSCO Discovery Service is quickly becoming the discovery selection for many libraries (www.ebscohost.com/discovery/eds-news), and an obvious partner for content providers. Because the service builds on the foundation provided by the EBSCOhost^® platform, libraries gain a full user experience for discovering their collections/OPAC—which is not typical in the discovery space. Further still, in the many universities and other libraries where EBSCOhost is the most-used platform for premium research, users are not asked to change their pathways or habits for searching. There’s simply more to discover on the familiar EBSCOhost platform, and the same can be said for library administrators who can leverage their previous work with EBSCOadmin^™.

New library report into the perceived value of academic libraries in developing world countries

August 6, 2013

Re-imaging the role of the library is key to demonstrating value in the developing world SAGE report highlights examples of best practice to enhance working relationships between librarians and faculty in developing countries

Raising awareness of how the library supports teaching and research staff is key to demonstrating library value in developing countries, concludes a new report published today. The findings are the result of a six-month research study with twelve developing country institutions conducted by SAGE exploring perceptions of the value of academic libraries by teaching and research staff in developing countries.

‘Library Value in the Developing World’ reports that developing-country librarians are beginning to recognize the importance of evaluating their value for research and teaching staff. Communicating the value of their role however, remains a key challenge. Librarians noted that whilst they receive positive feedback about the resource collections they provide, there is limited awareness of how librarians can better support research and teaching staff beyond these traditional parameters.

Chief considerations

Outlined in the report are examples of best practice from the case study institutions, along with recommendations on how working relations between academic libraries and stakeholders could be enhanced. These include:

Communication

The report highlights the value of increased engagement between individual libraries and their academic staff to help reinforce their changing role in supporting academia and in supporting training and advice. Developing research partnerships, integrated teaching, research services and literacy instruction were all considered part of the ‘reinvented’ librarian role, beyond providing access to resources. The report suggests that librarians are building an increased understanding of marketing skills, as well as developing external relationships with the scholarly community to promote advocacy for the library.

Support from the university

Universities can also help to build awareness of the role of the library, the report advises, by investing in the professional development of librarians in both their provision of research and teaching skills, and by enabling librarians more contact time with research and teaching staff. It also advises that the University provide internal marketing support to help raise the status and recognition of librarians and the value they add to the work of academic colleagues and senior managers.

Collaboration with publishers

There are also considerations for publishers. The report advises that further research be conducted to understand the ongoing needs of developing-country libraries and their work. Part of this includes the adaptation of marketing and online resources to enable greater access for those in developing countries.

The full report can be accessed from: http://www.sagepublications.com/libraries/dw . Follow the conversations on twitter at #libvalue

BMJ announces key appointment

August 5, 2013

Glen Campbell joins BMJ on 2 September. He comes from Elsevier, where he was Executive Vice President for Society Business Development, STM Journals. Glen has spent most of his working life at Elsevier, where up until his most recent role, he worked in its Health Sciences Division. More recently, in his role as EVP for Global Medical Research, Glen was responsible for the worldwide journals programme of Elsevier Health Sciences, overseeing more than 400 titles.

BMJ CEO Tim Brooks commented: “The BMJ board agreed earlier this year that in order to maintain the momentum of our growth outside our home market, it was essential to recruit local senior management in key territories. Glen is a most experienced professional, who brings a lifelong knowledge of medical publishing, and unrivalled contacts in the US health sector. His appointment follows that of Anand Ekambaram to the corresponding role in India, announced last month.”

He added: “For most of its long history, BMJ has been a British business with a pleasing line in exports. However, most of our revenues now originate outside the UK, and the arrival of Glen and Anand signals a transition to a multi-centre, global business.”

Glen commented: “I am thrilled to be joining BMJ to work on the expansion of its US business. With the medical research journal in a period of evolution, The BMJ itself has been a dynamic and creative innovator in both content and business models. BMJ Clinical Evidence and BMJ Best Practice have also broken new ground in providing clinicians with evidence-based information and knowledge. There is boundless opportunity in the US, and I look forward to building on BMJ’s current success in this market to realize its full potential.”