PeerJ passes one year anniversary

June 13, 2013

Today (June 12^th, 2013) PeerJ celebrated the one year anniversary of their original announcement. PeerJ was announced on June 12th 2012 and opened for PeerJ for submissions on December 3rd. The first PeerJ articles were published on Feb 12th 2013, and PeerJ PrePrints launched on April 3rd 2013.

Over the last 12 months, the company has recruited an Editorial Board of 800 world renowned researchers; built cutting edge submission, peer-review, publication and pre-print software from scratch; and established themselves with all the major organizations who archive, index, list and certify new publications (for example, PeerJ is a full member of CrossRef, OASPA (the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) and COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics). Their content is formally archived by CLOCKSS, LOCKSS and PubMed Central. They are indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, Google Scholar and the DOAJ).

OCLC completes major technical upgrade of core WorldCat infrastructure

June 11, 2013

OCLC completed the development work to convert the underlying structure for its WorldCatdatabase to Apache HBase, a distributed platform in use by many global information providers, including Facebook, Adobe and Salesforce.com. This marks the conclusion of a significant technical update to the WorldCat database of more than 300 million library records and more than 2 billion library holdings that will offer new options for data analysis and faster service to libraries and their users.

The Apache Hadoop software collection is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers. HBase is a top-level Apache Software Foundation project built on Hadoop that provides major data handling improvements for these very large datasets. OCLC WorldShare applications for library management, resource sharing, metadata and discovery rely on access to a variety of large and growing datasets, including the WorldCat database.

“This is a very exciting technology transition and service upgrade,” said Greg Zick, OCLC’s Vice President of Global Engineering. “As we move our OCLC services to the cloud on the WorldShare platform, we need to find ways to optimize performance of our operations on large datasets like local and national catalogs and authority datasets. This upgrade will also help ongoing quality improvement efforts, record matching and merging and will enable new representations and uses of the cooperative’s data.”

The sheer scope of OCLC members’ cooperative data is one driver of this change, as HBase provides better handling of very large datasets. In addition, HBase and Hadoop allow OCLC to represent library information in new ways for use in e-content and linked data systems while providing more consistent, reliable and faster service to libraries and their users.

Ron Buckley, Senior OCLC Technology Manager and leader of the Hadoop migration team, will be discussing this effort with leaders in the database management field at the 2013 HBaseCon conference in San Francisco on June 13, 2013.

“Our results have been significant,” said Mr. Buckley. “Our hardware storage requirements have been considerably reduced, and our overall footprint simplified to support growth. We have seen large gains in performance for some major data operations where execution time has been slashed from days to hours. This upgrade lets us explore new areas such as detailed analytics and enriched relationships that will increase the value of the cooperative’s data for all libraries.”

Hadoop provides these enhancements, in part, by scaling data services across hundreds or even thousands of computers, each with several processor cores. This efficiently distributes large amounts of work across a set of machines, allowing for greater flexibility, speed and dependability. OCLC is running Hadoop across more than 150 servers in three clusters.

Michael Stack, Software Engineer at Cloudera, Chair of the Apache HBase Project Management Committee and keynote for the HBaseCon event, is enthusiastic about OCLC’s work in this area. “I have had multiple discussions with Ron Buckley and know that after careful study and much preparatory work, OCLC has pulled off a smooth transition,” Mr. Stack commented. “This is my favorite HBase deploy. It is about libraries, my favorite institution, and it is about Apache HBase as an enabling technology that allows OCLC to do more. It is a great story.”

This technology has already had an impact on OCLC functionality and services. The recent addition of linked data elements to WorldCat.org relies on the features available in Hadoop. Also, the new WorldShare Metadata Collection Manager service takes advantage of the data handling benefits of its distributed infrastructure.

“We credit the success of this venture to our remarkable migration team,” noted Mr. Zick. “Because of their intelligent and hard work, this significant transition has had a minimal impact on our members’ use of existing OCLC services. The team was able to replicate the production version of WorldCat in HBase, write a completely new access layer, and then incrementally move existing products and services to the new infrastructure with minimal disruption.”

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute unveils new initiative to promote sharing of genetic and clinical data

June 11, 2013

World’s health researchers join together to share and use ‘big data’

The Global Alliance addresses a need for improved approaches to bring together the ever increasing amount of genomic and clinical data. [EMBL – European Bioinformatics Institute]

More than 60 leading health care, research and disease advocacy organisations from across the world are joining together to form an international alliance dedicated to enabling secure sharing of genomic and clinical data.

Each of these organisations has signed a ‘Letter of Intent’, pledging to work together to create a not-for-profit, inclusive, public-private, international, non-governmental organisation (modelled on the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C) that will develop a common framework.

The cost of genome sequencing has fallen one-million fold, and ever increasing numbers of people are making their genetic and clinical data available for research and clinical use. However, interpreting people’s genetic data requires a standardised biomedical evidence base that is larger than any one party alone can develop, and that adheres to the highest ethical and privacy standards.

“In recent years, many groups around the world have recognised the need for improved approaches to bring together genomic and clinical data, and some have made progress addressing this,” said Professor Mike Stratton, Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.”But in coming together, and studying the challenges, we recognised that something was missing: an international body that spans diseases and institutions, committed to furthering progress in an innovative and responsible fashion.”

In January 2013, 50 colleagues from eight different countries met to discuss the current challenges and opportunities in genomic research and medicine, and how they could work together to foster medical progress. They concluded that the greatest need was a common framework of international standards designed to enable and oversee the sharing of genomic and clinical data in an effective, responsible, and interpretable manner.

Following the circulation of a White Paper from the meeting, more than 60 organisations from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa have joined together to form a non-profit global alliance which will work to develop a common framework, that enables new research based on shared data while protecting participant autonomy and privacy.

“At present, it is generally not possible to predict which changes in DNA sequence lead to clinical consequences. Only by comparing each personal genome sequence to a large repository of other such data can robust patterns and relationships can be identified,” said Dr Tom Hudson, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, and President of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Canada. “The stakes are high, because if we get it right we can create new opportunities to define diagnostic categories, streamline clinical trials, and match patients to therapy.

We want to make sure this is done in a global manner, and with the highest standards for ethics and privacy.”

Elsevier publishes new book on information age pioneer, Alan Turing

June 11, 2013

Elsevier today announced the publication of a new book, Alan Turing: His Work and Impact, edited by S. Barry Cooper and Jan van Leeuwen. The book brings insight into the context and significance of Alan Turing’s impact on mathematics, computing, computer science, informatics, morphogenesis, philosophy and the greater scientific world. It also includes the most significant original works from the 4-volume set of The Collected Works of A. M. Turing, as well as some of his previously unpublished content and images.

During World War II as a member of Bletchley Park’s code-breaking team, Turing broke the code behind Germany’s “Enigma Machine.” This work enabled the Allies to decipher the German’s coded messages about ship movement. He is also considered the founder of computing science, having developed in 1936 the “Turing Machine,” the foundation for the modern computer. A Turing Machine is a device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to set of rules. It is a very simple machine that can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm and is useful to explain the functions of a central processing unit (CPU) inside a computer.

In addition to the Turing book, Elsevier published several new titles in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence:

Simple Steps to Data Encryption: A Practical Guide to Secure Computing
By Peter Loshin

Swarm Intelligence and Bio-Inspired Computation: Theory and Applications
By Xin-She Yang, Zhihua Cui, Renbin Xiao, Amir Hossein Gandomi and Mehmet Karamanoglu

Intelligent Networks: Recent Approaches and Applications in Medical Systems
By Syed Ahamed

Advances in Intelligence and Security Informatics
By Wenji Mao and Fei-Yue Wang

All of these books are available through the Elsevier Store or can be found on ScienceDirect, a full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more than 11,000 books.

NoveList and TLC Expand Relationship to Include ILS Integration into NoveList Select

June 11, 2013

NoveList, a division of EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is announcing a new seamless ILS integration with NoveList Select, its catalog enrichment resource. NoveList Select content is now displayed alongside library data in TLC’s (The Library Corporation) LS2 PAC. This latest announcement exhibits NoveList’s commitment to work with major vendors and systems so catalog users will find information where they need it, when they need it.

LS2 PAC Product Owner Dianne Coan explains the benefit of this integration for patrons. “The modern design of our LS2 PAC married with the rich data from NoveList equals a superior user experience for our librarians’ patrons. Our users not only find what they’re looking for quickly, but they can also explore the seamless display of reviews, series information, and recommended authors and titles.”

NoveList Select enables libraries to add rich reader-focused features including: reading recommendations, series information, events, reviews and book jackets to enrich their catalog and make it a tool for readers to discover great books. NoveList Select works with many major vendors and systems to ensure the content is seamlessly integrated into a library’s catalog. For customers that already have LS2 PAC and NoveList Select, the connection is very easy and no extra charge.

Vice President of NoveList, Duncan Smith, says working with TLC these last 10 years has helped more libraries reach their readers. “Our goal is to put expert reading recommendations and other expanded content into the place where it is most visible to library patrons and now libraries with LS2 PAC as their catalog solution can easily integrate the rich content of NoveList Select into their most frequently consulted resource—the catalog.”

A list of ILS systems that NoveList Select is already integrated with is available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/our-products/novelist-select-ils.

F1000Research joins OASPA and COPE, and is listed in DOAJ and SHERPA/RoMEO

June 11, 2013

F1000Research is delighted to announce the journal’s membership of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and its listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the SHERPA/RoMEO directory.

OASPA and COPE Membership

OASPA (http://oaspa.org/) supports and represents Open Access publishers by educating the research community on the benefits of Open Access, promoting Open Access business models and advancing innovation in science communication (http://oaspa.org/about/mission-and-purpose/).

F1000Research joins 35 other professional publishers that are members of OASPA, including BioMed Central, PLOS, and eLife, to help play an integral part in facilitating the transition of scholarly communication from traditional subscription-based systems to new innovative publishing models dedicated to making scientific research Open Access.

In addition, F1000Research is now a member of COPE (http://publicationethics.org/), the distinguished global forum that provides advice and guidance to journal editors and publishers on editorial and ethical standards. F1000Research’s publishing model, where articles are published prior to peer review, invites ethical considerations unique to the journal. Commenting on joining COPE, Rebecca Lawrence, Publisher for F1000Research said: “It is particularly important to us that the highest standard of ethical behavior is upheld in our journal, and by being a part of COPE, we are in the best position to achieve this goal.”

EBSCO Information Services Releases Engineering Source

June 10, 2013

EBSCO Information Services introduces Engineering Source™, the premier collection of engineering-related content. The comprehensive full-text database is designed to support the information needs of engineers at all levels, including research, planning, product development, management and supply chain.

The collection provides unmatched full-text coverage of information relevant to many engineering disciplines, including:

Aerospace
Biomedical
Civil
Electrical
Environmental
Mechanical
Software
Structural

Engineering Source indexes 3,000 publications, 2,000 of which provide full-text coverage, and includes engineering-related journals, monographs, magazines and trade publications as well as energy-focused monographs, books, conference papers and proceedings. Engineering Source enhances the use of major engineering indexes EI Compendex, GeoRef and INSPEC. Many of the full text titles in Engineering Source are also indexed in those databases, making Engineering Source the ideal full text complement for users of these core engineering indexes.

Engineering Source is the latest science and technology offering from EBSCO, joining Applied Science & Technology Source™, Computer & Applied Science Complete™ and Energy & Power Source™. Visit www.ebscohost.com/academic/engineering-source for more information on Engineering Source.

Informa Appoints Liontou In New Executive Role As Chief Content Officer

June 10, 2013

Informa has announced the appointment of Fotini Liontou as Chief Content Officer for Informa Business Information. Liontou has worked for the company for 17 years, most recently as Chief Executive of IBI’s Lloyds List Group.

This new executive position will focus on driving content connections between the IBI brands to maximise digital innovation across IBI’s product suite. “Fotini is uniquely placed to do this,” says Lindsey Roberts, CEO of IBI. “We are committed to maximizing the extensive opportunities we have to create unique digital content sets across our portfolio and Fotini’s wealth of editorial expertise and her experience of launching successful online subscription services will enable that to happen more quickly.”

“IBI has made some brave moves with our digital subscriptions, breaking down barriers to give our customers what they want rather that what the legacy brand has historically defined. Fotini’s appointment to this role, dedicated to our digital ambitions, is an exciting move for us,” explains Roberts.

During her tenure of leadership at the Lloyd’s List Group, Liontou masterminded the launch of two of the company’s most successful print to digital transitions, www.LloydsListIntelligence.com and www.lloydslist.com

Dr Philip Smith, Group MD of IBI’s Commodities division which includes The Public Ledger and Agra Europe will be additionally taking over responsibility for the Lloyd’s List Group.

Axel Kaschte joins OCLC as Product Strategy Director

June 6, 2013

OCLC announced today that Axel Kaschte has joined OCLC as Product Strategy Director, EMEA, with immediate effect. Dr. Kaschte has 20 years of experience working with library management systems and the library community throughout Europe.

In this new position at OCLC, Dr. Kaschte will be responsible for product strategy in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and will be focused on OCLC’s solutions in support of library management workflows in the region. OCLC has an established reputation and client base in EMEA and this new role will be instrumental in the ongoing development of new OCLC WorldShare services.

Dr. Kaschte has previously held positions at SirsiDynix, where he was responsible for the roadmap of localisation requirements for libraries outside the United States, and most recently at Ex Libris, where he was Strategy Director for Europe and played a key role in the introduction of their product strategy to launch cloud-based solutions like Alma.

“Axel Kaschte has in-depth knowledge and understanding of the needs and interests of libraries in multiple locations around the world, and especially in Europe,” said Robin Murray, OCLC Vice President, Global Product Management. “OCLC EMEA libraries will benefit from his vast experience as we continue to advance our cloud-based library services in the region.”

Stating his reasons for joining OCLC, Dr. Kaschte said: “Firstly, OCLC as a membership organisation has a unique and close relationship with libraries, which allows for a very open and direct discussion about their requirements and strategies. Secondly, OCLC is very resourceful and they can deliver solutions that are innovative and really push the boundaries. I’m looking forward to working with a talented team of individuals at OCLC to put the OCLC WorldShare strategy into practice in EMEA.”

Eric van Lubeek, Managing Director, OCLC EMEA added: “We welcome the wealth of experience Axel Kaschte is bringing with him to further our development of innovative new services to libraries. We very much look forward to his contribution.”

Dr. Kaschte will be based in Germany.

Macmillan Science & Education Launch Chinese Head Office in Shanghai

June 6, 2013

Macmillan Science and Education, a global division of one of the largest and best-known publishing and technology companies in the world will today host the official opening of a new regional office, based in Shanghai. The office will strengthen Macmillan’s ability to serve the fast growing scientific research and education sectors in China.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130605/618566 )

The office will provide strategic leadership, business management and support functions to Macmillan’s Science businesses inGreater China, and Scholarly and Education businesses in Asia. Along with Macmillan’s existing footprint in Tokyo, Hong Kongand other locations in Asia, the new Shanghai office will provide high-quality content and solutions to transform learning and discovery, and improve the way students learn, teachers teach and scientists discover in the region.

Led by Charlotte Liu , Managing Director, Macmillan Science (Greater China) and Education (Asia), the Shanghai-based team will bring the best practices, products and services from Macmillan Science & Education’s global network, to help Chinese researchers and language learners achieve greater success. The office will also be instrumental in delivering Chinese language learning content, scientific discovery and other products from China to a global audience, using Macmillan’s highly established infrastructure and network.

Liu, a native of Shanghai, has spent fifteen years working in international publishing in both the USA and China. A graduate of English Language & Literature from Fudan University, Shanghai, she also has a MBA from Dartmouth College, USA. The office, based in the Xuhui district of Shanghai is staffed by both Chinese staff and international colleagues who have transferred from other offices across Macmillan’s global network. Together they have strong insights of both the Chinese and global markets.

At the opening ceremony today at the prestigious Shanghai Science Hall, Macmillan will sign a Framework of Cooperation with the Shanghai Association for Science & Technology (SAST), pledging a five year alliance to stimulate international co-operation in the fields of science and technology, to nurture local talent and promote the success of Chinese scientists to the global stage.

Annette Thomas , CEO of Macmillan Science & Education explains the motivating forces behind the Shanghai opening. “I am extremely proud of our many successes in the region over the past decade and this investment in Shanghai reflects our confidence and enthusiasm for the opportunities ahead. We envisage that we can make a major contribution to driving the rise of China’s contribution to global science, technology and innovative learning. Macmillan is perfectly placed to be an active partner with China in this exciting journey.”

Macmillan’s science and education brands have been serving customers in the region for over a decade; its current strategy of forming alliances with local partners has already proved highly successful. Together with FLTRP, Macmillan co-publishes the highly acclaimed, Ministry of Education approved, “New Standard English” series, enabling students from kindergarten to college in more than 20 provinces across China to learn English more effectively. The companies have also successfully co-produced Chinese language learning products under the Discover China brand, and a new bi-lingual science learning course for primary schools. Education products and ecosystems from Macmillan Higher Education and Nature Education are also used in the growing higher education sector in China.

The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has long been collaborating with research institutions in China to improve the quality and global impact of science journals originating from China. NPG currently publishes seven journals in collaboration with partners in China, including Cell Research, one of the highest ranked Chinese journals in impact factor. Customized training programs are also offered to help Chinese researchers improve their research writing and communications skills, and become more successful in publishing their research results in high quality journals. In the area of popular science, the Chinese language edition of Scientific American, published under the name of Global Science, is a collaboration with the Chinese Association of Science & Technology, and has contributed to science popularization in general public in China.

Elsevier’s Digital Services Upgraded to Provide Enhanced Searching and Mobile Capabilities

June 6, 2013

Elsevier, today announced a major investment in services provided to its society partners and individual readers: a new online platform and management system for its 500+ health, medical, and life science journal-branded websites.

The new online platform will provide these journal-branded websites improved search results accuracy, a more robust editorial tool to create topical article collections, and a high quality reading experience for visitors using mobile devices. The upgrades will begin this Fall.

Elsevier’s new journal-branded web hosting service is state of the art, powered by Elsevier’s Smart Content, which provides world-leading semantic enrichment technologies in health, medical, and life sciences through the application of EMMeT™ (Elsevier Merged Medical Taxonomy). Beyond delivering improved search results, this semantically tagged content powers a robust editorial collection tool to create automated or curated topic collections. The new web hosting service was developed using Atypon^® Literatum™. Upgrades include an advanced mobile device adapted presentation through the use of Literatum for Mobile™.

“We look forward to using the new collection tool for editors that Elsevier is planning,” said Dr. Craig Niederberger, Head of Urology at the University of Illinois, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Fertility & Sterility and Urological Survey Section Editor of The Journal of Urology^®. “These semantic technologies are needed to assist editors in offering navigation and article collections organized around topics that are relevant to readers.”

Smart Content provides readers with improved search accuracy by mapping EMMeT’s extensive taxonomy to each journal article and webpage on a granular level. Founded on a core of UMLS (Unified Medical Language System), EMMeT contains select terms from standard vocabularies such as MeSH, SNOMED CT, RxNorm, ICD9 & 10, and LOINC. Manually curated by a team of taxonomists, EMMeT also includes an extensive custom vocabulary of jargon (abbreviations and acronyms) to reflect natural language. As a whole, EMMeT has more than one million concepts and three million synonyms of which 250,000 concepts are core clinical. Branches include diseases, drugs, procedures, anatomy, clinical findings and symptoms, organisms and substances.

In addition, through the use of html5 mobile browser technology, the upgrade ensures all journal-branded sites operated by Elsevier recognize mobile device visitors and present to them a device-optimized website, meaning that when the user is accessing the site via a mobile device the content will automatically display in a mobile-friendly format.

“Kudos! I’ve seen the mobile-formatted website for Fertility & Sterility, and the design is beautiful. We’re impressed with the greater readability of the forthcoming website version from mobile devices. So many physicians keep up to date from their mobile phone – this is needed to complement our journal iTunes app,” added Dr. Niederberger.

“The priorities for this investment reflect what Elsevier has heard from its journal subscribers as well as what societies have expressed as their top digital platform priorities,” said Glen Campbell, Elsevier’s Executive Vice President of Society Business Development. “We look forward to customizing these services carefully with each of our society partners. We will extend this new platform’s capability to our society journals in the Physical and Social Sciences as we expand our society business in those domains.”

Publisher Springer Science to Raise $993 Million in IPO

June 6, 2013

German academic publisher Springer Science & Business Media GmbH said it plans to raise about 760 million euros ($993 million) in its initial public offering.

Shares of Springer Science, controlled by Swedish buyout firm EQT Partners AB, are set to start trading in Frankfurt before the summer break, according to a statement today. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are managing the sale.

German companies including forklift-maker Kion Group GmbH and the country’s largest residential landlord Deutsche Annington Immobilien AG are planning to list shares as their owners seek to tap a rally in equity markets, with the benchmark DAX Index (DAX) gaining over a third in the last 12 months.

EQT is still accepting takeover offers for Springer Science this month and may scrap the IPO, people familiar with the matter said last week. The buyout firm hasn’t made a final decision whether to do the IPO or sell the German publisher, according to the people. Buyout firms BC Partners Ltd., which is most interested, as well as KKR & Co. and Providence Equity Partners have until about June 10 to hand in takeover offers, the people said at the time.

If the IPO happens, about 760 million euros in new shares will be issued. Springer Science reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 343.7 million euros in 2012, the company said.

Springer Science+Business Media Deutschland GmbH, based in Berlin, has said it will be converted into Springer Science+Business Media AG before the listing.

The company reported adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 344 million euros last year, up 12.4 percent from 306 million euros of adjusted Ebitda in 2011.

Source: Bloomberg