–Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization and leading provider of licensing and Open Access (OA) solutions, and Aries Systems, an industry recognized developer of workflow solutions for the scholarly publishers, announce the integration of CCC’s RightsLink^® for Open Access and Aries’ Editorial Manager for seamless Article Processing Charge (APC) management.

“Our integration with Aries Systems responds directly to the needs of researchers, publishers and institutions in an effort to make Open Access transactions easier.”

This integration provides scholarly publishers with a seamless and friction-free way to process APCs within their workflows and adapt to new Open Access models as they emerge. Backed by CCC and Aries Systems, which have collectively served the scholarly and publishing industry for over six decades, this automated APC management solution fully integrates with editorial and production workflows, thereby accelerating the publisher’s time to market, improving the author experience and minimizing the operational costs associated with managing author fees.

“CCC enjoys close, long-standing relationships with a wide range of journal publishers who have said they’re looking for integrated workflow solutions across the complete publishing lifecycle to ease the burdens on their own staffs and authors,” said Roy Kaufman, Managing Director, New Ventures, CCC. “Our integration with Aries Systems responds directly to the needs of researchers, publishers and institutions in an effort to make Open Access transactions easier.”

“We chose to work with CCC because of its strong relationships with publishers, deep knowledge of the changing Open Access market and dynamic RightsLink platform,” said Lyndon Holmes, CEO, Aries Systems. “We believe the CCC-Aries integration is a powerful answer for publishers, authors, funders and institutions that need a robust Open Access solution.”

CCC has been helping publishers improve the author experience in collecting APCs for over six years and welcomes efforts toward standardization and transparency. It recently joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), working with its members on issues such as collecting Article Processing Charges (APCs) and Open Access-aware licensing. The not-for-profit, named one of “10 to Watch” by information industry analyst Outsell in its 2013 Open Access Market Report, recently endorsed the Research Information Network’s call for cooperation among funders, universities and publishers.

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 as part of its non-profit mission.

Aries Systems was founded in 1986 with the mission to develop advanced software technologies that enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of scholarly publishing. Its principal offerings include Editorial Manager, ProduXion Manager and Knowledge Finder.

Ingram Content Group Inc., today announced plans to launch its IngramSparkSM offering, a new Publish On DemandSM platform. The easy-to-use, online publishing tool provides independent publishers with simple, cost-effective access to Ingram’s global distribution network for print titles and e-book content.

“Through the IngramSpark platform, independent publishers will now have access to Ingram’s reach, enabling them to affordably print copies, distribute books to global retailers, make titles available to all major e-readers and connect with more customers worldwide,” said Mark Ouimet, Vice President & General Manager, Ingram Publisher Services. “We wanted to make it easy for publishers to create an account and start uploading their content in just a few minutes.”

The new platform builds on the comprehensive services that Ingram already offers to independent publishers. The platform, which is set to launch in July 2013, gives publishers the tools to manage their print books and e-books in one location. A cost-effective way to publish, it’s free to open an account. Print titles can be managed through an on-demand, low-risk inventory model, and e-book distribution will be available in August.

The platform integrates Ingram’s best-of-class print-on-demand and digital distribution technologies. Publishers that use the IngramSpark service will have access to Ingram’s extensive distribution network. Ingram’s network distributes content to thousands of booksellers and online retailers around the world.

After its initial launch, Ingram plans to expand the reach of its IngramSpark service to include Ingram’s MyiLibrary® academic library platform, wholesale and full-service Ingram Publisher Services options, file conversion services, and sales and marketing programs.

Learn more about the IngramSpark service, register for an account and begin uploading content for distribution at www.ingramspark.com after the publishing portal goes live in July 2013.

A new agreement between Infogroup and EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) allows EBSCO to resell ReferenceUSA, the leading provider of business and consumer research, to libraries.

ReferenceUSA is a leading provider of business and consumer content, including real-time access to information on more than 24 million businesses, 235 million consumers, new U.S. businesses & new U.S. homeowners and Canadian businesses & residents. The telephone-verified data is updated monthly and includes validated business information including executive information, corporate trees, employee size and sales volume plus industry and business profiles. This trusted data is used to power the major search engines and the leading in-car navigation systems. ReferenceUSA is a product offering of Infogroup, the leading provider of high-value data and multichannel marketing solutions.

EBSCO Senior Vice President of Business Development Mark Herrick says ReferenceUSA offers a best of breed solution for business and consumer research. “The content, the care in which the information is updated and verified, and the customization options make ReferenceUSA stand out among other online market research and business data resources. We believe library researchers will benefit from a product offering unparalleled access to valuable business and consumer information.”

ReferenceUSA provides data visualization including heat maps, a search-by-map feature that allows users to set boundaries search by zip code options as well as exportable charts and graphs. ReferenceUSA provides detailed business information so researchers, students and job-seekers can quickly answer a variety of questions—helping users create marketing plans, conduct competitive analysis, look for business partnerships, raise funds and locate people. The consumer database includes contact information, geographical details and lifestyle information providing researchers with an understanding of where a specific demographic group can be found within a specific location. The job search information provides job listings from Indeed and may be cross-searched by company, geography and more.

A review in the May 15th Library Journal says, “ReferenceUSA’s incredibly easy, yet extremely sophisticated search capabilities are stunning. And the quality of the data is every bit as good as they describe at their data quality page (www.referenceusa.com/Static/DataQuality).” ReferenceUSA President Steve Laird says working with EBSCO allows ReferenceUSA to reach new customers and introduce the unique features of the service to a larger audience. “We know public libraries understand the value of the rich content in ReferenceUSA. By partnering with EBSCO, we are confident that institutions with entrepreneurial studies, marketing and economics departments will benefit along with school and academic career centers as well as corporations looking for a competitive advantage.”

EBSCO will soon provide metadata from ReferenceUSA to searchers using EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS). ReferenceUSA 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.

Serials Solutions, a ProQuest business, has acted on requests to expand discovery of French-language content by working with two publishers. l’Harmathéque is the first cultural database available digitally for the French language. Consortium Érudit Is a publishing consortium of three Canadian universities: Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and Université du Québec à Montréal.

l’Harmathéque presents a rich collection of books, journal articles, videos and audio programs that span all academic disciplines. The Summon service will index full text and metadata of l’Harmathéque including:

Approximately 26,000 e-books and journals in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, as well as novels, short stories and children’s books
17,000 articles from journals and collective books
A growing collection of more than 400 videos to date, as well as 600 audio programs including audio books, courses and conferences
Consortium Érudit gathers the work of nearly 150 Canadian scholarly and cultural publishers, including French-language Canadian university presses. Many of the journals, and all journals older than two years, are open access. The collection includes:

More than 140 journals spanning multiple subfields within the Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Health Sciences, as well as fields such as Industrial Relations, Law and Theology
A repository of more than 3200 research documents submitted by authors and researchers for preservation and dissemination, such as reports, research notes, lectures, preprints and raw data
The Summon service makes global content available to scholars worldwide, with an interface available in 32 languages and dialects. It applies native-language searching capabilities and language-tuned relevancy for 17 languages, including French.