British Library joins FutureLearn Mooc initiative

February 19, 2013

The British Library has announced its intention to join the UK’s Mooc platform FutureLearn Ltd, offering participants of its online courses access to the Library’s unique digitised resources. The Library will be the first non-university research institution to join the initiative, and is among five university partners announced today during a major business and skills mission to India with the Prime Minister.

The launch of the FutureLearn Mooc (or ‘Massive open on-line course’) stems from the growth of online degree-style courses in the USA, where companies such as edX and Coursera offer around 230 Moocs to more than 3 million students. The first ever UK Mooc, FutureLearn Ltd, was launched by the Open University last December and includes partnerships with eighteen UK universities. Existing Library digital resources will be made available on FutureLearn, complementing plans for large-scale participation in online lectures and courses which are due to start later this year. The Library’s freely available digital collections include over 800 medieval manuscripts, 40,000 nineteenth-century books and 50,000 sound recordings, and continue to grow each year.

Welcoming the news, David Cameron said: “Britain boasts some of the best universities in the world. This innovative new offer led by The Open University will mean that Indian students can access some of the best teaching and learning online from their home in Mumbai or Delhi. I’m delighted that Futurelearn is expanding to include more British universities and the British Library. I hope it will encourage many more Indian students to take the next step and study with a UK university.”

Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library, said: “FutureLearn is an exciting development in higher education, with the potential to enable mass access to valuable resources and teaching anywhere in the world, for free. As the home of a growing set of unique and valuable digital resources, the British Library is looking forward to partnering with The Open Universityand widening access to our collections for even more researchers online worldwide as the initiative develops.”

Welcoming the new partners to Futurelearn, Open University Vice-Chancellor, Martin Bean said: “We’re in the middle of an exciting time for higher education in which anything is possible. I am delighted that these iconic institutions – the British Library and five top universities – have joined us on our journey to make Futurelearn the world’s best source of free, open, online courses. I’m convinced that Futurelearn will quickly become a great, innovative British export. We’re building on the country’s 800-year history of higher education to deliver a best in class teaching and learning experience that will benefit students all over the world”.

The HE sector has seen a lot of change in the past couple of years, but we’re coming out stronger and Futurelearn is evidence of that. I’m convinced that Futurelearn will quickly become a great British export. We’re building on the country’s 800-year history of higher education to deliver a very high quality product that will benefit students all over the world“.

Simon Nelson, CEO of Futurelearn, said: “I am thrilled that more of the UK’s top institutions have joined Futurelearn, which will bring the best of UK teaching to students worldwide. Until now, this market has been dominated by companies based in the US, but with 18 UK partners, we are determined to provide the smartest and most engaging online learning experiences and revolutionise conventional models of education.”

First Specialist Bioscience Journals To Appear In Jusp, As Portland Press Becomes Latest Publisher To Participate

February 19, 2013

Portland Press Limited is delighted to confirm its participation in the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP).

The Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) is a service built in response to demand from the UK HE community. At a time of economic constraint it is essential that libraries can evaluate usage, and make a compelling case about the value of journal subscriptions, and COUNTER compliant data is vital in making such a case. However, obtaining and analyzing COUNTER compliant data can be extremely labour intensive with each library having to visit each publisher’s website and download their COUNTER Compliant statistics.

The Portal provides a single point of access for journal usage statistics. JUSP initially focused on NESLi2 publishers but its remit has since been extended to include a wider range of publishers whose content is important to researchers in the UK’s higher education community. The Portal uses the SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) protocol to collect the COUNTER compliant statistics, which are then displayed to each institution in an easy to read way.

Caroline Black, Managing Director at Portland Press Limited said: “We are delighted to be participating in this initiative by making our journals available in JUSP. We look forward to working with the JUSP Consortium to provide UK Higher Education with a far more efficient method for collection and assessment of journal article usage.”

SAGE to address library value in the developing world

February 19, 2013

SAGE, one of the world’s leading independent academic and professional publishers, is conducting a research study to investigate library value in the developing world. The project, ‘Library Value in the Developing World’ will investigate the value of academic libraries for teaching and research staff at twelve institutions selected from countries classified by the World Bank as low income and middle income economies (i.e. with a GNI less than $4035).

The aim of the study is to provide the academic library community in developing countries with a better understanding of the connections between academic libraries and academic departments, and to identify practical ways to enhance their working relationship. ‘Library Value in the Developing World’ will focus on the similarities and differences from numerous countries. The research team will be working with and using case studies from the following participant universities:

1) Honduras (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras)

2) Indonesia (Indonesian Research Institute)

3) Ghana (University of Cape Coast)

4) Georgia (National Scientific Library)

5) Kenya (Maseno University)

6) Nigeria (Convenant University)

7) Nigeria (Obafemi Awolowo University)

8) Philippines (University of the Philippines Visayas)

9) Senegal (University of Thies)

10) Uganda (Makerere University)

11) Ukraine (Institute of Intellectual Property of National University, Kiev)

12) Zimbabwe (University of Zimbabwe)

The research project is a follow up to the 2012 SAGE commissioned study, ‘Working together: evolving value for academic libraries’, which investigated library value and reported on findings from the UK, US and Scandinavia. This project was undertaken by LISU[1], who are also consulting on the current SAGE research project. A finding of the 2012 LISU Report was that general marketing of the library raises its profile amongst teaching and research staff. This is seen as an increasingly essential activity. To this end, ‘Library Value’ will also include a marketing case study which will

examine the effectiveness of marketing techniques to drive awareness, usage, and perception of the services and support libraries offer their academics in teaching and research roles.

“SAGE is committed to supporting librarians in ensuring the wide dissemination of high quality research”, said Stephen Barr, President, SAGE International. “In frequent conversations with our librarian partners globally, a common problem we hear is that more recognition is needed within institutions of the value of the services that libraries provide. We hope that this research project can be a step towards helping librarians in developing countries identify ways of promoting their services and of collaborating with academic departments to make full use of the value of libraries for teaching and research.”

The results of the research project will be published in the summer of 2013.

For further information about this Project please contact Nell McCreadie, Group Marketing Manager, SAGE at nell.mccreadie@sagepub.co.uk

AccessEngineering, as redesigned by Semantico, wins best in category at 2012 PROSE Awards

February 19, 2013

McGraw-Hill Education’s AccessEngineering, as redesigned by Semantico, won best in category in the 2012 PROSE Awards. The category was eProduct/Best in Physical Sciences & Mathematics.

The annual PROSE Awards celebrate the very best in professional and scholarly publishing. The awards are segmented into 40 categories from journals, books and electronic content, and are judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals. The 37th annual PROSE Awards – the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence – were presented at the Association of American Publishers’ Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division Annual Conference in Washington. This year’s competition attracted 518 entries.

Commenting on the win, Andrew Grimes, Senior Consultant, Semantico said: “We are delighted for McGraw-Hill and extremely pleased for the Semantico team who worked on the project. The win affirms the quality of AccessEngineering, and we look forward to delivering more award-winning sites for McGraw-Hill in the future.”

Complete information about the 2012 PROSE Awards including categories, judging process and background, can be found at PROSE Awards.

Established Journals to Publish Under Open Access Model: Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Microbial Biotechnology

February 19, 2013

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., announced today that Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Microbial Biotechnology have joined the Wiley Open Access publishing program. All articles in these two journals are now open access and free to view, download and share.

Since its launch in 1996, Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine has attracted very high quality submissions and attained an Impact Factor of 4.125, placing it 22nd in the Medicine Research and Experimental ISI Category. With its emphasis on translational medicine, and high quality review series, Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine is of interest to a wide spectrum of researchers and clinicians. Converting to open access allows all readers to benefit from the high-level research advances reported in the journal, driving biomedical research forward and accelerating discovery.

”We are excited that Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine is joining the Wiley Open Access publishing program, as it will make the highly topical and well-regarded review series commissioned by our Editor-in-Chief, Professor LM Popescu, available to all,” said Dr. Jo Wixon, Senior Editor, Health Sciences, Wiley.

Since its inception, Microbial Biotechnology has published papers of original research reporting significant advances in any aspect of microbial applications to biotechnologies, making it of interest to a wide spectrum of researchers across the scope of both Microbiology and Biotechnology. Converting to open access will significantly benefit readers and researchers in the field of biotechnology, through the dissemination of high quality research from Microbial Biotechnology.

“The Society for Applied Microbiology is delighted that this change is taking place. Enabling readers to access the contents of this already successful journal free of charge will foster progress in this important area of applied microbiology,” said Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) President, Professor Martin Adams.

“Last year Wiley successfully converted EMBO Molecular Medicine and Evolutionary Applications to open access from a subscription model. With this experience we are confident that these well-established journals will continue to thrive as they join our program of fully open access journals,” said Rachel Burley, Vice President and Director, Open Access, Wiley. “The Wiley Open Access program’s promise of quality is being realized as we now have four journals with Impact Factors; Ecology and Evolution is set to get its first Impact Factor this summer; and MicrobiologyOpen and Journal of the American Heart Association have both recently been accepted for Indexing in MEDLINE.”

Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Microbial Biotechnology will publish all from January 2013 under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, which permits use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A publication fee will be payable by authors or their funder on acceptance of their primary research articles. Authors affiliated with, or funded by, an organization that has a Wiley Open Access Account can publish without directly paying any publication charges.

Please visit the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Microbial Biotechnology websites for further information and future updates.

ProQuest Invites Future Information Professionals to Apply for Annual Scholarship

February 18, 2013

ProQuest is seeking applicants for its 2013 Roger K. Summit Scholarship. Celebrating its 20th anniversary and open to applicants from around the world, the US$5,000 award is given annually to a promising graduate student in library and information sciences. The winner will be announced at the Special Libraries Association’s 2013 Annual Conference to be held June 9 – 11 in San Diego, California.

“For 20 years, this scholarship has supported the education of students with an interest in electronic information services,” said Maria Ziemer, Manager of ProQuest’s Graduate Education Program. “We’re deeply proud of its legacy of support for aspiring information professionals. Its relevance is more profound each year as our technology environment continues to evolve.”

An important element in ProQuest’s extensive Graduate Education Program, the Summit Scholarship is named for Dialog founder Roger K. Summit, a pioneer in developing the technology behind online information retrieval. The scholarship was established in 1993 and continues as part of ProQuest’s commitment to support graduate education and engage the next generation of information professionals.

The deadline to apply for the scholarship is April 30, 2013. To qualify, candidates must be enrolled in an accredited library or information sciences program. A panel of ProQuest information professionals will select the winner after reviewing academic achievement, interest in digital services and faculty recommendations.

Information and applications are available here.

Elsevier Foundation, others give awards for women scientists in developing countries

February 18, 2013

Five medical and life science researchers from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin today received the 2013 Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing World for work that could contribute to life-saving knowledge and therapies worldwide. The prizes were awarded by The Elsevier Foundation, the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), and TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, to build research capacity and advance scientific knowledge throughout the developing world.

The 2013 winners are being recognized for their research excellence. The prize includes US $5,000 and all-expenses paid attendance at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston in February 2013. The winners received their prizes during a special ceremony on Saturday, February 16th.

The winners are:

Central & South Asia: Dr. Nasima Akhter, Center for Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, Dhaka Medical College Hospital Campus
East and South-East Asia & the Pacific: Dr. Namjil Erdenechimeg, Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences
Latin America & the Caribbean: Dr. Dionicia Gamboa, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences, Lima,
Arab region: Dr. Huda Omer Basaleem, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Aden University, Yemen
Sub-Saharan Africa: Dr. Adediwura Fred-Jaiyesimi, Department of Pharmacognosy, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria

“If we hope to solve the challenges that confront developing nations, we must help young women in science to fully develop their skills and energy,” said Professor Romain Murenzi, executive director of TWAS. “The winners of this prize will be an inspiration not only to other young women, but to all scientists of every generation.”

Dr. Nasima Akhter, one of this year’s award winners, commented: “In developing countries, continuing scientific research is difficult due to lack of resources, infrastructure and appropriate support. For young researchers, especially women, it is more difficult to continue research without cooperation and support from employers, co-workers and even family members. The Elsevier Foundation award is an immense honor and an appreciation of early career women scientists from developing countries who are devoted to continuing their research despite limited opportunity and constrains. It will encourage determination, amongst a new generation of women scientists, to contribute more in scientific development through research using available resources and focusing on community needs in line with national and international development goals.”

“These five women are pioneers,” said Professor Fang Xin, president of OWSD. “They come from different regions and different cultures, but all of them are doing highly advanced medical and life-science research. Their creativity and achievements will contribute to saving lives around the world, and that is sure to inspire a new generation of young women to pursue their highest ambitions in science and other fields.”

David Ruth, Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation, said, “The Elsevier Foundation recognizes how important professional visibility is to developing high-profile international scientific careers. Through our New Scholars grant programs we strive to support early-career women scholars with mentoring, research retreats, professional visibility, childcare, work-life integration and recognition programs. The awards for these impressive women scientists represents a cooperative effort supported by Elsevier, OWSD, AAAS and TWAS to build research capacity and advance scientific knowledge throughout the developing world – and what better place than the annual AAAS conference to raise awareness among scientists, policymakers, journalists and the public about the need to retain and celebrate top women scientists.”

The 2014 awards will be launched on April 2, 2013 and the theme will be Chemistry.

ICA Selects Health Language to Strengthen Analytics and Reporting Across Patient Populations

February 18, 2013

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, announced today that ICA has selected Health Language^® to support its health information exchange (HIE) platform. Health Language medical terminology management software and services will enable ICA, a leading provider of interoperability technology that enables care management and HIE, to create longitudinal patient records and enhance reporting and analytics across entire populations.

ICA’s interoperability platform connects providers across the continuum of care through a series of modules that support clinical communications and information exchange. The company is preparing to launch an informatics module, CareAlign Insight, which houses a central data repository. Health Language helps support this initiative by providing a dual-engine that, in collaboration with Clinithink, transforms both free text and disparate data into standardized terminologies.

“We are pleased to partner with Health Language as we prepare to launch CareAlign Insight because the engines will work together to allow providers to leverage data mined in the repository for better patient outcomes,” said Jeff Cunningham, chief technology officer at ICA. “In today’s transforming healthcare environment, this enables us to capture information being shared and use it in real time in order to make a difference in the overall delivery of care by monitoring individual patients and assessing trends across communities.”

ICA selected Health Language for its turnkey terminology management solution, professional services and customized mappings. By integrating Health Language software with its platform, ICA will enable its provider customers to:

De-duplicate data from disparate sources by automatically mapping it to standardized terminologies;
Leverage comprehensive, longitudinal patient records for enhancing patient care;
Receive immediate alerts of unusual activity around both individual patients and patient populations; and
Achieve population health management goals through robust analytics and reporting across communities.

“As population health becomes a primary goal for more hospitals and health systems, it is essential that they get the most value out of their patient data,” said Brian McDonald, Executive Vice President, Health Language, Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions. “By automatically normalizing all the information, ICA will be able to help providers become less dependent on their patients for information as they set the foundation for long-term analysis of patient populations.”

The dual-engine, developed in 2012, is a culmination of the Health Language advanced Language Engine which normalizes disparate data through automated mapping and Clinithink’s CLiX engine which translates narrative text into standardized codes.

Thieme launches major new monthly publication:”Journal of Neurological Surgery”

February 18, 2013

Thieme is pleased to announce the publication of the first issue of “Journal of Neurological Surgery” (JNLS), a key new monthly publication for those working in neurosurgery, skull base surgery and related disciplines. The first major neurosurgery journal with a truly international and interdisciplinary editorial structure, it currently serves as the official organ of nine national and international neurosurgery and skull base societies.

JNLS combines the renowned expertise of “Central European Neurosurgery”,“Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery” and “Skull Base” – three complementary journals with a long-standing history within the field. JNLS is a peer-reviewed journal publishing original research, review articles, and technical notes covering all aspects of neurological surgery. Its focus includes microsurgery and the latest minimally invasive techniques, such as stereotactic-guided surgery, endoscopy, and endovascular procedures. Divided into two parts, JNLS-A and JNLS-B, the journal is published alternately with six issues each. JNLS-A covers purely neurosurgical topics and JNLS-B is devoted to the techniques and procedures of skull base surgery.

“Neurological surgery is such a rapidly developing field. I am delighted to see a journal that speaks to us and moves with the times, recognizing the complementary elements of this discipline. JNLS is at the forefront in its approach providing a full 360-degree overview of the latest clinical and experimental findings and the new technologies and surgical innovations.” Veit Rohde (Goettingen, Germany), Editor in Chief, JNLS-A.

Michael Gleeson (London, UK), Co-Editor in Chief, JNLS-B adds “Journal of Neurological Surgery definitely highlights the complementary nature of the field without failing the individual specialties of neurological surgery. It brings together all the different multi-disciplinary perspectives from surgeons specializing in surgical procedures of the skull base.”

“Journal of Neurological Surgery provides a basis for true collaboration throughout the discipline, fostering and propelling progress and innovation worldwide.” Dennis Kraus (New York, USA), Co-Editor in Chief JNLS-B

In addition to the twelve issues of JNLS-A and JNLS-B, print subscribers receive two archival print issues of “Journal of Neurological Surgery Reports”, encompassing case reports published on an open-access, author-fee based model.

To learn more about this exciting and groundbreaking new journal from Thieme, please visit: www.thieme.com/jnls.

CCC named one of ‘10 to Watch’ in the Open Access space

February 15, 2013

Not-for-Profit Organization Named One of “10 to Watch” in the Open Access Space

Danvers, Mass. – Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization and leading provider of licensing solutions, was named one of “10 to Watch” in Outsell’s first Open Access Market Report.

CCC provides solutions to help publishers manage variable Open Access models through itsRightsLink® platform, which supports unique pricing rules, licenses and messaging for Open Access journals to encourage compliance with funding agency requirements. It was the only company named in the report that functions as an intermediary for collection of article processing charges (APCs) between publishers, authors and institutions.

Using RightsLink, an easy-to-use licensing solution, publishers can offer permissions at the point-of-content, whether on a website, through a mobile application or in the hands of a third-party aggregator.

“CCC is already entrenched in the STM ecosystem with RightsLink, which, in postpublication, can support the permissions documentation process, reducing friction for third parties who want to reuse content,” said Laura Ricci, Senior Market Analyst, Outsell. “Perhaps most important from a business standpoint, RightsLink and CCC can monitor use, reuse, and uptake data so that new powers to vary pricing can be matched by the ability to monitor the market’s reaction.”

“Today publishers are testing different publishing models such as Green, Gold, and hybrid to meet the growing demand for Open Access content,” said Roy Kaufman, CCC Managing Director of New Ventures. “Open Access is not a one-size-fits-all solution and, with our years of experience, CCC is uniquely positioned to help publishers answer complex questions about rights as they seek to balance evolution with viability.”

For 30 years CCC has been creating rights licensing solutions to help rightsholders optimizeroyalties for content, extending their reach into global corporate and academic markets and providing tools to manage their permissions business more efficiently.

To download a complimentary copy of the report, click here. To listen to Laura Ricci in a podcast about the report, click here.

Launch of COAR Repository Observatory

February 15, 2013

Today we launch the new COAR Task Force “Repository Observatory” (RO) on the COAR website. The aim of this project will be the identification of trends and future scenarios in the context of the use of repositories in research and education as well as to help Open Access (OA) repositories to anticipate and respond to the constant state of rapid evolution. Besides interviews with representatives of the OA Repositories Community, new projects and a series of COAR members and partner institutions profiles will be presented. In the “readings” section you will find interesting articles and reports with a visionary and strategic focus. Please visit the Repository Observatory website and enjoy!

Serials Solutions’ Summon Service Receives Most Innovative Technology of the Year Award

February 15, 2013

Serials Solutions’ Summon® discovery service was awarded the Most Innovative Technology of the Year at the Asia Digital Publishing Summit and Awards (ADPSA) organized by the Consultancy. The award recognizes companies who have demonstrated an unparalleled ability to succeed and have continually set standards of excellence.

Boe Horton, Vice President of Sales Asia Pacific for ProQuest, was at the event in Beijing, China to accept the award on behalf of Serials Solutions. “We are very pleased that Summon has been awarded the Most Innovative Technology of the Year by ADPSA. ProQuest is committed to serving the Chinese market with a complete and compelling discovery experience expressly designed to meet the needs and expectations of today’s users.”

The Summon unified index now includes more than one billion searchable items. Chinese-language content has contributed to the growth of the index, including e-books from Apabi, journal content from Hyweb Technology, and metadata for dissertations and theses from CALIS.

To aid in the discovery of Chinese-language content, the Summon service offers advanced native language searching capabilities and language-tuned relevancy for 17 languages including simplified and traditional Chinese. Recent enhancements to the service include updating the Chinese name dictionary to improve personal and organizational name searching and Chinese titles and authors can now be searched with Pinyin separated with spaces at the character level.

The Summon service is optimized for the discovery of content across the library’s collection. Ground-breaking achievements in discovery delivered by the Summon service last year include item-level discipline-scoped searching and Summon® Suggestions, a suite of features that provides contextual research assistance to guide users to better scholarly research and learning outcomes.