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RSC urges government to boost funding for science research ahead of next week’s Budget

The UK risks slipping into the margin of world competitiveness without further investment in science, says the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The country’s economic recovery is threatened by lack of funding for science research and the government must take urgent action, said the society’s president.

“Britain is on an economic tightrope. Science and innovation, properly supported, will help get us to the other side,” said Professor Lesley Yellowlees.

The chemical science community has produced a report Chemistry: we mean business setting out a ten-point plan to help Britain derive the greatest possible industrial advantage from its impressive science base.

“Most importantly we call on Government to return public investment in science to inflation-led growth before it is too late,” added Professor Yellowlees.

” We are not suggesting that the Government has entirely neglected science recently;  but we do assert that it has not done enough.

“Chemists and chemical engineers whom we represent welcomed publication of the Government’s recent Life Sciences Strategy; similarly, we welcomed the Autumn Statement by which £600m was invested in eight science priority growth areas.  Many of these areas are closely linked to, and dependent upon, innovative chemistry and will contribute significantly towards rebalancing the economy.

“But the scale of the challenge facing the country demands more than has already been offered by the Government

“The chemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors alone added £27 billion to the economy in 2011. Unless we re-invest in our science base now we will miss out on future wealth-creating opportunities and we will fall further behind our international competitors.

“The Government wants to make Britain competitive internationally, yet there is still inadequate funding for science when it should be the driving force behind such progress. This central paradox must be addressed.”

The RSC is one of five bodies pressing the government to take action in the budget to back science research, the others being the Chemical Industries Association, the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Society of Chemical Industry and the Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network.

This group of leading scientific institutions has written to the Treasury underlining the importance of the chemical sciences to the UK’s economic recovery hopes, and is seeking to work with the government to make sure that the chemical science community can help to support the UK growth agenda.

The letter says urgent actions are needed to maintain the UK’s competitive edge through a world-leading science base and to get the economy back on the pathway to growth.

Professor Yellowlees said: “Firstly, the government must link science funding to inflation. The freeze on science spending means that because of inflation over the past three years there has been a 10 per cent cut in real terms.

“Additionally, the government has to ensure that innovation resources are targeted to growth areas of strategic importance. Fundamental research, supported by the seven research councils, is the bedrock of knowledge and scientific breakthrough.  We need to create an environment for innovation where these breakthroughs are translated into economic and societal benefits for the people of the UK.”

The RSC report focuses on the vital need of a skills pipeline to guarantee that young, talented people emerge so that British companies get a steady supply of skills in the future.

Professor Yellowlees added: “The UK workforce is ageing. Unless we address the resulting skills gap then we risk facing a talent shortage which means companies will struggle to compete with the number of small to medium businesses shrinking.

“Around the world, other countries are getting it right by pouring investment into their sciences, aware that this will pay off.

“We must learn from the likes of China, South Korea and Brazil, who have all recognised the direct link between investment in science research and economic growth.

“If the UK shrinks from this challenge it risks slipping into the margin of global industrial viability.”

Serials Solutions Partners with Wolters Kluwer Health to Index Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Content in the Summon Service

Serials Solutions®, a ProQuest® business, and Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals, researchers, and students, today announced that Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) content available on the Ovid institutional research platform will be indexed in theSummon® discovery service. Researchers will be able to search the abstract and full reference (metadata) details of LWW’s 280 journals in the fields of medicine, nursing and allied health professionals.

“Working with Serials Solutions supports our mission to broaden the reach of our content to support end-user information needs, and the Summon service is widely recognized for increasing usage of resources,” said Jayne Marks, vice president publishing, Wolters Kluwer Health, Medical Research. “Also, researchers recognize the benefits of precision discipline-scoped searching – and students value contextual research assistance.”

The LWW journal collection is one of the most authoritative medical, nursing and allied health peer-reviewed resources in the world. Health care practitioners, researchers and students at medical, academic and corporate institutions globally access this content every day to make important decisions. “This announcement marks a milestone in building the most comprehensive collection of highly valued medical content in a discovery service,” said John Law, vice president discovery services, Serials Solutions.

The Summon Service
Used by more than 500 libraries in more than 40 countries, the Summon service is the first and only discovery service based on a unified index of content, leveraging its unique “match and merge” technology to combine rich metadata and full text from multiple sources to ultimately make items more discoverable. In just three years, the Summon unified index has grown from 200 million items to more than one billion items – with the vast majority of article and book content full-text searchable. Proven to increase usage of library resources, the Summon service consistently meets user expectations by delivering innovative new features for enhancing discovery.

Thomson Innovation adds patent records from Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced the addition of English-translated patent records from Vietnam and Thailand, as well as Malaysian full-text patents, to Thomson Innovation®, the world’s leading patent intelligence and collaboration platform.

The addition of these patent documents enables IP professionals to better understand the state of prior art in Southeast Asia, make more informed filing decisions, identify potential partners and more. This is all possible through the editorially enhanced content in Derwent World Patents Index® (DWPISM) and its integration with Thomson Innovation to provide a single platform for easily searching patents from the newly added authorities alongside Japanese, Korean and Chinese records (in English) and scientific literature.

“Intellectual property research in Southeast Asia is on the rise due to rapid economic development in China,” said Hiroshi Oyama, intellectual property department, Denki Kagaku Kogyo KK, a leading Japanese chemical manufacturer. “We rely on Thomson Innovation for trusted and accurate patent information from around the world. The inclusion of these patent-issuing authorities will enable us to expand the value of our IP portfolio in Southeast Asia.”

“With numerous languages, and hard-to-obtain patent records, Southeast Asia poses a serious challenge for IP professionals researching the region for IP market opportunities,” said Cynthia Murphy, senior vice president for the IP Solutions business of Thomson Reuters. “We are committed to supporting clients who conduct business in these emerging markets and are proud to be the only solution provider to offer accurate, value-added, full-text patent translations in English from a multilingual team of certified translation professionals.”

The addition of content from Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand is the first of three planned content sets to be added to Thomson Innovation this year. Thomson Reuters plans even more expanded patent coverage in 2013, including other emerging markets in Southeast Asia. Many patent databases are available exclusively through Derwent World Patents Index.

Thomson Innovation is the only patent research platform that enables users to search Asian patent data (in English) alongside global patents, scientific literature, and business and news information. Coupled with Derwent World Patents Index, the industry’s most trusted collection of editorially enhanced patent records from 50 global issuing authorities, it includes English-language abstracts and titles, making it easier for researchers to quickly find the information they need to make informed decisions.

For more information on Thomson Innovation visit: http://thomsoninnovation.com.

Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing sign agreement

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and IOP Publishing (IOP) have signed an agreement to publish the conference proceedings from the 28th International Conference on Photonic, Electronic and Atomic Collisions (ICPEAC) on an open access basis.

ICPEAC, which is being held in Lanzhou, China, on 24 – 30 July 2013, is a biennial international meeting bringing together over 500 physicists, from more than 40 countries, working in the atomic physics field.

IOP will be publishing the proceedings from ICPEAC for the third time running in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series. The journal previously published the proceedings from the 2011 conference hosted in Belfast, UK and the 2009 conference held in Freiburg, Germany.

Guoqing Xiao, Director of the Institute of Modern Physics, CAS, said: “We are very pleased to invite IOP as the publisher of ICPEAC 2013. At the last two ICPEACs, IOP did a great job in publishing our papers and left a deep impression with us. So I believe that IOP still have the ability to undertake the task. I am convinced that this year’s conference will be successfully held in co-operation between CAS and IOP.”

Mingfang Lu, Editor-in-Chief – China at IOP, said: “We are delighted to be publishing the proceedings of this important conference again and to further strengthen our long-standing collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. With the proceedings being open access, ICPEAC is leaving a legacy that will give long-lasting value to physics communities worldwide. I very much look forward to meeting with delegates at the conference in July.”

Along with Mingfang Lu, Sarah Toms, Conference Publishing Coordinator at IOP, will be attending the conference.

British National Formulary Information Available Through DynaMed

Clinicians in the United Kingdom can now access authoritative and trusted guidance on the selection and use of medicines from the British National Formulary (BNF) directly from DynaMed, the premier evidence-based clinical information resource. EBSCO Publishing announced that DynaMed drug topics now include links to the corresponding BNF topics which can be accessed by BNF subscribers.

The links allow clinicians to consult UK specific information on selecting, prescribing, dispensing and administering medicines at the point-of-care in concert with the evidence-based reference information available in DynaMed. BNF is the latest UK resource to be accessible through DynaMed, joining the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines; Patient UK Links; and links to electronic Medicines Compendium (eMC).

DynaMed Editor-in-Chief, Brian S. Alper, MD, MSPH, FAAFP, says that the addition of the BNF links is another example of how DynaMed strives to meet the needs of healthcare professionals around the world. “DynaMed is committed to providing content and features that clinicians throughout the UK need. It is important that clinicians can access drug information that is specific to their particular region.”

The BNF provides UK healthcare professionals with authoritative and practical information on the selection and clinical use of medicines in a clear, concise and accessible manner. Published monthly online and biannually in print, the BNF is a joint publication of the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Duncan Enright, the Publishing Director of the BNF at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, believes that the inclusion of the BNF links in DynaMed will ensure that subscribers using DynaMed will have access to the most trusted UK drug information. “DynaMed users already rely on that tool to provide the latest evidence-based information. By accessing the links to BNF, our subscribers can be certain that they are using the most recent edition of BNF for making clinical decisions.”

DynaMed is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for physicians and other health care professionals for use at the point-of-care. With clinically-organized summaries for more than 3,200 topics, DynaMed provides the latest content and resources with validity, relevance and convenience, making DynaMed an indispensable resource for answering most clinical questions during practice.

Updated daily, DynaMed editors monitor the content of over 500 medical journals on a daily basis. Each article is evaluated for clinical relevance and scientific validity. The new evidence is then integrated with existing content, and overall conclusions are changed as appropriate, representing a synthesis of the best available evidence. Through this process of systematic literature surveillance, the best available evidence determines the content of DynaMed.

OUP announces new MD for its Asia Education Business

OUP today announced that Adrian Mellor has been appointed as the new Managing Director for its Asia Education Division.

Asia Education comprises OUP’s operations in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, and China. It was created after a restructure last October which disbanded OUP’s International Division to create two new education units—Oxford Education (UK, Africa, Australia) and Asia Education.

Since 2005 Adrian has worked within OUP’s ELT Division, as Sales Director and more recently as Managing Director, OUP Latin America and ELT International Development. Prior to that he was a Managing Director at Pearson Education.

“This appointment is great news for OUP,” commented Nigel Portwood, Chief Executive of Oxford University Press. “Adrian has an exemplary track record for achieving growth in emerging economies such as Latin America, and has a deep understanding of international education markets. I am certain that he will continue our work to establish OUP’s Asian Division as a leader in providing educational resources in the region.”

DOAJ reaches new milestones

We have just completed the transition to a new environment and launched a new platform with integrated functionality for sharing, exporting and enhanced search/browse functionality: at the article level, search results can be filtered by language and publication year and by license and publication fee; at the journal level, you can filter by subject, by country, by license and by publication fees. These facets will be developed further in the months to come. (Read more about our enhancements on our home page.)

We are also very proud to announce that the DOAJ has reached two important milestones:

  1. For the first time since launch in 2003, more than 50% of the journals are providing metadata at article level. We will continue to work with the 2000+ publishers to increase this figure.
  2. More than 1 million articles are now searchable in DOAJ which means more than 1 million article-level metadata entries are available for harvesting! We expect this figure to increase significantly in the months to come.

We continue to work with key stakeholders to agree on and implement new, tighter criteria for the inclusion of journals in the DOAJ: critieria that will address issues of quality and openness, as well as other kinds of information about the journals.

We are very excited about these developments and we are grateful for the continued support from the community. We always need more support so we can continue to provide a better service, so please considerSupporting the DOAJ.

For more information, please contact Lars Bjørnshauge or Dom Mitchell.

The Directory of Open Access Journals is provided by IS4OA in cooperation with SemperTool.

The DOAJ Team

National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence selects EBSCO as supplier of print and electronic information resources

EBSCO announced today that it has been selected as a provider of print journals, ejournals, databases, ebooks and evidence-based clinical information for the new NICE Electronic & Print Content Framework Agreement. Following an evaluation process, EBSCO was selected for its highly-integrated technology and wide range of product offerings as well as its extensive customer support services and training.

NHS purchasers can access and view details of the products and services, purchasing and pricing models available through the Framework, as well as purchasing guidance, from the NICE Electronic and Print Content Framework Agreement signpost on the Journals and Databases page at NHS Evidence www.evidence.nhs.uk.

Mark Salmon, Programme Manager, Evidence Resources said: “NICE is delighted to launch the new Framework Agreement for electronic and print content. It will be a valuable tool for NHS institutions to use, allowing them to make informed purchasing decisions from approved suppliers at a competitive rate.”

EBSCO’s medical offering available through the NICE Electronic & Print Content Framework Agreement includes print and e-journals, access to full-text journals through EBSCOhost® databases such as MEDLINE®, CINAHL®, medical e-book collections and evidence-based, point-of-care reference tools such as DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™, Rehabilitation Reference Center™ and PEMSoft™ that provide evidence summaries.

European General Manager at EBSCO Information Services, Robert Schoenvogel, says working with such a renowned organisation as NICE helps deliver medical guidelines to health professionals worldwide. “Being selected by NICE underlines EBSCO’s expertise in the information industry, our cost-effective approach, and breadth of experience in the medical sector. We have many valued customers in this area, including NHS Scotland and the Royal Society of Medicine where we are sole supplier.”

Reprints Desk Launches Document Delivery Service for Academic Institutions, Announces Usage by University of Washington Libraries

Reprints Desk, Inc., a Research Solutions company, announced today the launch of A-Z Academic Document Delivery Collection,  a new single-article document delivery retrieval service for academic libraries that provide literature acquisition services to faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students.  University of Washington Libraries was among the first users of this new service, which Reprints Desk initially launched to a limited number of academic institutions in 2012.

“Document delivery has always been a part of our services for UW libraries users, and this service gives us added benefits of both speed and effective use of funds,” said Heidi Nance, Head of Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery services at University of Washington Libraries.

The collection, comprised of content from leading publishers, includes more than 14,000 journal titles and single chapters from more than 10,000 books. Reprints Desk provides a high quality PDF within minutes for each document delivery request that the company receives. Reprints Desk makes the service available for a low transactional service fee plus a special academic copyright royalty charge that is normally between fifteen to twenty-five U.S. dollars.

“The A-Z Academic Document Delivery Collection is an important addition to academic institutions’ collection management mix, offering significant cost savings over commercial document delivery rates and in many cases ILL,” said Ian Palmer, Head of Sales and Marketing. “As part of our ‘no hassle’ approach to customer engagement, academic institutions can sign up and start ordering the same day without pressure to buy anything additional services from Reprints Desk. Customers can also count on us to get the scholarly papers they need when time is of the essence since we’ve now integrated our flagship document delivery service capabilities featuring no collection limitations and 24-hour a day fulfillfment.”

Academic institutions, corporations, and government organizations use document delivery as a legal method for retrieving single copies of full-text papers from scholarly peer-reviewed journals when subscription access does not exist. Reprints Desk has held lone honors as the top-rated document delivery supplier in every document delivery market research survey conducted by information analyst and advisory firm Outsell, Inc., since 2008. Reprints Desk was founded by Peter Derycz, a pioneer in the document delivery business since 1987 when he originally founded Infotrieve, Inc.

For more information about the A-Z Academic Document Delivery Collection, visit http://info.reprintsdesk.com/academic-articles. For more information about Reprints Desk, visit www.reprintsdesk.com.

Springer partners with The American Meteorological Society

Springer has entered into a partnership with The American Meteorological Society (AMS) for the electronic distribution of their book titles for the next three years on SpringerLink (link.springer.com). The agreement includes the distribution of monographs, textbooks and popular science titles as well as approximately five new titles annually in Springer’s Earth and Environmental Sciences eBook Collection.

The collaboration with Springer will enable the society to benefit from Springer’s ePublishing technologies and long-term library relationships. Springer’s international sales and marketing teams will work to bring The American Meteorological Society’s publishing program to global institutional markets. The society will distribute print versions of the books in collaboration with the University of Chicago Press.

“The American Meteorological Society is committed to achieving the broadest possible dissemination of the important science published in our books. This agreement with Springer opens new avenues for distribution and therefore represents an important means to achieve our goals,” said AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter.

Robert Doe, Senior Publishing Editor in Earth Science and Geography at Springer, said “The AMS book program is internationally renowned, and many of their titles are classed as seminal. I am delighted that, through Springer, these quality books will now be available electronically for the very first time.”

Through the partnership, approximately 50 backlist titles will be available as eBooks. The collection includes key works on climate change and meteorological hazards including Lewis and Clark: Weather and Climate Data from the Expedition Journals and Deadly Season: Analysis of the 2011 Tornado Outbreaks, as well as instructional texts like Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker, and Atmospheric Scientist.

EBSCO Publishing Introduces Arab e-Marefa – The Leading Arabic Language Full Text Database

EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has released Arab e-Marefa™, an Arabic language full text database that offers hundreds of journals published by many of the Arab world’s most prestigious academic publishers. Arab e-Marefa is produced by Marefa World Company for Digital Content in Jordan and is designed to facilitate communication between researchers across the Arab world as well as increase accessibility to Arabic content on the Web.

Arab e-Marefa is the leading Arabic language research database providing full text for 950 academic journals and statistical reports issued by various bodies in the Arabic world including universities, research centers, public statistical departments, central banks, scientific associations and regional organizations. The database provides international standard bibliographic records for almost 70,000 articles plus the access to these articles. Additional content includes thousands of dissertations and over 7,000 book reviews.

Key subject disciplines covered by Arab e-Marefa include: human sciences, social sciences, medical sciences, economics and business administration, engineering and information technology, natural & life sciences and periodical statistical reports from 18 Arabic-speaking countries in Arabic, English and French.

The growth of EBSCOhost® throughout the world and the continued addition of non-English content to databases led to EBSCO’s extensive development of multilanguage searching in many of its resources. EBSCO provides language-specific searching for more than 45 of the most common languages, including Arabic.

Springer to publish open access journal with the Korea Basic Science Institute

Springer and the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) are partnering to publish the Journal of Analytical Science and Technology (JAST). As a fully sponsored open access journal, it will be part of the SpringerOpen portfolio, available on SpringerLink (link.springer.com). This international peer-reviewed journal was launched by the KBSI in 2010, however, starting this year, it will be published in Springer’s open access program.

The Journal of Analytical Science and Technology publishes original research and review articles on all aspects of analytical principles, techniques, methods, procedures, and equipment. Through its multidisciplinary focus, JAST will serve as a communication tool for scientists and researchers worldwide. With the “Technical Notes,” the journal offers a special section reporting on new developments and significant applications in analytical technology and equipment that do not yet have a complete theoretical foundation.

“We aim to provide scientists, researchers, and students worldwide with unlimited access to the latest advances in analytical sciences. Scientists working in laboratories frequently want their new and more efficient experimental methods published as soon as possible so that their fellow scientists working in the same field may hear about their discoveries. Our goal is to make JAST an internationally influential and widely read analytical science journal,” said Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Chaejoon Cheong.

Mark de Jongh, Senior Publishing Editor and coordinator of the Springer publishing program in Korea, said, “We are very enthusiastic about co-publishing this open access journal with the Korea Basic Science Institute. Research in the field of analytical science is strong in South Korea and hence we are delighted to be able to help the KBSI in disseminating this content to the international community. The journal will be a valuable addition to Springer’s impressive Korean publishing program.” Springer currently co-publishes 43 Korean society journals.

As an open access journal, all research results from JAST will be freely available online. SpringerOpen journals (www.springeropen.com) are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which facilitates the open distribution of copyrighted work.

Since 1988, the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) has focused its efforts in the analytical sciences through the development of novel analytical technologies and equipment. In 2009, together with Chungnam National University, KBSI established the Graduate School of Analytical Science and Technology (GRAST). Launching JAST in 2010 was the KBSI’s second step in promoting the advancement of the analytical sciences. KBSI’s mission is to inform and stimulate researchers to make significant professional achievements in science.

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