Jisc secures agreement to provide a continuing legacy for schools resource

January 14, 2013

Jisc is delighted to have finalised an agreement to preserve and host the Vital subject portals, an invaluable resource for schools.

From 1 April 2013, management of the established subject and special interest portals will move from The Open University. The portals direct teachers to some of the best subject resources available, helping to bring about innovation in the classroom to inspire learners.

Guy Lambert, CEO of Jisc Advance said: “We are delighted that the DfE and The Open University selected us to provide a legacy for the Vital programme. We’re looking forward to taking over the reins of these established resource portals, accessed by up to 6,000 users every year. Over time, we aspire to be in a position to extend the value the Vital portals already deliver to the curriculum and to teaching and learning. Vital currently serves teachers in England; our ambition is for all teachers across the UK to benefit from this invaluable resource.”

The portals will be free to access, complementing Jisc Advance’s new subscription offer to schools which is due to be launched in Spring 2013. This service will provide local hands-on practical support to:

• Optimise the use of schools’ and academies’ existing technologies
• Link the use of technology to improvements in learning outcomes and progression
• Provide opportunities to share with and learn from peers
• Provide open access to resources and professional development opportunities.

Peter Twining, director of Vital, commented, “I’m thrilled with this agreement with Jisc Advance which is a win-win for everyone concerned. It provides a huge endorsement of the work Vital has been doing, it will help Jisc raise its profile within schools, and most importantly ensures the ongoing support for teachers that the Vital subject portals provide.”

Current Vital users will be contacted by Vital in Spring 2013 informing them of the changes and increased benefits. They will be offered the opportunity for their registrations to be transferred to Jisc to ensure continuity of service. Users can rest assured that the portals will remain similar with possible enhancements introduced in the future.

Free app brings Thieme E-Book Library to the iPad

January 14, 2013

The collection of Thieme’s acclaimed E-Book Library is now available to institutional customers for the iPad. With the free iPublishCentral reader app, end-users within an institutional license can download all titles in the Thieme E-Book Library to their iPads and read them anywhere they want, even without an internet connection.

The iPublishCentral reader app, available free of charge in the iTunes store, now allows students, faculty, and researchers to download Thieme E-Book Library titles to their iPad for off-campus reading. Users only need to download the app to their iPad and access the Thieme E-Book Library within the IP range of their institution to download any title of the collections. New additions to the E-Book Library will also be available for download upon their release. “We provide unlimited downloads of full books by library patrons within the institutional license, delivering content to our users in whichever format they would like,” says Brian Scanlan, President of Thieme Publishers.

To access the Thieme E-Book Library, users need to be within the IP range of their university or institution. Once the book is downloaded to the iPad, however, it can be taken and read anywhere. No internet connection is required for reading, annotating, or searching the downloaded titles. In addition to a full-text search function, the iPublishCentral reader offers a user-friendly navigation via icons that provide easy access to notes, bookmarks, settings as well as the table of content.

Institutional subscribers may license Thieme E-Books for online use, making them available for their students, faculty, and other members. Titles downloaded to the iPad from the Thieme E-Book Library are available for one year, after which they can be re-downloaded provided that the institution still has a valid Thieme E-Book Library license.

The Thieme E-Book Library is an acclaimed, comprehensive online collection of downloadable textbooks with full-colour illustrations and a full-text search function. The electronic library covers every course in the medical school curriculum and is a valuable research, review and study resource for medical and life science students, faculty, and clinicians.

De Gruyter is expanding its program in North America. Staffing levels in the STM fields

January 14, 2013

De Gruyter will continue to expand at the beginning of 2013, its program department in the United States. The Boston office of the company is Alexander N. Greene build areas in the STM (Science, Technology, Medicine) and continuously evolve.

In recent years, De Gruyter had strengthened its liberal arts program in the U.S. market and for set of seven employees. The sales team has been systematically expanded to seven digits. Through this personal commitment could De Gruyter strengthen its market position and enhance its reputation in the American academic community greatly.

“With the new editorial offices in Boston, De Gruyter’s strategic expansion of its international program focused on,” said Dr. Sven Fund , CEO of De Gruyter. “The new colleagues will help to raise the international profile of our publishing house in the largest science fair of the world.”

McGraw-Hill Professional Expands Its Digital Offerings to Libraries

January 14, 2013

McGraw-Hill Professional today announced that it is offering an enhanced purchasing program for its popular McGraw-Hill eBook Library, a digital platform delivering unparalleled access to its premium content (MHeBookLibrary.com). This new purchasing alternative – perpetual access – is designed to give libraries more flexibility in acquiring McGraw-Hill Professional’s digital content to meet the growing demands from their patrons for eBooks.

The McGraw-Hill eBook Library includes nearly 2,000 titles in collections that are continuously updated with new eBooks. Users can access hundreds of thousands of pages of content from authors who are leading authorities in the areas of engineering, computing, medical, business, and student study aids.

Academic libraries will be interested in acclaimed reference works such as Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, Fundamentals of Radar Signal Processing, and the complete catalog of course study aides, Schaum’s Outlines. Public libraries will find a wealth of titles on careers and business skills, student and career exam study guides and the highly popular series of “How to Do Everything” books on consumer technology.

“In a fast-changing environment, McGraw-Hill Professional continues to provide new ways to deliver our content and respond to our customers’ needs,” said Philip Ruppel , president of McGraw-Hill Education International and Professional. “Our enhanced perpetual access program is another way to ensure that libraries around the world have all of the options they need to build eBook collections to best serve their patrons.”

The McGraw-Hill eBook Library At-A-Glance Facts:
Unlimited concurrent usage
Nearly 2,000 titles in the areas of:
Engineering
Personal Computing
Medical & Medical Test Prep
Business, Finance & Management
Student Study Aids

For more information about the McGraw-Hill eBook Library, including product demos, please visit www.MHeBookLibrary.com.

PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1yeSs)

Experimental & Molecular Medicine re-launches on nature.com

January 14, 2013

Experimental & Molecular Medicine (EMM) has re-launched on nature.com as a fully open access title. Co-published by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and the Korean Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (KSBMB), EMM is devoted to publishing the latest and most important advances in genetic, molecular and cellular studies of human physiology and diseases.

The journal re-launches with a revised aims and scope and publishes original research papers and reviews that communicate the improved clinical benefits for human health from the experimental and translational research performed using molecular tools. EMM provides a suitable platform for publishing studies involving basic discoveries with clinical relevance as well as those dealing with mechanisms, diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

The editorial team is led by Editor-in-Chief Professor Dae-Myung Jue with Professors Kyungho Choi, Sangdun Choi, Yoon-Keun Kim and Young-Han Lee as Associate Editors. A new international editorial board, composed of molecular biologists, biochemists and physicians, work with the editorial team of EMM to further define and shape the field of biomedical research.
“We are very excited to commence this new partnership with NPG,” said Professor Dae-Myung Jue, Editor-in-Chief of EMM. “We expect combining the publishing expertise of NPG with the fast-growing research in the field, especially in East Asia, will provide an ideal platform to address various medical problems that we face today.”

“The formation of the partnership between NPG and the KSBMB means that EMM, Korea’s first biochemistry journal, is also the first Korean journal to join the NPG Asia-Pacific journals program,” said Dr Dugald McGlashan, Publisher of NPG’s Asia-Pacific Academic Journals. “We look forward to working closely with the KSBMB on this truly international journal.”

EMM is the 15th journal published by NPG in the Asia-Pacific region, and joins over 60 journals in NPG’s journal portfolio that have either an open access option or are entirely open access. 58 of its 62 academic and society publications (94%) have introduced open access options or are open access journals. A full list of open access titles that NPG publishes is available on nature.com.

Brill Acquires Entomology List from Apollo Books

January 10, 2013

Brill, the international scholarly publisher, has finalized an agreement with Apollo Books (Denmark) to acquire the English-language Entomology publications program, effective immediately.

Brill, the international scholarly publisher, has finalized an agreement with Apollo Books in Denmark to acquire the English-language Entomology publications program as well as a small number of other Biology titles.The acquisition comprises of a number of book series, such as: Geometrid Moths of Europe, The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland, Palaearctic Macrolepidopteraand Microlepidoptera of Europe. Also included are 25 forthcoming titles and over 100 backlist titles.

The Entomology and other Biology titles fit well in Brill’s Biology program, building upon its systematic biology scope while bringing greater cross marketing and global distribution opportunities to the acquired list.

“I am happy that Brill will carry on our program,” says Peder Skou, Director of Apollo Books. “I regard them as a very well suited publisher to continue with this.”

Sam Bruinsma, Brill VP Business Development adds: “This agreement follows a previous deal in 2008 when we acquired the journal Insect Systematics and Evolution from Apollo Books, a publisher most highly regarded among the entomological community. ”

Effective immediately, Brill assumes publishing responsibilities for the acquired titles. As of 1 February stock will be available via Brill’s distribution channels.

EBSCO Publishing Acquires PEMSoft to Expand its Evidence-Based Pediatric Content

January 10, 2013

EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has expanded its evidence-based healthcare content with the acquisition of PEMSoft, a premiere pediatric point-of-care clinical information resource.

PEMSoft is an online clinical library and multimedia decision support system that addresses acute and chronic illness and injury conditions in children from newborn to young adult. PEMSoft was founded in 2003 by Ronald Dieckmann, MD, MPH, and Rob Pitt, MD. Dr. Dieckmann is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and served for 25 years as Director, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Pitt is Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Queensland, and served for 25 years as Director, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Mater Children’s Hospital, Brisbane, Australia.

PEMSoft is available in either U.S. or U.K. English. The product features nearly 1,000 topics and nearly 3,000 proprietary high-quality medical images and videos, as well as several interactive tools for clinicians. The software is completely designed for fast, point-of-care use at the patient’s bedside. The extensive use of links, and intuitive navigation and search features make finding specialized topics easy. Popular modules include an extensive formulary with links to appropriate topics, medical calculators, as well as special sections for triage, signs and symptoms, procedures, quick reference and toxicology. Altogether, there are 41 sections in the vast PEMSoft database that address the entire spectrum of pediatric and neonatal disease and injury.

The unique and comprehensive resuscitation system “Resus Tool” provides exact treatment protocols, drug doses, infusion rates and equipment sizes for children with critical illnesses or injuries. The treatment interventions are based on the child’s length, weight or age and are totally customizable to the individual pediatric patient. Another interactive tool is “Calc” – a module that provides formulas and scoring systems for diagnosis and management of pediatric trauma, acute care, and critical care. PEMSoft’s medical images, massive medical content, and its innovative interactive tools make it unique among clinical information resources.

EBSCO Publishing Senior Vice President of Product Management and Customer Satisfaction, Stratton Lloyd, says that PEMSoft was developed by leaders in the pediatric field to support pediatric healthcare professionals in a wide variety of healthcare settings and complements other products to make EBSCO a leading content provider in a critical specialty. “Drs. Dieckmann and Pitt have created a vital tool for pediatric care that shares EBSCO’s commitment to providing evidence-based, current, point-of-care information. PEMSoft will make a perfect addition to our clinical information product line which includes products such as DynaMed, Nursing Reference Center and Patient Education Reference Center.”

PEMSoft’s editorial board includes renowned physicians from highly regarded institutions such as Baylor, Chicago Childrens Memorial Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Duke, Stanford University, UCLA, and University of Washington. “The content development process that the experienced and diverse team of editors uses ensures that PEMSoft has the highest level of consistency, timeliness and quality,” says Dr. Dieckmann.

PEMSoft’s design and use of evidence-based content and multimedia elements help to assure access to online clinical information is fast, simple and intuitive. Dr. Pitt says that PEMSoft makes a difference throughout the clinical workflow. “PEMSoft has valuable content, organized in easy-to-find categories, so that doctors, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, paramedics and medical students can find what they need as quickly as possible.”

Dr.s Dieckmann and Pitt will continue their work as editors-in-chief with PEMSoft. More PEMSoft information is available at: http://www.pemsoft.com.

Elsevier Acquires Aureus Sciences, Provider of Databases and Information Tools

January 10, 2013

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today the acquisition of Aureus Sciences, a Paris, France based privately held company that provides databases and information tools to pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Formed in 2002, Aureus Sciences gathers unique and high quality quantitative biological activity data for major therapeutic drug targets. This content enables researchers to identify the most promising compounds, repurpose existing compounds and identify targets with which the new compounds might interact.

“The acquisition of Aureus Sciences provides us with tremendous opportunities to generate more value for our customers,” said Mark van Mierle, Managing Director Elsevier Pharmaceutical and Biotech Group. “With the combination of Aureus content assets and the content already available by Elsevier, we can create a valuable solution for those in need of improving speed and accuracy of lead-finding, decision-making and other key processes.”

The acquisition enables the combination of high quality and deeply extracted content from both companies to launch new solutions for our Pharmaceutical and Biotech customers. The first evidence of this will be seen early this year with the release of a new medicinal chemistry solution.

“The integration of Aureus into Elsevier, and the consolidation of best in class content, will complement Elsevier’s leadership in biomedical disciplines and strengthen our ability to offer new innovative databases to researchers in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology,” said Jason Theodosiou, CEO of Aureus Sciences. “We will see many positive synergies resulting from this combination.”

The acquisition is effective immediately and financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

UK specialists welcome launch of ORCID as tool to identify researchers

January 10, 2013

Jisc joins organisations from across the UK higher education network to welcome the launch of the Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID).

There are more academic articles being published than ever before and more authors working together. In order to be able to identify an author correctly a unique identifier is needed that can then link to each author’s publications. ORCID provides this link and if widely used would:

Ensure researchers get credit for their own work
Ensure researchers and learners looking for information will be able to find academic papers more accurately
Enable better management of researcher publication records, making it easier for them to create CVs, reduce form filling and improve reporting to funders
Create a means of linking information between institutions and systems internationally
Enable researchers to keep track of their own work with funders, publishers and institutions around the world.

It also provides researchers with their own ORCID. Researchers are able to control how much information it holds about them and who that is shared with. The adoption of ORCID is a solution to the current challenges of being able to search for work accurately. By researchers volunteering to adopt its usage it could improve discoverability and accurate referencing.

Neil Jacobs, programme director, Jisc comments: “We welcome the consensus that has been achieved on this issue, which should pave the way for better research systems, less work for researchers re-keying details, and more efficient operations across the sector. We recognise that this is only the start and that work needs to be done to implement ORCID in the UK. However, we have a solid beginning and we look forward to working with our partners across the sector to build on it.”

Alongside Jisc, the organisations below are encouraging the adoption of ORCID:

The Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA)
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
Research Councils UK (RCUK)
The Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA)
The Wellcome Trust.

Find out more about ORCID on Jisc’s website.

Elsevier Selected to Publish Cytotherapy: The Journal of Cell Therapy

January 9, 2013

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, is pleased to announce that the International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT) has selected Elsevier to publish Cytotherapy: The Journal of Cell Therapy effective January 2013.

“Elsevier presented ISCT with unsurpassed reach into the global medical community, top class publishing services, and significant experience in this field. We are extremely confident that our collaboration with Elsevier will not only help Cytotherapy grow for the benefit of our members and readers, but also for the benefit of all scientists, technologists, regulators, manufacturing experts and others dedicated to translational development of safe and effective cell therapies,” said ISCT President, Kurt Gunter, MD, FASCP.

Cytotherapy is a highly influential publication in the mainstream of the rapidly expanding field of cell-based treatments for cancer, degenerative disorders, immunotherapy and stem cell transplantation. Cytotherapy publishes cutting edge findings, clinical trials of cell-based therapies, and news and opinion on all aspects of these disciplines. The journal focuses especially on the practical translation of scientific developments in the laboratory into clinical practice. Cytotherapy is an essential global resource for clinical researchers, oncologists, hematologists, doctors, and regulatory experts involved in cell processing and therapy.

Senior Editor of Cytotherapy, John Barrett, MD, commented, “What matters is ensuring that new peer-reviewed treatments, developments, and studies reach as many specialists working with cell therapies as possible. In this, I believe Elsevier offers an unrivaled opportunity to help the journal achieve this goal.”

Glen Campbell, Executive Vice President at Elsevier added, “Cytotherapy is an established and reputable journal and we are honored that the International Society for Cellular Therapy selected Elsevier as their publishing partner. Together, we will ensure that this prestigious title develops further as the leading global forum and resource for developing and supporting innovative cellular therapies.”

For more information go to: www.journals.elsevier.com/cytotherapy

American Society of Plant Biologists adopts Utopia Documents software, to enrich PDF versions of articles in its journals

January 9, 2013

As part of its efforts to make articles published in its journals ever more useful to researchers, the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) will, from January 8, 2013, enrich Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell articles with Utopia Documents. All PDF versions of new articles published from the start of 2013 — along with many more published over the preceding years — will incorporate the advanced features that are accessible to the user via the free Utopia Documents PDF viewer.

Imagine how useful a PDF would be in which it is possible to link in-text references directly to the articles referenced, to export tables into a spreadsheet, and to highlight a term and get a wealth of related links. Imagine how much such a document would improve research and scholarship. Reflecting ASPB’s commitment to experimentation and innovation in research communication, this possibility is now a reality for ASPB’s journals, Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell.

ASPB aims for its journals not only to be avenues for the exchange and communication of knowledge, but, wherever possible, to also be catalysts for innovation. In that light, the Society will enhance and enrich the PDF versions of articles in its journals with the state-of-the-art techniques used by Utopia Document’s PDF viewer to bring features to those PDFs that before now could be realized only in web versions of the article. The technology behind the Utopia Documents tool allows users to view interactive and extractable tables that can be rendered as graphs; active links to citations in the paper; and link-outs, directly from the PDF, to numerous relevant information resources without the need to retype or even copy and paste any keywords or phrases. The result is that the PDFs are as interactive as the HTML versions of the articles, if not more so.

As Steve Pettifer, originator of Utopia Documents, puts it, “Navigating the scientific literature can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Utopia Documents was conceived to help researchers and students cope more readily with the scientific literature. It is a software tool designed by scientists for scientists, frankly, to make life easier. Scientists are always short of time, and to be able to discover—and get to —needed information faster and more conveniently is a major advantage.”

Mike Blatt, incoming Editor-in-Chief of Plant Physiology, agrees. “As a former Editor of the Biochemical Journal, I took part in the launch of Utopia and have seen it grow over the past four years. I am convinced that Utopia will prove immensely attractive both for authors and readers of Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell.

ASPB was founded in 1924 to promote the growth and development of plant biology, to encourage and publish research in plant biology, and to promote the interests and growth of plant scientists in general.

For more information about the Society, visit http://aspb.org.

For more information about Utopia Documents, visit http://utopiadocs.com.

‘Journal of Medical Case Reports’ offers discounted article processing charge

January 8, 2013

To celebrate the launch of Cases Database, BioMed Central is offering a discounted article processing charge to Journal of Medical Case Reports authors, and expanding the scope of its Case Report of the Year Award.

Creating Cases Database, BioMed Central’s freely accessible database of peer-reviewed case reports which launched last month, was one of the original aims of Journal of Medical Case Reports. The expertise and guidance of a number of the journal’s senior editorial board members, including in particular Editor-in-Chief Prof Michael Kidd and Deputy Editor Dr Geoff Wong, have been invaluable in developing the database.

Cases Database is growing rapidly and includes several thousand more case reports than when it first launched in December 2012. It currently includes nearly 20,000 case reports from 170 journals. All case reports, more than 2,500, published in Journal of Medical Case Reports are included in Cases Database.

Journal of Medical Case Reports is offering a 20% discount on the article processing charge to Cases Database users who submit a case report to Journal of Medical Case Reports before March 1st 2013. When submitting a manuscript, authors should request a discretionary discount during the submission process, quoting discount code CASESDB2013.

Nominations for BioMed Central’s 2012 Case Report of the Year Award close soon. This award has previously recognized the most original and significant, to clinical practice, case report published in Journal of Medical Case Reports. Journal of Medical Case Reports’ focus on important original case reports which expand the field of general medical knowledge has produced winners from across medicine, including in ophthalmology, and a case series of the application of stem cell therapy. Given the value of case reports is increased when multiple sources are considered, the scope of the Case Report of the Year Award has been extended, for this and subsequent years, to include all journals publishing case reports at BioMed Central. This includes many of the BMC series journals and our independent titles which are contributing thousands of case reports to Cases Database. Nominations, which should be submitted online, are also now open publicly, and will be judged by Prof Michael Kidd. Please identify your nominees for the 2012 award by 31st January 2013 for them to be considered – and perhaps a search of Cases Database might help in finding them.