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Wiley & O’Reilly Media sign ebook distribution deal

Technology publisher O’Reilly Media is pleased to announce an agreement with global publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Beginning immediately, O’Reilly will become an online distributor for Wiley’s extensive technology ebook program, which includes such leading brands as Wrox, Sybex, and For Dummies®. Nine imprints in all are included in this distribution model, totaling over 3,000 individual titles.
“We are excited to share our technology titles with the O’Reilly community, which includes many leaders and innovators in that industry,” says Peter Balis, Director of Digital Business Development at Wiley. “Wiley is focused on offering products and services that enable our customers to be effective and successful in their professional lives. Our relationship with O’Reilly will broaden Wiley’s reach to the professional technology community.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with Wiley,” says Pascal Honscher, O’Reilly’s General Manager for Corporate Development. “Wiley’s impressive selection of thousands of highly relevant titles, which include some of the most recognizable and trusted brands in technology publishing, will be of great interest to our audience. It’s an honor to make these Wiley books available to more readers online.”

This alignment of philosophies and business models is exciting to all involved.

“Partnering with another publisher, one that shares and embraces similar digital content ideals—where content is made available to customers in multiple digital formats, all without DRM—is particularly gratifying,” Honscher says.

To learn more, visit http://www.oreilly.com.

Tablets Gain on Dedicated E-Readers, Says New BISG Study

E-book consumers are decidedly shifting to multi-function tablets and away from dedicated e-readers, according to the Book Industry Study Group (BISG)’s closely watched on-going Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey. The fourth and final installment in Volume Three of the Bowker-powered survey shows that tablets have risen by about 25 percent over the past year as the first choice for respondents’ e-reading device, while dedicated e-readers have fallen by the same amount. The rise of tablet popularity has been fueled largely by Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which increased over the past year from no use to be the first choice for more than 17 percent of e-book consumers. Other Android devices, such as Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Tablet, have also increased as the first choice for respondents’ e-reading device, from two percent in August 2011 to nearly seven percent in August 2012, while Apple’s iPad has held steady around 10 percent.

“We’ve discovered throughout the course of this survey work that we can chart the future based on what is currently happening with e-book ‘Power Buyers.’ Their e-book purchasing and e-reader preferences have proven to be reliable predictors of market trends,” said Angela Bole, BISG’s Deputy Executive Director. “Based on this, the introduction of new tablet devices by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Microsoft is likely to continue the trend of preference for tablets over dedicated e-readers through the upcoming holiday season.”

Power Buyers – those who purchase e-books at least weekly – are rapidly increasing their preference for tablets as e-reading devices. More than 38 percent indicated that tablets are their primary e-reading device, compared with about 19 percent a year ago. Dedicated e-readers are preferred by less than half of Power Buyers today, compared with more than two thirds last year.

Further, tablets designed specifically for the purchase and consumption of books excel when it comes to that activity, but underperform for all others—sometimes by wide margins. Almost 60 percent of respondents who currently own Amazon’s Kindle Fire report that they read e-books “very often,” compared with 50 percent of those who currently own an Apple iPad. The two most common activities reportedly performed “very often” by iPad owners are Web browsing (60 percent) and creating or reading emails or text messages (59 percent). Kindle Fire owners report those activities at 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

BISG’s Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey also looks at genre preferences, revealing that nonfiction genres, notably how-to guides/manuals and scientific/medical/technical titles, are generally preferred by respondents who read e-books on desktop, laptop, or netbook computers. “This possibly suggests the need to improve e-reading device capabilities for non-linear e-book content,” said Jo Henry, Global Director of Bowker Market Research.

Since November 2009, Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading has been tracking the habits and preferences of print book consumers who say they have acquired an e-book or a dedicated e-reading device within the past year. Volume Three is sponsored by Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, and Harlequin. In addition to quarterly PDF Summary Reports, Volume Three of Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading is published as a dynamic online report via Real-Time Reporting: a unique web-based tool set displaying the raw data derived from responses – drillable, sortable with on-demand accessibility.

Data for Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading was derived from a nationally representative panel of book consumers (men, women, and teens). Each month a new group of more than 6,000 respondents complete surveys about their book purchasing behavior for Bowker Market Research. Out of nearly 65,000 possible panelists, respondents were qualified for the BISG e-book survey by selecting “Digital/E book” as a binding type of a book they had acquired or indicating that they owned a dedicated e-reader device (such as Kindle, NOOK, or Sony Reader) during any month in 2012. This process yielded a survey sample of more than 1,000 e-book consumers.

The survey findings are available for sale both as a PDF Summary Report and as a complete data compendium, accessible online. A substantial discount is available for BISG members. For more information, or to order a copy of Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading, visit www.bisg.org/publications/product.php?p=19&c=437.

Research4life Publisher Partners Commit To Free And Low Cost Access Through 2020

The Research4Life partners announced today that they have agreed to extend their partnership through 2020. Research4Life (www.research4life.org) currently provides over 6,000 institutions in more than 100 developing countries with free or low cost access to peer-reviewed online content from the world’s leading scientific, technical and medical publishers. The renewed commitment will ensure that the 18,000 peer reviewed scientific journals, books and databases now available through the public-private Research4life partnership will continue to reach research communities in low- and middle-income countries.

Nearly 200 scientific, technical and medical publishers worldwide participate in Research4Life. Since the programme’s launch in 2001, no publisher has withdrawn support from the partnership. A 2010 survey which formed part of a Research4life user experience review, revealed that more respondents (24%) cite HINARI as a source for life-science and medical research than cite any other source, while more respondents (32%) cite HINARI as the source they use most frequently. For agricultural research, AGORA similarly tops the list of resources used, with equivalent figures of 27% and 54% respectively.

One of the beneficiaries of Research4life, Gamal Khalafalla Mohamed Ali Director General of Sudan’s Central Medical Supplies Public Corporation who heads the national government agency responsible for medical supplies to all public health institutions commented, “As a policymaker, I use research published in HINARI for formulating research-based policies. I have written many proposals and most of these find their way to implementation. A major reason for this, I think is the evidence that underpins the proposals. To me HINARI is like water and oxygen: it is vital for me.”

“As the world community looks beyond the Millennium Development Goal milestones in 2015, the Research4Life partnership is setting an example by ensuring sustainability of these important information access initiatives through 2020,” noted Richard Gedye, Director of Outreach Programs, International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.

“The partnership has extended its commitment to the programmes several times since the HINARI programme for Access to Research in Health was launched in 2001. The last two extensions were for 9 and 8 years respectively. I applaud the long-term commitment by the partnership in support of low- and middle-income country researchers, who have been making such strides in improving scientific practice, policy, and education in the last ten years,” said Kimberly Parker, HINARI Programme Manager at the World Health Organizations

ORCID and CrossRef Collaborate to Accurately Attribute Authorship of Scholarly Content

Two not-for profit organizations, ORCID and CrossRef, have collaborated to solve the problem of ambiguous author names in scholarly content. ORCID began assigning unique identifiers to researchers in October. As part of the ORCID Registry, individuals can search the metadata from CrossRef, the largest organization assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to scholarly content, and add their works to their personal ORCID records.

Connecting researchers with their research has been hampered by lack of data standards, and in particular a standard for identifying individuals. ORCID provides researchers a Registry to create a unique personal identifier, and has been working with the research community to embed these identifiers in research workflows.

One key component of the ORCID interface is the ability to import metadata on research works to populate an individual’s ORCID record. As an affiliate member of CrossRef, ORCID provides its users the ability to search and import bibliographic metadata from CrossRef. “Linking the unique document identifier (the CrossRef DOI) with the unique person identifier (the ORCID iD) is essential for ensuring accurate attribution of authors and other content creators,” said Ed Pentz, Executive Director of CrossRef and a member of the ORCID board.

In addition to importing past works, ORCID is working with CrossRef and the publishing community to ensure that ORCID identifiers collected during the manuscript submission process are incorporated into article metadata and included with the information submitted to CrossRef. “As important as importing past works, is implementing an automated process for updating the ORCID record with new publication information. This is one way researchers will truly benefit from having an ORCID identifier,” said Laure Haak, Executive Director of ORCID. Already at the launch of the ORCID Registry, a number of publishers and manuscript tracking system vendors had integrated ORCID identifiers into their author profile and submission processes (for a list, see the ORCID Launch Partners web page).

In order to access the CrossRef bibliographic metadata, ORCID has become an affiliate of CrossRef. Likewise CrossRef is a founding member of ORCID. CrossRef has modified its metadata schema so that publishers can include ORCID iDs with their bibliographic metadata deposits. The CrossRef system will allow querying for ORCIDs from its records early in 2013.

In an article published in Learned Publishing in October, Haak, Pentz, and co-authors described recommended best practices for collecting and displaying ORCID identifiers in research papers (See http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20120404). Since it is not possible to deduce name or other identifying information from the ORCID identifier, it is important to visually display the identifier with the author name: as a footnote or in-line in the HTML and PDF versions of published manuscripts; in the article metadata used on journal websites; in the article metadata sent to CrossRef and bibliographic databases such as Pub-Med; and in downloadable reference lists using the RIS, BibTeX or Endnote format. The ultimate goal is to have the ORCID unique identifier associated with the article DOI whenever a scholarly contribution is made or reported.

Springer partners with Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Science Press

As of January 2013 Springer will publish the Journal of Arid Land, the official publication of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The quarterly peer-reviewed journal joins Springer’s Chinese Library of Science, a collection of more than 90 high-quality research journals from China.

The journal is co-sponsored by the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography and the CAS. Starting with Volume 5, Issue 1, the Journal of Arid Land will be published jointly by Springer and Science Press.

Launched in 2009 and indexed by Science Citation Information Expanded (SCIE) in 2011, the Journal of Arid Land provides a platform for high-quality research papers from all over the world in the fields of geography, geology, pedology, hydrology, biology, ecology and meteorology in arid and semiarid regions. It publishes articles on the interactions between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere with a special focus on ecological improvement and protection of the environment.

Professor Xi Chen, Director of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Arid Land, said, “We are glad to collaborate with Springer on this journal. We believe that the partnership will improve communication among ecologists, geographers and resources- environmental researchers and enhance the impact of the journal internationally.”

Dr. Lu Ye, Editorial Director at Springer’s Beijing office, said, “Springer has a broad range of journals in geosciences. We publish most of the high-quality English-language journals in earth sciences from China. We are honored that the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, the CAS and Science Press have chosen to work with us. Our online information platform SpringerLink will help disseminate the journal to a global audience.”

Academic Rights Press, The Electrochemical Society and GeoScienceWorld Sign New Contracts with ACCUCOMS

In October 2012, ACCUCOMS signed new representation agreements with Academic Rights Press (ARP), The Electrochemical Society (ECS) and GeoScienceWorld (GSW). ACCUCOMS now represents ARP in Turkey, and ECS in Germany, Turkey, Latin America and India. The existing representation agreement with GSW for Europe has been extended to now include representation in India.

ARP licenses academic information from the world’s leading academic publishers and information providers, publishes academic databases, and distributes online resources to the academic library market. In June 2012, ARP introduced Academic Charts Online (ACO), a database of popular music chart data. “ACO is a resource whose time has come,” said Roger Press, CEO at ARP. “It brings a new level of scholarship not only to music, but also cultural studies, entertainment business, historical and social studies courses. We are proud to be working with ACCUCOMS to bring it to a wider market.”

“The ECS tradition of scientific excellence ensures a progressive exchange of research through the flagship Journal of The Electrochemical Society and entire content of the ECS Digital Library,” said Mary Yess, ECS Deputy Executive Director and Publisher. “We look forward to our association with ACCUCOMS, and trust that it will enable the Society to serve a broader international community, furthering our mission to disseminate information in electrochemistry and solid state science and technology.”

“GeoScienceWorld has many potential users in India,” said Alix Vance, Executive Director at GSW. “ACCUCOMS representatives help us reach local universities, government agencies, and corporations in the earth sciences. Regional expertise makes a positive difference in the sales process, both for the publisher and the end-user. ACCUCOMS has already demonstrated that for us in Europe, so expanding in an additional region is a next logical step for GSW.”

“These representation agreements underline to continuing need for specialized publisher sales services,” said Pinar Erzin, Managing Director at ACCUCOMS. “We help publishers to sell their content in broader markets. Whether a market is a country or a continent, we successfully bring libraries, users and publishers together. We are proud to be expanding our collaboration with GeoScienceWorld and welcome our new customers Academic Rights Press and The Electrochemical Society to our program.”

Open Access: ‘we no longer need expensive publishing networks’

Higher education institutions need to recognise the changing world of publishing, says Rupert Gatti – it’s time for academics to take matters into their own hands

While academia is in the midst of a general funding crisis, multinational publishing houses are making vast profits from disseminating publicly funded research. New open access publishing models provide cost-efficient methods for disseminating research findings, eradicate excess profits by publishers and massively widen the readership of scholarly works. The government recognises this but their current reform agenda is nowhere near bold enough.

Academics as a rule do not write their books to make money – in fact most receive only token royalties for their work. They do it to satisfy research assessments, to get hired and promoted and, most of all, to inform readers, spark debate, and contribute to the intellectual richness of their discipline.

Commercial publishers reap high profits while putting up several barriers to dissemination of research results. First by imposing restrictions on copyright; second by deciding which areas of research reach publication — a decision often based on marketing considerations which penalises cutting-edge and niche subjects. Third by imposing high prices to readers and libraries in order to maintain high profits and an obsolete infrastructure.

What’s more, publishers increasingly bundle their numerous services into single large dissemination packages (so called ‘big deals’), extracting large profits from libraries and universities while further restricting access to research by readers outside the academic community. The average prices for an academic book is now around £50, with total sales running at around only 200 or 300 per title globally, predominantly to libraries in the US.

We have reached a point where university libraries cannot afford to buy access to the research done by scholars in their own institutions as journal costs are now too expensive even for the wealthiest universities.

The recent Finch report and subsequent new policies announced by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) fully support open access publication for all UK publicly-funded research. While these are important steps in the right direction, the Finch recommendations and the RCUK policies fall well short of pushing through the wholesale reforms required to make open access publishing the prime outlet for research results.

To continue reading the Guardian article click here:

Source: Guardian

Dr Rupert Gatti is fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and co-founder of Open Book Publishers – follow it on @OpenBookPublish

Emerald to publish official journal of the Latin American Council of Schools of Management (CLADEA)

Emerald Group Publishing Limited is delighted to announce its collaboration with CLADEA (the Latin American Council of Schools of Management) to publish their official journal Academia Revista Latinoamericana de Administración. Starting in 2013, Emerald will publish three issues of the journal annually, both online and in print, including contributions in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Edited by Professor Elvira Salgado of the University of Andes, Colombia, Academia disseminates theoretical and empirical research in the field of management and related disciplines, and serves as a means of integration among academics in the Latin-American region.

Tony Roche, Publishing Director at Emerald, comments, “We are delighted to partner with CLADEA in taking Academia to the next stage of its growth path. There is strong demand amongst the international business and management research community, for access to research from these emerging markets. Emerald will work closely with CLADEA to continue developing Academia, furthering its international dissemination, impact, readership and authorship.”

Alberto Zapater C. , Executive Director at CLADEA adds, “This agreement will undoubtedly allow researchers and faculty members to achieve a new international presence through Emerald which has very large network of professionals at a global level. Thus, 2013 opens with a new perspective for the Academia journal.”

Emerald has a strong commitment to innovation and quality in publishing, and continues to expand through publishing collaborations with stakeholders across research and practice. In addition to the new partnership on Academia , Emerald continues to work in partnership with CLADEA through the annual Emerald/CLADEA Latin American Management Research Fund, promoting research of benefit to the Latin American region.

Wiley Partners with TED

John Wiley, a global provider of content and workflow solutions in areas of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly research; professional development; and education, announced today a new collaboration with TED, the non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, to create and supply instructor materials for their recently launched series of “TED Studies.”

To support the demand for integrating TEDTalks into classroom coursework, TED created TED Studies – 21 collections of curated talks, organized into popular academic subject areas. Wiley will commission instructor materials to accompany TED’s offering to educators. These materials will be offered at no cost with TED’s video content on iTunesU, Wiley.com and other platforms around the world.

“Combining the TEDTalks series for academia with Wiley’s high-quality, customized educational materials and expertise creates a powerful new resource for effective, flexible, and personalized teaching and learning,” said Stephen M. Smith, Wiley’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

Commissioned from leading authors who are specialists in their academic and professional fields, the instructor materials developed for each TED Study will provide teachers with valuable curriculum content. Each set of instructor materials will include contextualizing essays, assignment questions and activities, key debates, experiments, and glossaries relating to the TEDTalks. Links to related content from Wiley and other publishers will be included for lecturers to share with students, or for lifelong learners to interact with directly.

“Our goal is to provide teachers with innovative, engaging resources that can be used to supplement curricula and bring lessons to life,” said Logan Smalley, Director of TED-Ed, TED’s education-focused initiative. “TED-Ed is committed to lessons worth sharing, and we are thrilled to offer these 21 collections as a new resource – particularly with the perspectives of highly regarded teachers and innovators from Wiley’s vast network.”

The TED Studies span a wide range of subject areas in which Wiley has a wealth of content and author relationships. The first authors to join the project are:

  • Prof Cary Cooper, Lancaster University Management School and co-founder of Robertson Cooper – TED Psychology: Understanding Happiness
  • Prof Tamara Sonn, College of William and Mary – TED Religion: Understanding Islam
  • Prof Robin Lock and Patti Frazer Lock, St. Lawrence University; Dr Kari Lock Morgan and Dr Eric Lock, Duke University; Dennis Lock, Iowa State University – TED Statistics: Visualising Data
  • Prof John Kingston, University of Massachusetts – TED Linguistics: Exploring the Evolution of Language
  • Prof Jeff and Lisa Smith, University of Otago – TED Education: Creative Problem-Solving
  • Prof Alex Rogers, University of Oxford – TED Marine Biology: Deep Oceans
  • Prof Tom McPhail, University of Missouri, St Louis – TED Media & Journalism: Covering World News
  • Prof Patricia Campbell, American Public University – TED Government & Politics: Cyber-influence and Power
  • Prof Max Boykoff and Dr Kanmani Venkateswaran, University of Colorado, Boulder – TED Environmental Studies: Climate Change
  • Prof Jose Oscar Mur-Miranda and Prof Ben Linder, Olin College –TED Design+Engineering: Ingenuity in the Developing World
  • Prof Jeff Forshaw, University of Manchester and Dr Peter Millington, University of Sheffield—TED Physics: The Edge of Knowledge
  • Prof Brian McGrath, Parsons The New School for Design and Prof David Grahame Shane, Columbia University—TED Urban Design: The Ecology of Cities

Several other courses and author teams will be announced over the year.

Al Manhal provides the latest eJournal solution through its electronic data base

Amman, Al Manhal technologies, the world’s only full-text searchable electronic Arabic database provider, signed agreements with World Islamic & Sciences University and Qatar University. Under the agreements, World Islamic & Sciences University and Qatar University students, faculty and researchers will have access to Al Manhal’s full-text searchable database of peer-reviewed eJournals from across the Arab World.

The comprehensive database, the only full text search database in Arabic, includes the most influential journals from leading universities, research institutes and scientific societies in the Middle East, most of which are exclusive to Al Manhal. The eJournal collections cover various subjects from the humanities and social sciences, with a focus on business and economics, education, history, geography, Islamic studies, language and literature, law, political science and international relations, psychology, sociology and social studies.

In addition to being the only full-text searchable provider of Arabic journals, Al Manhal also provides an array of advanced search and utility tools in order to make searching and using the content easy and effective. Al Manhal utilizes the world’s latest e-publishing and Digital Rights Management technologies in order to ensure that all content is protected, all usage is tracked, and all usage based royalties are paid to copyright holders accordingly. Mohamad Al-Baghdadi, CEO of Al Manhal, stated “We are honoured that WISE and Qatar University, as two of the most respected institutions in the region and the world, have adopted our eJournal collections. Due to the advanced levels of research being conducted at these esteemed institutions, we expect high levels of usage of our journals, which will benefit the users and content providers alike.”

Regarding their agreement with Al Manhal, Abdullah Kreishan, head of the World Islamic & Sciences University library stated, “Al Manhal database for Arabic peer-reviewed Journals adds a distinct quality to our Arabic eLibrary, which clearly suffers in this area and is a key tributary to the educational development in the Arab world. Al Manhal peer-reviewed Arabic Journals is a necessary tool to any Arab and foreign researcher, and it particularly serves graduate students and faculty members. We hope to see Al Manhal databases for Arabic Journals receive coverage in the Arab World. “

Educational Institutions Partner with Pearson to Improve Management and Sharing of Digital Learning Content

With the influx of numerous types of educational content — from premium content to freely available Open Educational Resources (OER) and user generated materials — institutions are often burdened by the process of storing, tagging, retrieving, and sharing learning assets. This results in assets being lost, misplaced or underutilized. To address this challenge, institutions are partnering with Pearson and choosing the EQUELLA® digital repository to easily identify, manage and provide shared access to high quality course content that enhances the learning experience for students, improves outcomes and helps to support accreditation requirements.

Content stored within EQUELLA — which now features the EQUELLA Content Exchange, new to version 6, offering free access to an extensive collection of OER materials — serves more than three million educators and students in North America. EQUELLA, like Pearson’s Project Blue Sky announced earlier this week, furthers Pearson’s commitment to helping educators to quickly identify and choose from a wide selection of high quality OER material. EQUELLA educational partners includePalm BeachAtlanticUniversity,University of Utah,North Carolina Community College System, and University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Institutions use EQUELLA to house learning materials such as video, custom eTextbooks, presentations, and lecture captures — often tagged to learning outcomes and relevant keywords — as well as to support course design and delivery.

Palm Beach Atlantic University uses EQUELLA with the Pearson LearningStudio learning management system, and benefits from the ease of delivering audio files, videos, and Flash presentations, to the LMS from EQUELLA. This provides efficient sharing and repurposing of learning objects for online course development in a team design environment. “Since we implemented EQUELLA, we’ve seen dramatic improvements over the ease of searching and successfully finding files quickly and easily,” said Rick Hubbard, Instructional Designer,Palm BeachAtlanticUniversity.

“Our commitment to providing innovative technology solutions that increase access to the content and materials needed to drive student achievement is evident in our EQUELLA solution,” said Matt Leavy, CEO of Pearson eCollege. “We have not only given institutions greater visibility into their vast inventory of digital assets, we have taken it one step further, integrating the solution seamlessly with a number of third party systems and providing an open access repository to encourage collaboration and achievement across the world.”

To support continued innovation, the EQUELLA Content Exchange, part of EQUELLA version 6, provides an easy-to-use platform to share and sell content between EQUELLA instances. Private exchanges within a consortium, free exchanges of OER resources, and various eCommerce models can now all easily be powered by EQUELLA. Resources can be provided free of charge, sold outright or by subscription. At launch, the EQUELLA Content Exchange offers nearly one million Open Educational Resources from a variety of sources. These resources can easily be discovered and downloaded for free to any version 6 installation of EQUELLA via Content Without Borders, an open access repository powered by EQUELLA. This publicly accessible repository promotes and provides access to resources contributed by academic institutions and repositories from around the world, which are available through content harvesting, and direct access to the website.

Additional EQUELLA version 6 enhancements include:

  • Mobile App, which enables users to access EQUELLA via iPad® and Android® tablets. The app enables users to view resources owned by the logged in user, as well as notifications and tasks.
  • Language Pack Support for right-to-left languages such as Arabic, as well as language pack support for other regions. This provides institutions with the ability to change common terms and strings of characters in EQUELLA to better match their institution’s common terms and/or foreign language requirements.
  • Extended Kaltura Integration, which provides users with the ability to set up multiple Kaltura servers. The addition of local servers allows users to upload, link to, and stream both audio and video files.
  • LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) Provider, which provides users with the opportunity to launch EQUELLA objects within learning management systems, enabling deeper integration with those that support LTI.
  • Accessibility Modifications, which have been applied to EQUELLA to ensure the user interface is accessible to people with disabilities. The platform now meets the international web content accessibility guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium.

For more information about EQUELLA®, please visithttp://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/equella/index.php.

Labtiva and Nature Publishing Group offer ReadCube Access for the public

An affordable way to read scientific articles launched today on Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journals, as NPG and Labtiva opened to the public a pilot of the ReadCube Access program for inexpensive single-click purchases and two-day rentals.

The program helps researchers, doctors, journalists, and the wider public who do not already hold subscriptions gain access to articles in high-impact scientific journals, including Nature and the Nature research journals.

“No one I know has complete access to all the academic literature needed—not even fellow researchers at Harvard,” says Siniša Hrvatin, a biology Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University.

This realization led Hrvatin and his fellow alumnus Robert McGrath to found Labtiva, a software company focused on helping scientists discover, organize, and read peer-reviewed literature.

“We wanted to make research in all journals readily accessible, which meant finding a practical way to reduce the price,” says McGrath. “ReadCube Access evolved as a way to read those articles immediately and inexpensively.”

Articles read by clicking the ReadCube Access icon on nature.com pages cost between $5 and $11, compared to the $32 pay-per-view fee. A 48-hour rental costs between $3 and $5.

“We are committed to continued innovation and experimentation with new channels and pricing models. Our goal as a scientific publisher is to sustainably bring affordable access to high quality scientific literature to the widest possible audience,” says Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director of NPG. “ReadCube Access coexists alongside our existing HTML full-text, PDF and app access options. We will be interested to see the uptake of this convenient format and price: whether by scientists on the go or checking for relevance; or by those in industry, patients and science-interested citizens.”

Purchased articles open in the ReadCube app, which works on PCs, Macs, and within any desktop web browser. The app makes PDFs interactive with annotation tools, clickable citations, compatibility with common reference managers, simultaneous download of supplemental data, and links to subsequent citations and online discussions of the article. An article accessed through ReadCube Access may not be printed or shared, but can be read offline.

At this time, the ReadCube Access button is present on articles in Nature and 18 Nature research journals. Articles in all NPG journals are available at the same discount using the ReadCube desktop app.

Hrvatin and McGrath say more publishers, both in the natural sciences and humanities, plan to adopt ReadCube Access.

“These publishers want to reach non-subscribers without jeopardizing existing academic relationships,” says Hrvatin. “We are working together with publishers to customize pay-per-article options including pricing, printing or sharing to their individual needs and the needs of their readers.”

Research institutions, like individuals, can use ReadCube Access to supplement subscription holdings. In a trial program underway at the University of Utah, researchers can access articles from more than 50 NPG journals that were previously not fully accessible. Payments are deducted from a central fund, managed by the library.

For more information, visit www.readcube.com/Access.

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