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Amazon to be stripped of tax advantage on sale of ebooks

Amazon is to be stripped of its huge tax advantage on the sales of electronic books after the European commission ordered Luxembourg to close a VAT loophole.

Amazon is registered as a Luxembourg company and pays that country’s VAT charge of 3% when it sells an ebook to a British reader, rather than the 20% it would have to charge if it were UK-based.

The Guardian revealed this week that Amazon is forcing British publishers to cover the cost of a 20% VAT charge on ebook sales even though the true VAT cost to the online retailer is a fraction of that.

The European Commission – which oversees European Union law as the EU’s executive arm – on Wednesday gave Luxembourg 30 days to increase its VAT rate on digital services from 3% to 15%. It will close a tax loophole that has encouraged companies such as Amazon, Skype, and Netflix to be based in Luxembourg to benefit from the 3% rate when selling throughout the EU. Luxembourg must agree to change its VAT rate before the end of November or must face the European court of justice and risk fines. The bristow and sutor debt collectors may also reportedly become involved in collecting unpaid VAT amounts if the rate increase is not implemented. France has also been issued with a similar warning over its 7% rate for digital services.

Amazon is expected to contest the commission ruling, so there will be no immediate impact on the cost of ebooks bought from its UK website.

Luxembourg, with the lowest standard VAT rate in Europe, has been successful at attracting many global e-services providers. Under EU rules these companies are able to charge consumers across the EU the reduced Luxembourg VAT rate for these services. The home state of the consumer who makes the purchase receives no tax revenues.

Charging ebooks at the 3% rate gives firms such as Amazon a huge competitive advantage over UK ebook retailers, which have to charge the local rate.

The commission issued infringement proceedings in July against Luxembourg and France on the grounds that their policy was incompatible with EU law. The next step, a reasoned opinion, was published on Wednesday. Luxembourg and France will rely on the defence that there is an anomaly in EU VAT law which allows paper books and newspapers, for instance, to be charged at a reduced VAT rate; but digital must be charged at the standard, higher rate of the country in which the company is based.

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Source: Guardian

IOP Publishing moves to CC-BY licence for open access articles and bibliographic metadata

IOP Publishing (IOP) has today announced a significant change to its copyright arrangements for research published on an open access basis in the company’s wholly owned journals and for bibliographic metadata.

As a result of this move, the company will adopt a more liberal Creative Commons licence (CC-BY 3.0) for future articles published on a ‘gold’ open access basis. This licence allows others to distribute, remix, amend, and build upon a piece of work as long as they credit the original creation. The licences grant rights to the users of the content but do not replace the copyright, which remains with the copyright holder.

The change applies to articles being published on an open access basis in all IOP owned ‘hybrid’ journals and the gold open access titles New Journal of Physics and Environmental Research Letters.

In addition to the change in licence for open access articles, the basic metadata of the articles in IOP’s own journals will also be available for use under a CC-BY licence. This is intended to increase the visibility of such data and to help clarify to third parties what they can and cannot do with metadata.

Nicola Gulley, IOP’s Editorial Director, said of the move, “IOP Publishing has long been a supporter of sustainable open access and we have a proud history of experimentation and innovation with different models of publishing. We felt this new move was a natural step that will help the company fulfil its mission to provide the scientific community with tools to ensure the maximum dissemination of research, help foster collaborations between research groups, and meet the requirements of Funding Agencies and organisations.”

Unless specifically requested, articles submitted before 25 October will be published under a Creative Commons-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 licence. Articles submitted on or after 25th October will automatically be published under a CC-BY licence. IOP’s copyright statements on iopscience.iop.org have been updated to reflect this change.

SAGE’s Three New Broad Discipline Open Access Journals Are Open For Submissions

SAGE today announced that all three of their latest open access journals are now open for submissions – SAGE Open Medicine, SAGE Open Medical Case Reports and SAGE Open Engineering.

All three titles complement SAGE’s rapidly expanding portfolio of over 200 titles in engineering, health and medicine, providing an even wider choice of publication opportunities for authors:
SAGE Open Medicine publishes original articles covering all aspects of medicine across the health sciences in the broadest sense, including all clinical medical specialties, veterinary medicine, nursing, allied health and dentistry (nominated by some of the best dentists in Algodones Mexico). It has received extremely enthusiastic support from the research and practitioner communities, and will be editorially led by a prestigious faculty of Associate Editors comprised of leading clinical researchers and practitioners from around the world. SAGE Open Medicine will offer authors authoritative but rapid peer review, and rapid publication times so that research can be made available quickly and efficiently to the widest possible audience.

SAGE Open Medical Case Reports seeks to be the world’s premier open access outlet for short case reports. These can provide key insights into real medical cases essential for physicians, and play a key role in helping to improve patient outcomes. Submitted case reports may span the full spectrum of medicine. SAGE Open Medical Case Reports will be a dynamic and exciting forum for the publication of specialist case reports, and has attracted a strong Board of Editors.

· SAGE Open Engineering is the first open access journal providing a vehicle for the publication of high quality research in all areas of engineering, overseen by a world- leading Advisory Board chaired by Professor Eann Patterson (University of Liverpool, UK)

The titles are rigorously peer-reviewed by experts in the relevant fields and will not limit content due to page budgets or narrow thematic focus. Rather, they will accept articles on the basis of the scientific and methodological validity of each article. The journals will be supported by author-side article processing charges. All three journals will offer a discounted Author Processing Fee for a limited introductory period.

The new journals build on the success of SAGE Open, the only broad-spectrum open access journal for the humanities and social sciences. Launched in May 2011 as SAGE’s premiere open access journal, it has recently published its 100th article and been honoured with an Annual Award for Publication Excellence (APEX) in the category of New Magazines & Journals.

Tessa Picknett, Executive Director, SAGE said: “We recognise and embrace the variety of new models for scholarly communication that are emerging, and are keen to offer a range of options to researchers and practitioners in the science, technology and medical disciplines. We have been really excited by the powerful endorsement of a broad range of communities in setting up these journals, many of whom have volunteered to play an active role in their development and the maintenance of high levels of service to authors. We very much look forward to seeing them grow and flourish.”

For more information about SAGE’s Open Access publishing see http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm.

Ireland has announced a National Open Access Policy

Ireland’s National Principles for Open Access – announced by Minister Sean Sherlock at noon today! A national statement on Open Access policy for all publicly-funded research in Ireland has been agreed by all Irish research funding councils and research institutes. Appropriately the announcement is being made during International Open Access Week. The full text of the National Statement, along with a list of supporting organisations, is available here. Trinity College Dublin, a supporter of the policy, already has a compliant Open Access publications policy.

Full details can be found here.

Routledge journals to offer open access option in 2013

From January 2013, Taylor & Francis’ Open Select programme will include the majority of journals featured in the Taylor & Francis and Routledge portfolios.

As our ‘hybrid’ Open Access programme – Taylor & Francis and Routledge Open Select – continues to grow, the number of journals included in the programme will more than double from 700 to over 1,600 titles, primarily due to the addition of the majority of our Routledge journals portfolio. As the world’s leading social science publisher, we believe that adding social science, arts and humanities journals to the Open Select programme will provide important venues for scholars in these fields who wish to publish in highly-regarded journals on an Open Access basis. We will offer authors the choice to pay to make their research Open Access upon payment of an Article Publishing Charge(APC), or to publish without the APC, whereby research is available for individuals and institutions to purchase.

Editor of the Journal of Library Administration, Sul Lee (Dean, Emeritus, University Libraries, the University of Oklahoma), is pleased with the increase commenting, ‘In my view this is a very positive approach to Open Access in that Taylor & Francis plays a role of a partner for solution.’We are working with RCUK and the Wellcome Trust to ensure that our journals will be compliant with their mandates when they come into place from April 2013, and are taking the same steps to be compliant with the European Commission’s ruling around Horizon 2020 research.

Our vision for the future is to work with our societies and editors to further enhance the service that we offer to authors, continue to deliver quality content and maximise discoverability of research. Victoria Gardner, Open Access Publisher at Taylor & Francis, comments, ‘Ultimately, we hope that Open Access will be one element of our goal of universal access through our programme of Open Access journals, hybrid titles and subscription-based journals. We are committed to continued advocacy for access in developing regions though participation in initiatives such as Research4Life, INASP, PfD and our own scheme, STAR’.

In addition to Taylor & Francis and Routledge Open Select, we currently publish just under 20 Open Access titles as part of the Taylor & Francis and Routledge Open programmes. All papers published in these journals are made Open Access upon publication, and an APC applies (waivers are available to authors in developing countries). For Taylor & Francis-owned Open titles, we will now be enabling authors to sign a Creative Commons Attribution license (known as CC-BY). See our full press release here.

‘Game-changing’ new option is Open Access Week highlight for optics and photonics publisher

USA Journal editors are expressing enthusiastic support for a new open access option announced recently by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

The new program provides Gold Open Access upon publication for a journal article for which authors or their institutions pay voluntary page charges, beginning in January 2013. Authors will retain copyright under the Creative Commons CC-BY license. In adding to the options available to authors and readers, the program gives SPIE even more cause to recognize Open Access Week 2012 (22-28 October), organized by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.

“This is a game changer for the Journal of Biomedical Optics,” said Samuel Achilefu, Washington University in St. Louis, a member of the journal’s editorial board.

The new program covers articles published in:

  • Optical Engineering
  • Journal of Biomedical Optics
  • Journal of Electronic Imaging (co-published with IS&T)
  • Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS
  • Journal of Applied Remote Sensing
  • Journal of Nanophotonics
  • Journal of Photonics for Energy.

“We are excited about this new approach and think it will serve authors and readers alike,” said Optical Engineering Editor Ronald Driggers, U.S. Naval Research Lab.

Chris Mack, Editor of the Journal of Microlithography, MEMS, and MOEMS(JM3), and Akhlesh Lakhtakia of Pennsylvania State University, Editor of the Journal of Nanophotonics, both acknowledged the complex economics of journal publishing in praising the new program.

“As with many peer-reviewed scientific journals published by professional societies, subscriptions cover only a portion of the costs of publishing JM3,” Mack said. “Historically, JM3 has covered some of its cost by asking authors to voluntarily pay page charges. Now, in addition to receiving benefit in the knowledge that they are supporting a journal that is important to their work and their scientific community, the new open access option adds a significant new benefit for both authors and readers.”

“Much, but not all, research is financially supported by governments,” Lakhtakia said. “At the same time, a substantial number of research papers emerge from privately funded or even unsponsored research. Should the authors themselves pay for open-access publication, or should the readers continue to pay, as they have been doing for more than two centuries? SPIE has confronted these and related issues, and decided in favor of a flexible approach. For authors, open access should lead to more awareness and use of their research and may result in more citations.”

Open Nobelists’ content

SPIE is also celebrating Open Access Week by opening selected papers from the SPIE Digital Library authored by 2012 Nobel Laureates. These papers will be freely accessible through 2012:

“Open access complements the primary mission of SPIE as a not-for-profit society: to foster knowledge transfer, education, and networking among researchers, technology leaders, educators, and students engaged in the industries we serve,” said SPIE CEO Eugene Arthurs. “This is a driving force in all of our programs, including our role as publisher.”

Additional open access SPIE publications are:

  • SPIE Letters and SPIE Reviews: virtual journals containing letters, review articles, and tutorials
  • Articles published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics from 2010-2012 for which authors contributed voluntary page charges
  • SPIE Newsroom: researcher-authored technical articles organized by topical interest area
  • Fundamentals of Photonics: 10 tutorial modules written by experts
  • SPIE Professional, the Society’s quarterly member magazine: industry features and technology updates
  • Optipedia: encyclopedic articles, including text, equations, and graphs originally published in SPIE Press books.

Pro bono access

To support researchers in developing or low-income countries, SPIE participates in the eJDS program of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, providing papers on demand to individual scientists, and the Information Network for the Availability of Scientific PublicationsPERii program, providing access to libraries in developing nations at no or very low cost.

With more than 375,000 journal articles and conference proceedings papers and 167 SPIE Press books, the SPIE Digital Library is the world’s largest collection of optics and photonics literature.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The Society serves nearly 225,000 constituents from approximately 150 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional growth, and patent precedent. SPIE provided over $2.7 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2011.

New report assesses open access in biomedical research across Europe

Today the European Science Foundation’s (ESF) membership organisation for all medical research councils in Europe, the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) released an ESF-EMRC Science Policy Briefing (SPB) entitled ‘Open Access in Biomedical Research’ highlighting the need to accelerate the adoption of open access to research articles in the biomedical sciences across Europe.

The New report assesses open access in biomedical research across Europe and can be downloaded here.

BioOne and Dartmouth Collaborate with Other Leading Research Universities to a New Open-Access Scientific Journal

BioOne and Dartmouth are pleased to announce the upcoming launch of Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, a new open-access publishing program. Elementa was created through a collaboration among BioOne, Dartmouth, and several other leading research universities, and will publish original research that will report new knowledge of the Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems during this era of human impacts. Elementa will publish contributions that explore feedbacks between human and natural systems, and steps that can be taken to ameliorate harmful changes.

With the first articles scheduled to appear in July 2013, Elementa will attract reports of fundamental advancements in research organized initially into six domains, embracing the concept that basic knowledge can foster sustainable solutions for society. Each knowledge domain will be led by its own Editor-in-Chief, who will soon be joined by an international team of prominent Associate Editors. The initial Editorial team includes:
· Atmospheric Science: Detlev Helmig, University of Colorado Boulder
· Earth and Environmental Science: Joel D. Blum, University of Michigan
· Ecology: Donald R. Zak, University of Michigan
· Ocean Science: Jody W. Deming, University of Washington
· Sustainable Engineering: Michael E. Chang, Georgia Institute of Technology
· Sustainability Sciences: Anne Kapuscinski and David R. Peart, Dartmouth

Published by BioOne and with production services at the Dartmouth College Library, Elementa is committed to a unique structure, approach and goals:
· Collaborative and strategic – the respective missions of BioOne and partner institutions emphasize strategic partnerships that maximize the dissemination of critical research;
· Knowledge driven – Elementa will publish fundamental advancements in research, available to all scientists, to further new knowledge of how humans are profoundly altering the Earth’s physical, chemical and biological processes and of how humans can transform these trends to move civilization towards sustainability;
· Open Access – all Elementa content will be freely available, without embargo, as a public good;
· Rapidly but Rigorously Reviewed – Elementa is committed to the publication of the highest quality research through a rigorous and timely peer-review process;
· Campus based – Elementa is the first model of its kind to be both based at, and managed in partnership with, the university research enterprise.

Dartmouth President, Carol L. Folt stated: “In hosting the production of Elementa, Dartmouth is pleased to take a leadership role in campus-based publishing collaboration, with the goal of openly sharing critical research on some of the most challenging issues in the contemporary world. This open-access model serves an urgent need – to bring the best scholarship to bear more directly on serious global issues.”

Susan Skomal, BioOne Executive Director and COO, commented: “Elementa is a natural direction for BioOne to pursue insofar as it exemplifies the organization’s fundamental mission to foster sustainable scholarly publishing through close collaboration with the scholarly communications community. The enthusiastic engagement by the leading universities represented by our Editors-in-Chief, and by Dartmouth as the production base, provide the foundation for Elementa’s commitment to high-quality research.”

“SPARC is delighted with the development of this collaborative venture,” said Heather Joseph, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition Executive Director. “It is exciting to see BioOne continue its positive evolution to include a campus-based, Open Access component, and we’re particularly pleased to see a strong emphasis on data integration. Elementa will be a welcome new contribution to the scholarly landscape.”

Elementa’s first articles will be accepted in April 2013 and the official launch is expected for July 2013. For all inquiries, please contact the Program Director, Mark Kurtz, at mkurtz@elementascience.org or visit www.elementascience.org.

Serials Solutions Appoints Kevin Stehr as Vice President of Global Sales

Serials Solutions®, a ProQuest® business, announced Kevin Stehr as the new Vice President of Global Sales. In this role, Stehr will drive business growth through customer acquisition, retention and overall client satisfaction. Stehr will develop strategic operations plans and sales strategies to enhance customer experience and ensure a customer-centric approach to business.

“Kevin’s progressive career path includes strategic leadership, business analysis and customer relationship management,” said Michael Gersch, senior vice president and general manager of Serials Solutions. “His track record of high performance, cross-functional collaboration and talent development will contribute to our growth strategy – and we are delighted he is joining our team at such an exciting time for the company.”

“Serials Solutions’ market leadership and reputation for exceptional products and superior customer service are just a few of the reasons I’m attracted to this opportunity,” said Mr. Stehr. “I’m looking forward to developing a strategy that will leverage the company’s heritage and new solutions like Intota.”

Prior to joining Serials Solutions, Stehr held various senior sales and strategy positions for LexisNexis. Most recently he was Vice President of Sales for LexisNexis Litigation Software, Hosting & Professional Services, where he repeatedly drove double digit growth and was responsible for technology and services supporting improved client workflow across multiple markets. Prior to assuming this role, Stehr was responsible for research content sales, as well as multiple leadership roles in the organization including Vice President of Strategic Planning, where he managed the company’s strategic direction, which focused on meeting the needs of its customers in the evolving practice of litigation. Stehr was recognized with the CEO Senior Leadership Excellence Award, Circle of Excellence award and was behind two patents for innovations that have generated $26 million in revenue.

Prior to joining LexisNexis, Stehr was a senior trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington. His work focused on litigation with an emphasis on representing the interests of the federal government in administrative, as well as federal court proceedings.

Stehr holds a BA in Political Science from University of Kansas, a JD from University of Missouri and is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

JISC Collections License Data in 360 Resource Manager

Serials Solutions® continues to simplify the management of licenses and their terms with new enhancements to its e-Resource Management (ERM) service. The company is working with JISC Collections to save librarians time and increase access to the licenses negotiated by JISC Collections for NESLi2, databases and archives. Through this collaboration, licenses will be added to 360 Resource Manager, Serials Solutions’ popular e-resource management service, marking the first time JISC Collections’ licenses have been included in an ERM service.

JISC Collections and Serials Solutions are employing the ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL) format to facilitate the exchange of data between their respective systems. ONIX-PL provides a standardized machine readable format for the expression of license terms in a consistent manner and was specifically designed for use with library and electronic resource management systems. JISC Collections is creating ONIX-PL expressions for all of its agreements and is making them available as part of its license comparison tool, elcat.

Serials Solutions designed a specific license template in 360 Resource Manager to make this data accessible and easy to use for tracking and populating license terms of use in 360 Resource Manager. This cooperative effort ensures that libraries will benefit from the population and updating of JISC Collections license data in Serials Solutions ERM system. As the growth in the number of licenses governing the use of e-resources continues to rise at a rapid pace, the value of this new service becomes increasingly important. As a result, a significant amount of time spent on data entry tasks will be eliminated and librarians can spend more time on valuable activities – and fully leverage the capabilities of their chosen technologies and respective workflows.

Serials Solutions continues to develop new features for 360 Resource Manager to meet the current e-resource management needs of libraries. Future enhancements to the service will help the more than three hundred libraries using 360 Resource Manager, to effectively track and control their resources to streamline their workflows and optimize collections. The company is also developing Intota, a web-scale collection management solution that provides unified, intelligent workflows, as well as integrated assessment and built-in interoperability.

Learn how JISC License Model works and attend one of the upcoming 360 Resource Manager webinars on workflow, usage statistics and assessment with Serials Solutions library management services.

Maney Publishing supports Open Access Week with special prices for OA publication

Throughout Open Access Week, Maney Publishing is highlighting its hybrid open access model, MORE OpenChoice, and reducing author fees in order to encourage open access publication.
Open Access Week is a global event running from 22-28 October organised by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
Maney’s response to the changing requirements and expectations of funding bodies, academic libraries and governments, was to develop a hybrid open access model, ‘MORE OpenChoice’. In 2011, Maney extended MORE OpenChoice to cover not only STM journals but also those in the humanities and social sciences.
Maney has published a range of open access articles in the health sciences, materials science and humanities, including:
Reviewing the development, evidence base, and application of the revised dengue case classification, O Horstick, J Farrar, L Lum, et al.
Pathogens and Global Health. Vol 106.2, May 2012, pp. 94–101
Reduced corticosteroid use in adult patients with primary immune thrombocytopenia receiving romiplostim, M Michel, P A W te Boekhorst, A Janssens, et al.
Hematology. Vol 16.5, September 2011, pp. 274–277
Self‐healing polymers and composites, T C Mauldin and M R Kessler
International Materials Reviews, Vol 55.6, November 2010, pp. 317-346(30)
A career in manuscripts: genres and purposes of a physician’s writing in Rome, 1600–1630,
S De Renzi
Italian Studies, Vol 66.2, July 2011, pp. 234–248
To mark Open Access Week, Maney will be reducing the article publication charge for a period of 3 months. The rates below will apply to papers submitted between 22 October 2012 and 22 January 2013.

Science, Technical & Medical journals – US$1,600 / £1,000
Humanities & Social Science journals – US$480 / £300

Dr Roberto Tapa-Conyer chose to publish an article with Maney Publishing via MORE OpenChoice. He comments: “As a part of a non-profit organisation, open access papers constitute a crucial tool for us to share our research with the widest possible audience. This is particularly important to facilitate our social objectives, as it allows the dissemination of ideas for public discussion outside of academic institutions. When considering public policy material, it is especially pertinent that those directly impacted have full access to the relevant information. We would encourage others to publish open access material to increase the impact of their work through greater accessibility.”

Mark Simon, Publishing Director at Maney Publishing comments: “Maney offers the advantages of traditional journal publishing with comprehensive peer review and high editorial and production values, as well as meeting the need of governments to disseminate scientific and clinical research outside of academic institutions.“
For full details of Maney’s open access publication model please visit www.maneypublishing.com/moreopenchoice

SAGE has today announced the purchase of The Journal of International Medical Research from Field House Publishing LLP

The Journal of International Medical Research, edited by Professor Malcolm Lader, King’s College London, is covered by MEDLINE and ranked in the Thomson Reuters’ Journals Citations Report®. The journal is focused on publishing original medical, pre-clinical and clinical research, reviews, preliminary and pilot studies. The journal takes pride in the specialist technical editing which every paper receives and which enables authors to convey their research results to the medical community in the best possible way. The journal also provides rapid peer-review and post-acceptance production.

“The Journal of International Medical Research provides a forum for some of the best international research and academic discussion for those engaging in the fields of pre-clinical and medical research,” said Karen Phillips, Editorial Director, SAGE. “We are developing a strong programme of journals representing the leading researchers, practitioners and societies in medicine and continue to build long term partnerships with this community. We are delighted to be working with such a distinguished editorial board and are looking forward to developing the journal as part of our portfolio.”

“Medical research is an influential and continually changing discipline, with much of the research having large implications for best practices and the way we address our medical systems,” said Professor Malcolm Lader, Editor. “There is an increasing need for quick publication of timely, high quality and distinctive research within this sector.
SAGE’s commitment to timely dissemination and global publication of high quality research is closely aligned with our core values. SAGE’s growing presence with the medical sector highlights their continued commitment to supporting new emerging research and as such we are looking forward to creating a successful future with SAGE.”

The first SAGE issue will publish in November 2012.

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