The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google today announced a settlement agreement that will provide access to publishers’ in-copyright books and journals digitized by Google for its Google Library Project. The dismissal of the lawsuit will end seven years of litigation.

The agreement settles a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google on October 19, 2005 by five AAP member publishers. As the settlement is between the parties to the litigation, the court is not required to approve its terms.

The settlement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders. US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project. Those deciding not to remove their works will have the option to receive a digital copy for their use.

Apart from the settlement, US publishers can continue to make individual agreements with Google for use of their other digitally-scanned works.

“We are pleased that this settlement addresses the issues that led to the litigation,” said Tom Allen, President and CEO, AAP. “It shows that digital services can provide innovative means to discover content while still respecting the rights of copyright-holders.”

“Google is a company that puts innovation front and center with all that it does,” said David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, Google. “By putting this litigation with the publishers behind us, we can stay focused on our core mission and work to increase the number of books available to educate, excite and entertain our users via Google Play.”

Google Books allows users to browse up to 20% of books and then purchase digital versions through Google Play. Under the agreement, books scanned by Google in the Library Project can now be included by publishers.

Further terms of the agreement are confidential.

This settlement does not affect Google’s current litigation with the Authors Guild or otherwise address the underlying questions in that suit.

The publisher plaintiffs are The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.; Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation.

Private equity firms EQT and GIC Special Investments of Singapore are considering options to either sell or refinance the debt of their German academic book publisher Springer Science & Business Media, banking sources said on Thursday.

EQT and GIC acquired Springer Science & Business Media in 2009 for 2.3 billion euros ($3 billion) from Candover and Cinven, backed by 1.72 billion euros of debt, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data.

They are now in the early stages of considering options on whether to sell the company or conduct a dividend recapitalisation to refinance and distance themselves from the moorcroft debt they’d procured years ago.

EQT declined to comment. GIC was not immediately available for comment.

Bankers have been approaching lenders to Springer to gauge what support there is for either a sale or dividend recapitalisation.

“Bankers are pitching potential structures to lenders to sound out lender appetite,” a banker said.

The company has performed well and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) have risen to around 330 million euros, bankers said, from 310 million in 2011, which was quoted on EQT’s website.

Although there is no urgency for the company to do anything as its debt does not mature until between 2015 and 2017, conditions in Europe’s leveraged loan market are such that it could be good time to do an opportunistic deal.

There have been a number of such deals recently as banks and private equity firms seek to make money and take advantage of stronger market conditions, after a lack of deal activity over the summer, including dividend recapitalisations by the RAC and Formula One.

Springer Science & Business Media is the world’s second- largest publisher of scientific research journals in science, technology and medicine and is the largest publisher of books in the field, according to EQT.

The group has almost 6,200 employees across 25 countries and publishes around 2,000 journals and more than 7,000 books a year, according to the company’s website.

Source: Thomson Reuters 

Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released a “knee-jerk” national press release announcing in panicky fashion their challenge to the notion that historic college textbook legislation unanimously passed by the California State Senate and signed by Governor Jerry Brown could indeed be provided to undergraduates for “free.”

Stating that “there’s no such thing as a “free” textbook,” AAP attacked the 20 Million Minds Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to lowering the cost of textbooks nationally, calling its recently released infographic http://www.20mm.org/infographic-open-source-impact.html  ” voodoo math” based on “trumped-up claims.”

“It’s disappointing that AAP does not grasp what their pricing structures have done to the finances of the average college student. The overpricing of textbooks, combined with unnecessary new editions has produced static, antiquated products that are sold at incredibly premium prices” said Dean Florez, President of the 20 Million Minds Foundation. “We can understand that AAP feels threatened about the impact Governor Brown’s recent signature will have, but our concern is that students have a free option that is state approved and faculty adopted. We believe it’s a positive when privately funded foundations can come together with the state to work on educating our next generation of digital natives.”

The 20 Million Mind Foundation has responded to the AAP press release attacks below:

AAP: “these “free” textbooks will, in fact, cost California taxpayers, including college students, tens of millions of dollars to develop, distribute and maintain”

20MM Response: WRONG. Publisher textbooks are already costing huge amounts of taxpayer dollars and offering a free version online will cost students nothing. Consider that the state of California already spends over $200 million dollars in taxpayer financed Cal Grant B funding (used primarily for textbooks) that pays for overpriced publisher textbooks that far exceed the average inflation rate growth in medical care, housing, food and other consumer items. In fact, according to the CA Legislative Analyst Office, total purchases of college textbooks for fiscal year 2013-14 is expected  to be $1.7 billion alone—AND student’s are taxed on these textbooks –thus $67 million in taxes students are paying alone on top of the costs for these required overpriced textbooks.

AAP: “the initial funding is not going toward the creation of textbooks for “50 … courses” but the development of some unstated lesser number of “strategically selected textbooks”

20MM Response: WRONG. The initial funding for the textbooks under the legislation goes directly toward the creation or purchase of open source textbooks that will be provided to students for free on the web or any internet device. The newly established California Open Education Resources Council, which has nine members drawn from the UC, CSU, and community college systems, will create and oversee the book approval process, including choosing the courses, then solicit bids to produce the textbooks in time for the 2013-2014 school year that will be paid directly out of the $10 million dollars allocated under the legislation. Important note for the publishers, they too can participate if they can make their content “cc-by” available and given the Council can also choose to use existing open source textbooks.

AAP: “no credible report or source supports the inflated, seven-year-old figures for student spending or textbook publishing touted by the infographic”

20 MM Response: WRONG.  The AAP wants you to believe that the stats are old and out dated but many of them are within the past three years and all trending reports indicate that textbook prices are getting more expensive.  It is somewhat insulting that the AAP feels the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Student PIRGS and the College Board are all non-credible sources of information. Instead of presenting a bogus claim that our stats are non-credible and outdated, we challenge the AAP to prove that the trends are changing and textbooks are becoming more affordable.  The truth is they are not becoming more affordable.

The 20 Million Minds Foundation will be releasing a new infographic next week to address point-by-point the flawed statements issued in the AAP’s roadmap attack on the facts presented by 20MM.

Wolters Kluwer Health is pleased to announce an expanded partnership with the University of Adelaide’s Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), a leading international producer of evidence-based practice (EBP) resources and tools. Ovid, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, will be the exclusive channel for JBI’s complete EBP solution on its OvidSP and Nursing@Ovid research platforms, which are used by more than 12,500 institutions globally.

Through the partnership, current JBI members will have dual access to their resources on OvidSP, which offers robust searching and productivity tools, as well as JBI’s COnNECT+ (Clinical Online Network of Evidence for Care and Therapeutics) platform. With the addition of JBI, Ovid’s customers will have access to a comprehensive, aggregated solution of leading EBP resources, supporting improved patient care and clinical outcomes.

“We’re very pleased that our partnership with JBI is expanding to support a single point of access to JBI’s premier EBP solution on OvidSP,” said Andrew Richardson, Vice President Business Development, Wolters Kluwer Health Medical Research. “As more clinicians globally accelerate the adoption of EBP within their institutions, we’re able to support fast, effective access to the most essential resources from JBI, putting the evidence into practice.”

“Wolters Kluwer Health offers JBI the unparalleled global distribution that is critical to our continued growth and success,” said Alan Pearson, Executive Director, The Joanna Briggs Institute and Professor of Evidence Based Healthcare at the University of Adelaide, Australia. “With Ovid as our dedicated sales and support channel, we’re able to combine our strengths and shared mission to provide greater accessibility to EBP resources and increase the opportunity for more clinicians to translate evidence into practice, while allowing JBI’s researchers to focus on the development of evidence-based resources at our 70 collaborating centers around the world.”

JBI’s comprehensive full-text resources organized by clinical specialty include:

· Systematic Reviews – comprehensive reviews of the latest evidence by trained reviewers
· Evidence Summaries – summarize international literature on common healthcare interventions
· Recommended Practices – evidence-based procedures on various clinical topics
· Best Practice Information Sheets – concise information guidelines for practitioners
· Consumer Information Sheets – standardized summaries for patients, relatives, and care providers

JBI’s powerful suite of online tools assists physicians, nurses, researchers, students, and policymakers to adopt EBP methodologies to effectively:

· Search the evidence
· Appraise the evidence
· Implement the evidence (embed the evidence in procedure manuals, patient education, etc.)
· Evaluate outcomes and the impact on practice change

Wolters Kluwer Health and JBI formalized the exclusive partnership in 2010, to collaborate on providing broader access to evidence-based clinical information through its global platforms, beginning with select JBI content on Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) nursingcenter.com. The partnership is now expanding to provide the full suite of JBI resources on OvidSP.