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Springer begins worldwide migration of customers to new SpringerLink

Today Springer will begin migrating its global library customers to its new and improved version of its platform, SpringerLink. The platform was re-engineered with a focus on improving the user experience based on three principles: speed, simplicity and optimization.

After more than 18 months of development, SpringerLink (link.springer.com) as received a total makeover that will change the way Springer brings its content to students, researchers and librarians. After extensive consultations with customers and stakeholders, the platform promises to set a new standard in the industry. While its back end construction and clean design are dramatically improved, the way content is found and used is the real headline.

Page load times are two times faster globally, and three times faster in core markets. Working alongside this much-improved speed are a number of new, powerful utilities that help make searching for content far easier and more efficient.

Intuitive navigation, a unique “look inside” feature for every one of the 5.9 million documents, and suggested search terms help users to get what they want far quicker and more precisely than SpringerLink’s previous iteration. An integrated dashboard with usage statistics and institution-specific data gives librarians quick and useful insights into their own organizations, and the site includes one long-requested improvement: the ability to filter search results to include only accessible content. Finally, device-agnostic, responsive design allows for an optimized experience anywhere, at any time, on any sized screen.

“The new SpringerLink represents the latest step in Springer’s continuing investment in, and commitment to, helping our customers better access and use the research we publish,” commented Brian Bishop, Vice President of Platform Development for Springer. “The design, speed and device optimization will help those who engage with our content find and use information better than ever before. We are certain of this because we enlisted these customers to help us build the platform from the ground up.”

To date, customers in New Zealand and South Korea have been migrated to the new SpringerLink, with the rest of Oceania and India beginning today. It is expected that the migration of all global customers will be complete by the end of December 2012.

Elsevier and ISTIC Establish ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, and Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), today announced the establishment and opening of the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center.

Based in Beijing, the mission of the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center is to enhance China’s opportunities in bibliometric research. The research center will focus on identifying research topics of interest to both Elsevier and ISTIC, such as article level bibliometric analyses for measuring journal quality and research performance of individuals and institutions.

Dr. Defang He, Director-General of ISTIC, said, “In order to further promote the process of globalization, the cooperation between the development, dissemination and use of scientific and technological information is very important. With Elsevier’s full text resource, extensive databases and technical know-how, our research program and students will benefit from an expanded breadth of knowledge and resources.”

In following their mission, the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center will use Elsevier’s SciVal Spotlight, a web-based tool that enables countries and institutions to evaluate their research performance, measure their strengths against peers and establish and execute research strategies based on objective information, and Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. These Elsevier tools will help extract and integrate insights about China’s research performance and advance journal assessment research and article-based analytics. In addition, Scopus data will be included in the ISTIC annual university research performance report.

“Working with ISTIC and having Scopus data in the ISTIC annual university research performance report is a significant recognition of the value of SciVal Spotlight and Scopus to the scientific community in China,” said Elsevier’s senior scientific advisor, Professor Henk Moed, appointed to represent Elsevier as Co-director of the research center. “The establishment of this center represents a key development in Elsevier’s mission to establish global data metric standards for scientific research, and recognition of China’s growth and increasing influence in academic research.”

In addition to the ISTIC-Elsevier Journal Assessment Research Center, Elsevier and ISTIC will also establish an Expert Content Selection and Advisory Committee of China (ECSAC-China). The ECSAC-China board members will work closely with Elsevier to evaluate and select Chinese Journals to be submitted for evaluation by the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB), the independent group that approves titles for Scopus indexing.

“We believe that the formation of ECSAC-China will play a crucial role in helping to establish processes and programs that will raise the standards and international visibility of Chinese journals,” said Olivier Dumon, Managing Director A&G Research Markets at Elsevier. “Our collaboration with ISTIC and the creation of ECSAC-China serve to further our mission of supporting the global research community.”

Cengage Learning Appoints Julian Drinkall as President of Europe, Middle East, Africa and India Regions

Cengage Learning, a leading educational content, software and services company, today announces the appointment of Julian Drinkall to President and CEO, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and India, effective September 27, 2012. In this key role, Mr. Drinkall will focus on driving growth across the EMEA and India business building new opportunities with international partners and customers and strengthening core existing relationships. He replaces Jill Jones who stepped down in July this year.  

Mr. Drinkall joins Cengage Learning most recently from OC&C Strategy Consultants, where he helped build their media business, including key educational projects with the BBC and Cambridge University Press. Previously, he served as CEO of Macmillan Education when the unit was newly created and focused on strategy to address the trends of globalisation and digital. He built a new organisational structure and strengthened the performance and capabilities of the international education and English Language Teaching businesses. Before becoming CEO, he held the position of COO at the group level for Macmillan Publishers Limited. Mr. Drinkall’s earlier background includes key business development and merger, acquisition, and integration roles at Boots Group, IPC Media (Time Warner), BBC, Arthur D. Little, and Island International.

“We are excited to welcome Julian to our team. He has a range of experience in operations, strategy and corporate finance, as well as a deep understanding of digital media and education businesses, including managing transition,” said Manuel Guzman, Executive Vice President, Learning & Research Solutions and International, Cengage Learning. “In addition, his background working with international teams in education and English Language Teaching makes him an ideal candidate to lead our business in these regions.”

Julian Drinkall said, ‘I am delighted to be taking on this role at Cengage Learning of President and CEO for EMEA and India. Cengage Learning has talented teams around the world and an exceptional portfolio of leading-edge modern products and solutions for higher education, libraries and learning institutions. International education markets are growing in sophistication. Combined with the possibilities of new technologies, this context makes for exciting opportunities to bring about greater innovation and better outcomes across the entire education sector’.

Mr. Drinkall graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration focused on entrepreneurial management and finance and a Master’s in Public Administration, both from Harvard University.

The University of Birmingham in the UK Goes Live with Ex Libris Primo and Begins Implementation of Aleph

Ex Libris® Group, a global leader in library automation solutions, is pleased to announce that the University of Birmingham libraries have extended their suite of Ex Libris solutions with the selection of the Primo® discovery and delivery solution—now live for faculty and students—and the Aleph® integrated library system (ILS).

The selection of Primo and Aleph was driven by the Library Division’s desire to offer users a robust discovery experience supported by a strong ILS that would be capable of managing the libraries’ extensive collections. The university chose a cloud-based deployment for both solutions to reduce the technical burden on library staff members, thereby giving them more time to support users’ research and learning activities.

Furthering the university’s strategic objectives, Primo—and particularly its ranking of search results according to users’ academic level and discipline—substantially increases the visibility of the libraries’ diverse collections. Having witnessed the positive impact of Primo implementations on resource usage at other UK institutions, Birmingham is looking forward to a greater use of electronic resources and a higher return on the libraries’ investment.

“We are very excited about the successful implementation of Primo and welcome the consolidation of our relationship with Ex Libris,” remarked Diane Job, director of the Library Services division. “The new services will provide numerous benefits to the University of Birmingham, including greater exposure of our extensive collections, improved user experience, greater back-office efficiency, and analytics to measure the true value of the libraries’ collections. Further, all of these services will be delivered through the cloud, a technology that is an important innovation for the university.

Christoph Frech, regional sales director of Ex Libris Europe, commented: “This is an important milestone for the University of Birmingham. Birmingham joins hundreds of institutions worldwide that are providing integrated services from the Ex Libris cloud data centers in Chicago and Amsterdam. We are delighted to be extending our collaboration with this leading research institution.”

Springer to convert two journals in high energy physics to open access

The SCOAP3 consortium (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), which aims to convert journals in high energy physics to open access, has chosen two Springer journals to participate in the initiative. They are the Journal of High Energy Physics, published for the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA – Trieste, Italy), and the European Physical Journal C, published with Società Italiana di Fisica. The selection is the result of an open and transparent tender process run by CERN for the benefit of SCOAP3, in which journal quality, price and publishing services were taken into account.

“Springer has shown interest in SCOAP3 from the very beginning and is committed to the project as an important and pioneering initiative,” said Christian Caron, Executive Editor Physics at Springer. “In preparation for SCOAP3, not only have we been providing open access to all experimental papers and letters in the European Physical Journal C since 2007, we have also significantly increased the proportion of open access content in the Journal of High Energy Physics since taking it over in 2010. We are now looking forward to the next steps.”

“These journals published by Springer, together with SISSA and the Società Italiana di Fisica, have a long tradition in both open access and service to the physics community, and SCOAP3 is pleased that they will be part of this initiative. We look forward to working with Springer and its partners,” said Salvatore Mele, SCOAP3 Project Manager at CERN.

Springer is committed to close cooperation with CERN and the global library community to ensure the launch of SCOAP3 in 2014 (www.scoap3.org). Under SCOAP3, both journals will be converted to fully open access journals with a Creative Commons Attribution license. The costs will be centrally covered by the SCOAP3 consortium through a process of reduction and re-direction of subscription fees.

WK Health announces enhancements to Sentri7

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, announced today several new enhancements have been added to Sentri7®, a web-based, enterprise-wide electronic surveillance application that helps hospital staff identify at-risk patients.

The Sentri7 Pharmacy Module now features integration with Lexicomp drug information to improve patient outcomes at the point-of-care. Lexicomp’s concise and in-depth clinical content allows pharmacists, physicians and nurses to find answers quickly while making safer medical decisions.

The Sentri7 Infection Prevention Module now automates and streamlines data collection for communicable disease surveillance, with immediate report results to identify trends and outbreaks. Infection preventionists can also annotate reports to communicate infection information to policy-making committees within the hospital. Additionally, Sentri7 now has enhanced functionalities for infection documentation, including additional fields on the surgical-site infection form and pre-filling procedure information to save time in reporting to the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN).

Sentri7 by Pharmacy OneSource combines medication, laboratory, patient, radiology and surgery data to facilitate earlier, better, and more consistent interventions. Accelerating workflows can lead to shorter lengths of stay, lower costs, improved patient safety and reduced antibiotic resistance.

More information about Sentri7 can be found at www.sentri7.com.

Elsevier Launches New Open Access Journal – NeuroImage: Clinical

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announces the launch of NeuroImage: Clinical, a new open access journal, and sister journal to NeuroImage.

NeuroImage: Clinical provides a vehicle for communicating important advances in the study of abnormal structure-function relationships of the human nervous system based on imaging. It offers authors the choice of two Creative Commons licenses, either Creative Commons By Attribution or Creative Commons by Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.

Paul Fletcher, MD, Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, UK, and co-Editor-in-Chief said of the journal launch, “With the growing importance of clinical neuroimaging, we hope that the new journal can serve the field by publishing innovative, high quality studies, reviews and opinions – work that may ultimately prove valuable in informing and improving clinical practice.”

Scott Grafton, MD, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Imaging Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also co-Editor-in-Chief added, “NeuroImage: Clinical provides an unprecedented opportunity to publish novel insights into the pathophysiology of nervous system disease based on cutting-edge methods of imaging and analysis.”

Michael Osuch, Executive Publisher at Elsevier said, “In recent years, advances in the field of neuroimaging have enabled more robust clinical research studies to be undertaken, and opened up the potential for translating these applications into having a direct impact in both diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases. This new launch will provide the community with a high quality journal in which to publish these advances.”

For more information or to submit an article, go to NeuroImage: Clinical. First articles to be published in the journal are now available online through ScienceDirect.

Italian public library records added to WorldCat

OCLC has added the records of a group of more than 100 public libraries in the province of Trento, Italy, to WorldCat. This addition significantly increases the number of Italian language records in the world’s largest database of items held in libraries. With their records in WorldCat, these Italian libraries’ collections are more visible and accessible to people around the world interested in Italian literature, history and culture.

The 136 public libraries and branches in the province of Trento together use the Catalogo Bibliografico Trentino (CBT), their regional union catalog. The CBT holds 1.6 million records, about 1 million of which are Italian-language records, representing 3.6 million holdings. CBT has contributed 1.2 million unique records to WorldCat, and will continue to add records as the catalog is updated regularly.

It was the libraries’ desire to increase visibility of their collections on the Internet, for those who start their search for information often begin through websites like Yahoo! and Google. OCLC partnerships with those and other search providers make it possible for search results to include library materials from WorldCat, the world’s largest bibliographic database. From those results, online searchers can find what they need online or at a library close to them.

“We are very pleased with our presence in WorldCat,” said Franco Panizza, Assessor for the Culture of the Province of Trento, which coordinates the CBT. “The richness of our collections should not remain available only to our own users. Now anyone in the world can find our collections and enjoy what we have to offer. This is not only to the benefit of the user, but also of the library, which will see its collections and services used much more broadly.”

Contributing records to WorldCat also means that the libraries become members of the OCLC cooperative. As members, they can participate in OCLC’s governance and have access to valuable OCLC research, which can help them plan for the future. Also, with their records in WorldCat, libraries can easily utilize other OCLC services in the future, from integrated discovery with WorldCat Local to cloud services via the OCLC WorldShare Platform.

“As a library service provider, OCLC is quite unique with regards to its cooperative structure,” said Gabriele Lunati, managing director of Ifnet Srl, OCLC’s distributor in Italy. “Thanks to the collaboration among the members, libraries can save money and other resources. And as part of the global network that OCLC offers them, they can enhance their local relevance and better serve their patrons.”

Pearson launches Early Edition eBook service

Readers everywhere now have the opportunity to get early access to important, time-sensitive topics and technologies before the official publication. Available exclusively through Pearson, Early Edition multi-format eBooks (PDF, ePUB, and MOBI) have been through preliminary stages of editing and technical review, but content and presentation are not yet final. By purchasing an Early Edition, customers automatically will receive an updated, official edition of the multi-format eBook when it is available.

These Early Edition titles share a focus on hot emerging technologies. The first set includes: The Core iOS 6 Developer’s Cookbook by Erica Sadun, Learning Objective-C 2.0 by Robert Clair, and Programming in Objective-C, 5th Edition by Stephen Kochan. An Early Edition title typically becomes available 60-90 days prior to a book’s publication. For more information about the Early Edition iOS 6 titles, please visit informit.com/ios6.

“Developers can’t wait for the right answers, especially from amazing teachers and trainers like Erica Sadun, Stephen Kochan, and Robert Clair,” said Paul Boger, Publisher of Pearson Technology Group. “We want our customers to gain expertise as soon as the experts do. With Early Editions, they can.”

New Draft Document From PLOS, SPARC, and ARL Ask, “How Open is It?”

From a PLOS Blog Post:

Not all Open Access is created equal. To move beyond the seemingly simple question of Is it Open Access?” PLOS, SPARC and OASPA have collaborated to develop a resource called HowOpenIsIt?” This resource identifies the core components of open access (OA) and how they are implemented across the spectrum between “Open Access” and “Closed Access”. We recognize there are philosophical disagreements regarding OA and this resource will not resolve those differences.

We are seeking input on the accuracy and completeness of how OA is defined in this guide. Download the open review draft and provide feedback via the comment form on the SPARC site.

The goals of the guide are to:
+ Move the conversation from “Is It Open Access?” to “How Open Is It?”
+ Clarify the definition of OA
+ Standardize terminology
+ Illustrate a continuum of “more open” versus “less open”
+ Enable people to compare and contrast publications and policies
+ Broaden the understanding of OA to a wider audience

Newspaper sales suffer due to lack of stimulating content

Since the newspaper industry started to experience a major decrease in readership in recent years, many people have deemed the internet and other forms of new media as the culprits. However, a recent study published in the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, a SAGE Journal, finds that sales are down because readers need more engaging and stimulating content.

Study authors Rachel Davis Mersey, Edward C. Malthouse, and Bobby J. Calder suggested that it is crucial for journalists and practitioners to focus their efforts on creating stimulating content in order to “curb the tide” of newspaper abandonment. In order to test their hypothesis, they selected 52 newspapers nationwide, and issued a series of surveys to their readers to find out exactly what they wanted.

The study authors discovered that readers are looking for more engaging content and offered a few suggestions that could help newspaper organizations provide more variety.

Mersey, Malthouse, and Calder suggested that newspaper journalists could include “a question of the day around a major, local, or even barely known but interesting news story that runs on the front page and is designed to encour­age conversation among readers and between readers and the newsroom.”

Find out more tips by reading the complete study, “Focusing on the Reader: Engagement Trumps Satisfaction” in the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. This article is available free for a limited time at: http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/29/1077699012455391.full.pdf+html

Elsevier Collaborates with edX, Not-for-Profit Venture Offering Interactive Study Via the Web

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced its plan to provide free content through edX, the online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched in May.

Students who enroll in edX’s course 6.002X: Circuits and Electronics will have free access to an online version of the course textbook, Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits, written by Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey Lang and published under Elsevier’s Morgan Kaufmann imprint.

“We’re honored to collaborate with edX,” said Suzanne BeDell, Managing Director, Science and Technology Books, Elsevier. “With this new course, hundreds of thousands of students around the world will have had free access to the cutting-edge content contained in Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.”

The free version of the textbook was also available in the spring offering of MIT’s 6.002x, before the creation of edX.

“Innovative alliances, such as this one with Elsevier Science & Technology Books, are at the core of the edX mission to improve access to higher education for students worldwide,” said Anant Agarwal, co-author of Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits and President of edX. “edX is committed to providing our students with content published under the most rigorous standards. We are very grateful for Elsevier’s commitment to helping edX learners throughout the world.”

Through edX, the “X Universities” – which now includes UC Berkeley in addition to founding institutions Harvard and MIT – will provide interactive education wherever there is access to the Internet and will enhance teaching and learning through research about how students learn, and how technologies can facilitate effective teaching both on-campus and online. edX plans to add other “X Universities” from around the world to the edX platform in the coming months.

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