The Intellectual Property (IP) & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, has officially completed the acquisition of MarkMonitor following regulatory clearance in the United States.

MarkMonitor, the market leader in innovative online brand protection technology, strengthens the broad portfolio of intellectual property solutions from Thomson Reuters, resulting in a powerful suite of comprehensive brand protection offerings to assist customers in securing their revenue and reputation. Headquartered in San Francisco and with offices in five countries, MarkMonitor safeguards more than half of the Fortune 100 brands.

“The addition of MarkMonitor to our Intellectual Property & Science portfolio marks a transformational shift for our business,” said Chris Kibarian, president, IP & Science, Thomson Reuters. “Together, MarkMonitor and Thomson Reuters will provide customers with the world’s only end-to-end solution for online brand protection. We will continue to develop market leading innovations, helping clients drive brand revenue and protect their intangible assets.”

“Brand owners encounter a myriad of challenges in today’s online environment, from digital piracy, to counterfeiting through social media, to planning for the launch of more than 1,000 new gTLDs,” said David Brown, president, IP Solutions, Thomson Reuters. “MarkMonitor and Thomson Reuters will continue to invest in advanced technologies that enable customers to manage and scope their online brand risk, keeping one step ahead of brandjackers.”

Flagship offerings of MarkMonitor include MarkMonitor Brand Protection™, for safeguarding brand equity, revenue and reputation from paid search scams, unauthorized channels, counterfeit sales, false association, impersonation, cybersquatting and other threats; MarkMonitor AntiPiracy™, for monitoring, detecting and responding to piracy and related promotional activities; and Domain Management, for proactively seizing domain name opportunities and preventing others from undermining a company’s brand and revenue.

“Brands lost billions of dollars to online abuse last year, as brand saboteurs hijacked search engine marketing, infiltrated social media, stole web traffic and peddled fake goods,” said Irfan Salim, president, MarkMonitor. “MarkMonitor and Thomson Reuters together form the brand protection market leader, providing customers with efficient and effective brand protection solutions that secure their revenue and reputations.”

MarkMonitor
As a global leader in online brand protection, MarkMonitor uses a SaaS delivery model to provide advanced technology and expertise that protects the revenues and reputations of the world’s leading brands. In the digital world, brands face new risks due to the web’s anonymity, global reach and shifting consumption patterns for digital content, goods and services. Customers choose MarkMonitor for its unique combination of industry-leading expertise, advanced technology and extensive industry relationships to preserve their marketing investments, revenues and customer trust. Learn more atwww.markmonitor.com.

As ORCID prepares for the public launch of its Registry in October, we are excited to announce a number of organizations from across the scholarly community preparing to integrate with the ORCID Registry.  Participating in the ORCID Launch Partners Program are research institutions, publishers, research funders, data repositories, and third party providers, including The American Physical Society, Aries Systems, Avedas, Boston University School of Medicine, the California Institute of Technology, CrossRef, Elsevier, Faculty of 1000, figshare, Hindawi, JMIR Publications, KNODE, Nature Publishing Group, SafetyLit, Symplectic, Thomson Reuters, Total-Impact, and the Wellcome Trust. Program participants and other organizations interested in integrating ORCID identifiers are encouraged to register for our integration Webinar series, at http://dev.orcid.org/getting-started.

At Launch, the ORCID Registry will:

·      Allow researchers and scholars to register for an ORCID identifier, create ORCID records, and manage their privacy settings

·      Contain ORCID records created by universities on behalf of their researchers and scholars

·      Allow researchers and scholars to link their ORCID record external identifiers, including  Scopus and ResearcherID

·      Facilitate synchronization of ORCID identifier record data with external systems including Scopus

·      Bi-directionally link to a number of author profile and manuscript submission systems, aiding researchers and scholars in creating ORCID records.  Systems that will have integrated ORCID Identifiers at the time of launch include the American Physical Society, Aries Systems, Hindawi, Nature Publishing Group, and Scholar One Manuscripts

·      Allow researchers and scholars to search and upload publication metadata from CrossRef

·      Soon have the ability to link to grant application systems

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities to these identifiers.  ORCID is launching its public Registry in October, at which time individuals may register for an ORCID identifier.  For more about ORCID, see http://about.orcid.orgor contact the Executive Director at l.haak@orcid.org

In April, leading independent academic and professional publisher SAGE convened a roundtable in association with the British Library into the role of the academic library in an open access (OA) future. Chaired by publishing consultant Simon Inger and attended by an international panel of 14 senior librarians and other industry experts, the conclusions of this discussion have today been published in a report, “Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic libraries”.

The report is a summary of the discussion around what support and skills librarians will require in an OA future, and how institutions, publishers, funders and other parties should be supporting their library partners, including variation by discipline and geographic region. Representing librarians from the UK, Europe, USA and the Middle East, attendees indicated that the concept of the individual library is changing. Panellists highlighted an important shift, recognizing that attention will shift from the library to the librarian: the information professional will be the library of the future. Academic libraries and research communication will have to evolve as open access grows in importance, but while traditional roles may change, librarians will still play an important role in managing and advising on information and information-related budgets.

Key discussions include:

• Addressing the culture of mistrust and misunderstanding regarding OA amongst researchers
• The varying uptake of OA and the subsequent impacts
• The key roles that librarians will play in:
  • Sharing discovery and support services amongst libraries and institutions
  • Managing services such as institutional repositories
  • Providing licensing and related advice to researchers
  • Supporting preservation and managing metadata and recognising the importance of recommender services
  • Explaining open access to researchers.

Open access calls for a greater move towards communication and working together. The report concluded that to remain an important part of the research process in institutions and beyond, the librarian has to be creative and support users in new ways through communication, collaboration and tools.

Stephen Barr, President SAGE International said, “SAGE is committed to supporting the sustainable dissemination of scholarly and educational material. The shift to open access raises issues for the whole scholarly communication process, and we are committed to working with our stakeholders to navigate these changes together. We were delighted to work with the British Library in hosting this workshop to review the potential challenges for academic libraries. Events since the workshop, such as the Finch report and restatement of the position of the EU on access to and preservation of scientific information, have increased the importance of engaging with these changes for many stakeholders. We are part of a changing scholarly landscape and are committed to supporting our publishing partners, including launching new SAGE Open journals and widening the availability of our SAGE Choice programme at a lower rate for the humanities and social sciences.”

Caroline Brazier, Director of Scholarship and Collections, The British Library, said, “The research library community has been awaiting a ‘sea-change’ in the world of scholarly communications […] and it may finally be arriving. Open Access is expected to speed up research progress, productivity, and knowledge transfer as well as promoting the democratisation of knowledge. While research librarians have been amongst the strongest advocates of open access models, the implications of these models for research libraries and their future role in supporting the research process are less well understood. With this in mind, we very much welcomed the opportunity to work with SAGE to host the roundtable at the British Library and to participate in stimulating discussions. We hope this report conveys the urgency and significance of these issues to the wider research community.”

The report, “Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic libraries”, forms part of a suite of research-led resources commissioned by SAGE for the librarian community. Others include: “Working Together: evolving value for academic libraries” and “Improving Discoverability of Content in the Twenty-First Century ”. The full report can be viewed here. For further information about this report and the other white papers for the library community, please visit  SAGE ‘s Library page.

Eleven million eReaders are projected to be shipped globally in 2012. Down from a peak volume in 2011 of 15 million devices, the growing popularity of media tablets along with declining US baby boomer population and lack of organized digital bookstores outside of the US and Western Europe will reduce the eReader opportunity over the next five years.

Regardless of the tremendous historical eReader success, the market tides have already begun to turn, says senior mobile devices analyst Joshua Flood. Despite the average tablet selling for more than $465 as a result of Apples dominant market position, tablets are expected to outsell eReaders 9 to 1 this year. Adds Mr. Flood, Nevertheless, the eReader market will not be totally cannibalized by media tablets. We believe there will always be a niche market for the dedicated reading device for voracious readers, business travelers, and educational segments, particularly ones that are low-priced.

Over the next five years, annual eReader shipments are projected to drop by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1%. In contrast, global media tablet shipments are predicted to increase from approximately 102 million annual device shipments in 2012 to nearly 250 million in 2017.

However, eReaders maintain advantages over media tablets for reading purposes. Electronic paper (ePaper) displays are able to better replicate the print reading experience and are usable in direct sunlight conditions unlike LCD technologies. The eReader battery life of weeks between charging is significantly greater than the media tablet. And of course, eReaders are priced significantly less than entry-level tablets.

The decline of buying audiences for dedicated digital readers in the US is more rapid than the digital publishing ecosystems organizing for growth in Asia or Eastern Europe, says senior practice director Jeff Orr. Development of content digitalization systems and services in all world regions should continue without delay as the effort will be necessary for developing mobile app catalogs that provide easy search, discovery, and monetization.

The report eReaders and the Digital Publishing Market provides further details on the eReader device and digital publishing markets. Tracking eBook Readers since 2007, ABI Researchs Media Tablets Research Service analyzes the technology segments affecting growth and segmentation in the global mobile devices marketplace and includes Research Reports, Market Data, Insights, and Competitive Assessments.

The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced it joined forces with several North American universities to demonstrate the efficiency and impact of their research. The reliable and trusted indicators from Thomson Reuters InCitesTM, a customized, web-based research evaluation tool, will allow them to measure their research output and impact, monitor trends, and benchmark their performance against peers at the individual, departmental and global levels.

The strategic relationship between Thomson Reuters and Harvard University, Emory University and members of Canada’s leading research institutions (known collectively as the “U15”) will support these institutions’ plans to develop new research strategies, retain talent, pinpoint emerging trends and identify new opportunities for collaboration through InCites indicators. The U15 includes Dalhousie University, Université Laval, McGill University, McMaster University, Queen’s University, University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Manitoba, Université de Montréal, University of Ottawa, University of Saskatchewan, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo and University of Western Ontario.

Built on data from Thomson Reuters Web of Science, the customized data sets in InCites provide analytics on authors, journals and fields, as well as connect to the universities’ proprietary research management and profiling systems for full workflow integration.

“The partnership with Thomson Reuters enables the U15 to greatly improve our ability to assess and compare our research performance amongst the world’s top universities,” said Martin Kirk, Ph.D., director of the office of research services at the University of British Columbia.

InCites is a customized, web-based evaluation tool that enables universities to analyze their research productivity and compare their output with that of their peers. The solution provides normalized metrics for repeatable analysis of outcomes, cross-regional impacts, discipline comparisons and standardized, accurate reviews for promotion and tenure processes. InCites can also serve as a support solution in ongoing quality assurance activities.

“North American universities are increasingly recognizing the growing need to assess their performance by demonstrating and promoting the impact of their research,” said Keith MacGregor, executive vice president of Thomson Reuters. “InCites assists universities with these challenges by providing tools and data that allow them to benchmark achievements and support strategic decisions by identifying key successes within their organization.”

InCites is one of a number of solutions in the Research Analytics suite of solutions provided by Thomson Reuters, offering comparative benchmarks to support research management and evaluation. Research Analytics solutions also include enterprise-wide profiling capabilities, consulting services, custom studies, reports, and management systems that enable the world’s leading research institutions, governments, publishers and universities to connect research with impact.

For more information, visit http://researchanalytics.thomsonreuters.com/incites/.