IEEE, other standards organisations endorse OpenStand’ principles

September 3, 2012

IEEE, IAB, IETF, Internet Society and W3C Invite Other Standards Organizations, Governments and Companies to Support Modern Paradigm for Global, Open Standards

Shuang Yu, for IEEE Standards Association
+1 732 981 3424; shuang.yu@ieee.org

Marilyn Siderwicz, for W3C
+1 617 258 5263; msiderwicz@w3.org

Wende Cover, for IAB, IETF and Internet Society
+1 703 439 2773; cover@isoc.org

PISCATAWAY, N.J., and WASHINGTON, D.C., United States; GENEVA, Switzerland, and http://www.w3.org/, 29 August 2012 – Five leading global organizations—IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—today announced that they have signed a statement affirming the importance of a jointly developed set of principles establishing a modern paradigm for global, open standards. The shared “OpenStand” principles—based on the effective and efficient standardization processes that have made the Internet and Web the premiere platforms for innovation and borderless commerce—are proven in their ability to foster competition and cooperation, support innovation and interoperability and drive market success.

IEEE, IAB, IETF, Internet Society and W3C invite other standards organizations, governments, corporations and technology innovators globally to endorse the principles, which are available at the OpenStand Web site.

The OpenStand principles strive to encapsulate that successful standardization model and make it extendable across the contemporary, global economy’s gamut of technology spaces and markets. The principles comprise a modern paradigm in which the economics of global markets—fueled by technological innovation—drive global deployment of standards, regardless of their formal status within traditional bodies of national representation. The OpenStand principles demand:

cooperation among standards organizations;
adherence to due process, broad consensus, transparency, balance and openness in standards development;
commitment to technical merit, interoperability, competition, innovation and benefit to humanity;
availability of standards to all, and
voluntary adoption.
“New dynamics and pressures on global industry have driven changes in the ways that standards are developed and adopted around the world,” said Steve Mills, president of the IEEE Standards Association. “Increasing globalization of markets, the rapid advancement of technology and intensifying time-to-market demands have forced industry to seek more efficient ways to define the global standards that help expand global markets. The OpenStand principles foster the more efficient international standardization paradigm that the world needs.”

Added Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer with the Internet Society: “International standards development for borderless economics is not ad hoc; rather, it has a paradigm—one that has demonstrated agility and is driven by technical merit. The OpenStand principles convey the power of bottom-up collaboration in harnessing global creativity and expertise to the standards of any technology space that will underpin the modern economy moving forward.”

Standards developed and adopted via the OpenStand principles include IEEE standards for the Internet’s physical connectivity, IETF standards for end-to-end global Internet interoperability and the W3C standards for the World Wide Web.

“The Internet and World Wide Web have fueled an economic and social transformation, touching billions of lives. Efficient standardization of so many technologies has been key to the success of the global Internet,” said Russ Housley, IETF chair. “These global standards were developed with a focus toward technical excellence and deployed through collaboration of many participants from all around the world. The results have literally changed the world, surpassing anything that has ever been achieved through any other standards-development model.”

Globally adopted design-automation standards, which have paved the way for a giant leap forward in industry’s ability to define complex electronic solutions, provide another example of standards developed in the spirit of the OpenStand principles. Another technology space that figures to demand such standards over the next decades is the global smart-grid effort, which seeks to augment regional facilities for electricity generation, distribution, delivery and consumption with a two-way, end-to-end network for communications and control.

“Think about all that the Internet and Web have enabled over the past 30 years, completely transforming society, government and commerce,” said W3C chief executive officer Jeff Jaffe. “It is remarkable that a small number of organizations following a small number of principles have had such a huge impact on humanity, innovation and competition in global markets.”

Bernard Aboba, chair of the IAB: “The Internet has been built on specifications adopted voluntarily across the globe. By valuing running code, interoperability and deployment above formal status, the Internet has democratized the development of standards, enabling specifications originally developed outside of standards organizations to gain recognition based on their technical merit and adoption, contributing to the creation of global communities benefiting humanity. We now invite standards organizations, as well as governments, companies and individuals to join us at the OpenStand Web site in order to affirm the principles that have nurtured the Internet and underpin many other important standards—and will continue to do so.”

Elsevier’s Gold Standard module to help Rite Aid pharmacies track legislation changes

September 3, 2012

Elsevier’s Gold Standard, a leading drug information provider, announced today that Rite Aid Corporation, one of the nation’s leading drug store chains, has selected the Gold Standard Drug Database State and Federal module to monitor legislative updates made to prescription medications.

The integration of the Gold Standard Drug Database State and Federal module allows Rite Aid to streamline and automate the process of tracking changing state and federal regulations for Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and legend status, as well as medication-related guidelines. This integration allows Rite Aid to effectively communicate such modifications to its more than 4,700 pharmacies in 31 states and the District of Columbia.

“The Gold Standard Drug Database State and Federal file will enhance our monitoring capabilities of vital prescription drug legislations,” said Rite Aid Vice President of Pharmacy Operations Scott Jacobson, R.Ph. “Integration of the database will improve our ability to quickly address those changes across our vast network of pharmacies.”

The Gold Standard Drug Database State and Federal module offers a comprehensive, automated means of communicating critical legislative changes. The module provides up-to-date, accurate data that is easily accessible to clinicians who need to make informed decisions that abide by frequently changing state and federal requirements.

The Gold Standard Drug Database State and Federal module includes:

Guidance for State and Federal Controlled Substance Regulations: Gold Standard Drug Database is the first and only database to offer a State and Federal Controlled Substance Drug Schedule; the module supplies data for states whose controlled substances classification and legend status are more restrictive than federal requirements.
Guidance for FDA Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) Requirements: The FDA has significantly increased the number of drug products that must be dispensed with a MedGuide, now encompassing millions of prescriptions. The database provides the solution to managing MedGuides, including indicator flags, and complete content for all publicly available MedGuides and instances where patient package inserts (PPIs) are recommended or required by the FDA.
Black Box Warning Identifier: The module identifies drug products where the product labeling includes a “black box” warning, including the codified reason for the warning. Clinicians are also able to confirm post-market drug safety information via Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) data, including REMS indicators with codified descriptions unique to Gold Standard Drug Database.

“Our innovative clinical decision support solutions enable us to incorporate emerging industry policies and standards more rapidly and effectively than other drug information providers,” said Elsevier’s Gold Standard President Marianne Messer. “We look forward to providing Rite Aid with the critical information needed to help speed-up and streamline their daily processes.”

For more information about Gold Standard, please visit www.goldstandard.com.

MetaPress Appoints Business Development Director for Europe

September 3, 2012

MetaPress®, an industry-leading hosting service for scientific, technical, and medical content, announces that it has retained Mark Carden to act as director of sales, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Carden is a technology and education consultant with more than 15 years experience in business development for scholarly content, software and service providers. Carden will continue as principal consultant at Naughton Consulting Ltd. “I am delighted to be undertaking this assignment with MetaPress,” said Carden, “with the focus on growing awareness and customer base for MetaPess across the EMEA region.”
“MetaPress is recognized, worldwide, for great products and services,” said MetaPress General Manager Mark Williams, “but we want to further increase our visibility and engagement with scholarly publishers based in EMEA, and in particular to grow the awareness of our recent improvements in reliability, scalability and functionality. We are very pleased to be able to retain the services of a local expert to bring that message to the region.”

Australian government renews national licence to access Cochrane Library

September 3, 2012

Empowering Australian patients through access to better health decisions
Australian patients and their health care practitioners will benefit from ongoing access to The Cochrane Library, an online resource published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., on behalf of The Cochrane Collaboration, that features over 5000 published systematic reviews of evidence for health care interventions; ranging from surgical procedures and drugs to behavioural therapies and preventive care. Cochrane reviews provide independent high-quality evidence to aid in health care decision making.

The Australian Government, through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), has renewed funding for Australia’s national licence to the Library. This means every Australian will continue to be able to access reliable information about what works and what does not.

Australians are the highest per capita users of the Library in the world. In 2011 Australians viewed 708,000 Cochrane abstracts online and downloaded 501,642 full reviews. The three most popular reviews in Australia were models of care for childbearing women, preventing falls in older people living in the community, and zinc for the common cold. The most popular review internationally looked at interventions for preventing obesity in children.

NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson said that NHMRC is committed to a health literate society where all Australians benefit from access to the latest health and medical research.

“Access to high quality research evidence is being increased through support of The Cochrane Library and NHMRC’s open access policy on the research it funds. Ongoing promotion of research findings will ensure translation into clinical practice.”

Ongoing support for The Cochrane Library is recognition of the vital role systematic reviews play in informing policy and practice.

“Continuing to provide access to the Library will ensure Australia remains a significant contributor to the Cochrane Collaboration, and the leading user of the best available research evidence,” Professor Anderson said.

The renewal of The Cochrane Library licence marks the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the original licence at the Cochrane Colloquium held in Melbourne in 2002.

Wolters Kluwer helps advertisers adopt ad content for iPad app journal editions

September 3, 2012

As more healthcare professionals use mobile devices to access medical information, Wolters Kluwer Health is leading the industry’s digital transformation of medical journals with a strategy focused on helping its advertising partners leverage multimedia content to increase audience reach and engagement, and deliver return on investment.

According to Manhattan Research’s recent Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2012 study, physician tablet adoption for professional purposes almost doubled since 2011, reaching 62 percent in 2012, with the iPad being the dominant platform. Moreover, four in ten physicians use a tablet between patient consultations, with online journals being the top source accessed on tablets during this time (Source: Manhattan Research, Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2012).

“The medical journal market is undergoing an exciting transformation with new digital channels that offer compelling value for our readers, authors and advertisers,” said Karen Abramson, President and CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health Medical Research. “And with iPad adoption among physicians growing at such a fast rate, we saw a market opportunity to help our ad partners innovate their marketing strategies with digital content shifting the focus to audience reach across all publishing channels used by target audiences. We’re at the forefront creating value for our partners,” she concluded.

With the highly successful, early market release of its Lippincott William & Wilkins (LWW) medical and nursing journal iPad app editions, the team is creating value for its advertisers with a strategy that helps them get into the ‘digital game’ quickly, test out and develop new multimedia content, while maintaining their audience reach in the print/online journal. For pharma and device marketers, video and other rich media ads allow them to visually illustrate products and studies, engaging readers to create a stronger brand experience overall. To date 50 advertisers, including five of the top 20 pharma and six of the top 20 device companies are leveraging LWW’s digital journal solution.

“With the use of video and interactive tools, we’re able to bring our product to life through actual demonstrations and that’s a powerful new way to connect with our target audience. Because of this innovative use of interactive technology, we’re very enthusiastic about how to maximize customer experiences with the use of multimedia channels to better engage with practitioners, and early indicators show this proving out,” said Walter Son from LifeCell Corporation, one of the early advertisers in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery’s iPad app edition.

Digital content strategies also provide a more transparent view into reader behaviors that translates into greater return on investment for advertisers. Preliminary data from LWW journal apps across six specialties showed an iPad reader interacting with an ad on average between 10 – 40 seconds, while page views for digital increased between 30%-70%.

LWW was one of the first medical publishers to deliver an iPad app journal edition with the release of Neurology journal app edition in May 2011. Since then, LWW has delivered iPad app editions for more than 50 journals, with ongoing new app releases across its full journal portfolio.

EBSCO Publishing unveils new portal for organisational learning

September 3, 2012

EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has released Leadership & Management Learning Center™ , a turnkey solution that provides highly relevant content from thought leaders on best practices and benchmarks to support and sustain formal and informal learning.

Leadership & Management Learning Center comes pre-populated with targeted content including summaries of top business books, articles from leading business magazines and journals, e-books, and videos. The content is organized into 82 key business competencies enabling users to browse relevant content by topic. Custom mapping to specific competencies is also available from EBSCO for organizations using their own competency model.

Leadership & Management Learning Center offers organizations an easy-to-use, customizable learning portal — a “plug & play” solution that includes tools to facilitate social collaboration as well as comprehension tests to reinforce key learnings, in addition to the content collection. It can also include links to an organizations’ existing learning content or 3rd party content. Leadership & Management Learning Center can be accessed through multiple means including a dedicated portal, Sharepoint or a Learning Management System (LMS).

EBSCO Publishing’s Vice President of Product Management, Tad Goltra, says EBSCO is leveraging its expertise as one of the world’s leading aggregators of premium content to create a unique solution for organizations looking to extend their formal and informal learning programs. “No other company can provide the same breadth of best-in-class learning content, mapped to competencies, all from within a browsable portal that facilitates self-directed learning as well as collaboration.” Leadership & Management Learning Center is designed for companies of all sizes and enables organizations to offer a cloud-based solution that helps employees achieve and sustain their learning objectives.

EBSCO provides a full suite of learning resources — critical content and tools to support key organizational learning needs. More information is available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/learning-resources.

SPIE Digital Library Launches With Silverchair

August 29, 2012

SPIE today announced the relaunch of the SPIE Digital library, the largest repository of optics and photonics content, in one semantically integrated collection on Silverchair’s SCM6 platform.

“Our goal in developing the new SPIE Digital Library was to better integrate all of our content,” said Eric Pepper, SPIE Director of Publications. “We selected Silverchair because the SCM6 platform provides a semantic foundation, forging connections across SPIE proceedings, journals, and eBooks and presenting a unified user experience. Our new site has been designed to enable SPIE to develop and deliver new content types and formats and to improve information discovery for researchers, educators, and students.”

Features of the new SPIE Digital Library include:

· More content – With the addition of 27 years of archival content (published between 1962 and 1989), the SPIE Digital Library now features over 375,000 proceedings papers, journal articles, and eBooks chapters.

· Optics and Photonics Taxonomy – Supports content recommendations, semantic search, and dynamic topic collections.

· Semantic Collections – Integrating content from proceedings, journals and eBooks, the SPIE Digital library now offers 120+ specific subject collections.

· Content in Context – Surfaces highly relevant articles and other resources from across all the publications in the SPIE Digital Library.

· Integrated SPIE Author Profiles – Provides users with an overview of the publication record, society activities, and accomplishments of authors.

· Conference Videos – Users can view selected conference presentations directly within the proceedings article page, providing enhanced understanding of the content directly from the author.

· Personalization – Users can manage email alerts, save figures and tables, view a summary of subscriptions and article privileges, and activate remote access to their institution’s subscription.

· Single Log-in Credentials for All SPIE Websites – One username and password provides access to SPIE Digital Library and all other SPIE websites.

“The new SPIE Digital Library sets a new standard in the physical sciences,” said Thane Kerner, Silverchair CEO. “Working with SPIE, Silverchair has extended our semantic coverage across the optical sciences. The result is an unparalleled user experience that leverages the semantic fingerprinting of the SCM6 platform to provide content integration through topic collections, unified search results, and highly relevant recommendations.”

To view the redesigned site and new features firsthand, visit http://spiedigitallibrary.org/.

Online Academic Material Has Costs Too – Students often don’t expect to pay for online educational resources!

August 29, 2012

Students often don’t expect to pay for online educational resources – and this could be a long-term threat to innovation in digital publishing

The students in the group were smart. They were well dressed and educated, all had laptops, several had expensive smartphones, and yet none of them really expected to pay much, if anything at all, for textbooks or academic materials.

I met the students a few weeks ago as part of a focus group looking at digital textbooks. The topic strayed – as it increasingly does – into a debate surrounding the cost of materials.

“I’ve never paid for anything educational online,” explained one student, “even though the journals want me to pay.”

“Abstracts are all you need,” added another, indicating the trend to skim the publicly available abstracts. “I often find I’m on a lot of US library websites, where they’ve already paid for the journal. Then I’ll go on their site and read it.”

Increasingly, I see this belief: online materials should be free, particularly when those materials are educational. A recent study by Bowker Market Research indicated that 48% of UK students using ebooks were likely to acquire them free, accessing them through their library or via filesharing.

Of those students who admitted to illegally downloading books, 22% believe some book content should be free. The message, as the students in the focus group said, is clear: online should be ‘off-cost’.

As someone working in digital education, I’m concerned that ‘e means free’ is a long-term threat to innovation. It could even act against the best interests of students. Consider open access (OA), which owing to the UK government’s recent approval of a report recommending shifting costs to authors and away from readers, is of particular timely relevance.

“The debate is polarised at the moment so that those who advocate open access equate ‘free’ solely with costless,” said Dr Martin Coward, senior lecturer in international politics at Newcastle University. Open Access refers to free at the point of use; this doesn’t mean there aren’t significant costs involved.

One cost might be associated with publishers, who add value through peer-review and authenticating research. Publishers also work with authors to make content more readable, filtering out the best work and putting information in context. All of this is meant to make information more accessible – online or off.

This isn’t to say that things aren’t changing. The world of online is full of opportunities for growth and development. I find this growth fascinating. Digital brings enormous potential to education, improving both the effectiveness and the reach of the learning experience. Look at Macmillan’s New Ventures – this is a programme that draws together education tech start-ups, providing financial assistance and the backing of a large name. Encouraging development, New Ventures has created things such as PrepU, an adaptive assessment tool that helps students practise digitally for exams.

To continue reading the Guardian report by Fionnuala Duggan please click here

Campus eBookstore selects Ingram’s Vital Source to enhance its e-textbook offering

August 28, 2012

As more students and educators worldwide adopt digital course materials, Ingram Content Group Inc. today announced that Campus eBookstore, Inc. has selected its VitalSource Bookshelf® platform to enhance and expand its e-textbook offering to institutional and retail bookstore customers.

“Working with Vital Source, we have access to thousands of e-textbooks from the world’s leading publishers, and, the technology to help us deliver content in the formats of choice to the leading devices in the market today including Mac®, Windows®, iPad®, and Android®,” said Chris Tabor, President, Campus eBookstore, Inc. “As institutions integrate more digital components and learning tools into curriculums, working with a proven industry leader like Vital Source gives us tools to grow our platform and give our customers the newest and most relevant e-textbooks in demand today.”

The creation of an e-book-distribution platform at college stores is typically an expensive and complex proposition. Campus eBookstore, Inc. (CEI), a development project owned and operated in Canada and the USA by the Canadian Campus Retail Associates Inc. (CCRA), and the Independent College Bookstore Association Inc. (ICBA), was developed to provide affordable alternatives and complements to traditional course materials. Through its work with Vital Source, CEI will provide a rich digital textbook catalog to more than 170 independently owned college bookstores in the United States and Canada.

“E-textbooks are a growing and very important part of the future of education,” said Kent Freeman, Chief Operating Officer, Vital Source Technologies, Inc. “We are pleased to support Campus eBookstore in their efforts to make e-textbooks available to all participating member stores. Their innovative model ultimately helps more of today’s content reach more educators and students in North America.”

Vital Source, one of Ingram’s fastest growing businesses, is the preferred and most used e-textbook delivery platform in higher education today. With longstanding relationships with more than 200 of the best-known publishers, and with over 2.2 million registered users on 6,000 campuses in 200 countries and territories worldwide, the platform was designed to support learning and built to scale for dramatic growth. Combining the education and technology background of the Vital Source team with the book industry resources and leadership of Ingram, Vital Source is firmly positioned as a market leader in the digital learning space.

SPARC and the World Bank to co-sponsor Open Access Week 2012 kick-off webcast

August 28, 2012

SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the World Bank have announced they will co-sponsor the kickoff event for Open Access Week 2012 on Monday October 22nd in Washington, DC. The live event will take place at the state of the art World Bank facilities and will host a Liveblog and Webcast for those who cannot attend in person. The event will also be recorded, and be available to the community for use during and after local Open Access events.

The co-sponsored event will begin at 4:00 p.m. and consist of a 90-minute panel discussion with Open Access experts from a variety of stakeholder groups – including students, researchers, and policy makers – as well as representatives from the World Bank and SPARC. As this year’s Open Access theme is “Set the Default to Open Access,” the panelists will touch upon what that means to them, their institutions, and their work. Speakers will be announced in early September.

Immediately following the question and answer session, SPARC will sponsor a reception for those attending and participating in the panel discussion.

The World Bank was recently named as SPARC Innovator for its implementation of a new open access policy, which included the launch of the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) in 2012. The World Bank opened its data to the public in 2010.

For information about Open Access week events and information please go tohttp://www.openaccessweek.org.

Oxford University Press acquires American Journal of Hypertension

August 28, 2012

Oxford University Press (OUP) today announced that the esteemed American Journal of Hypertension will be joining the publisher’s journal collection.

Established in 1988, the American Journal of Hypertension is a highly regarded title providing a forum for scientific inquiry in the field of hypertension and related cardiovascular disease. It is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal with an Impact Factor of 3.181 (2011 Journal Citation Reports© by Thomson Reuters). The journal publishes high-quality original research and review articles on basic sciences, molecular biology, clinical and experimental hypertension, cardiology, epidemiology, pediatric hypertension, endocrinology, neurophysiology, and nephrology.

“Speaking for the Editors of the American Journal of Hypertension, we are delighted to be joining the excellent family of Oxford University Press journals. Their strong academic tradition, commitment to excellence, and worldwide presence promise to help us advance our goal of disseminating the best of current research on hypertension and its related clinical consequences,” said Dr. Michael H. Alderman, Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Hypertension.

The acquisition sees the continued expansion of OUP’s substantial cardiology list, which includes the journals of the European Society of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and the European Society of Cardiology.

“We’re delighted to welcome the American Journal of Hypertension to the growing list of OUP titles in the area of cardiology, and we look forward to working with the Journal’s editorial team to continue the Journal’s tradition of publishing the highest quality research in the field,” said Niko Pfund, President of Oxford University Press USA.

The first issue of the American Journal of Hypertension will be published by OUP from January 2013. Visit the website for more information, submission guidelines, and to sign up to receive tables of contents by email: ajh.oxfordjournals.org

American Journal Experts joins Inc. Magazine’s Exclusive List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies

August 28, 2012

Inc. magazine has ranked American Journal Experts number 872 on its sixth annual Inc. 500|5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent entrepreneurs. American Journal Experts (AJE) joins Yelp, yogurt maker Chobani, Giftcards.com, KIND and famed hatmaker Tilly’s, among other prominent brands featured on this year’s list.

“We are proud to be the 872nd fastest-growing company on the Inc. 2012 list, which is especially rewarding because we are also larger than 99.6% of U.S. companies,” says AJE founder Shashi Mudunuri. “American Journal Experts is working to improve the way that researchers discover, validate, and share human knowledge, and this award brings much appreciated attention to our mission. With a number of growth opportunities ahead of us, we hope to remain on this prestigious list for many years to come.”

In a stagnant economic environment, median growth rate of 2012 Inc. 500|5000 companies remains an impressive 97 percent. The companies on this year’s list report having created over 400,000 jobs in the past three years, and aggregate revenue among the honorees reached $299 billion.

The 2012 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2008 to 2011. To qualify, companies must be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2011.

“Now, more than ever, we depend on Inc. 500/5000 companies to spur innovation, provide jobs, and drive the economy forward. Growth companies, not large corporations, are where the action is,” says Inc. Editor Eric Schurenberg.