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Citation rate for Chinese Science Papers Goes Up

The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China recently released its annual report, ‘Statistical Data of Chinese (Science & Technology) Papers 2011’. According to the report, about one-tenth of the science and technology papers included in the Science Citation Index came from China in 2010.

China reportedly produced 836,300 papers on science and technology between 2001 and Nov 1, 2011, and they together garnered 5.19 million citations. This gave the country the seventh highest citation rate in the world. It had the eighth highest rate in 2010.

Report:

About a tenth of the science and technology papers included in the Science CitationIndex, a leading thesis-index system, came from China in 2010, according to a recent researchreport.

On Friday, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China released its annualreport – the Statistical Data of Chinese (Science & Technology) Papers 2011.

According to the report, China produced 836,300 papers on science and technology between2001 and Nov 1, 2011, and they together garnered 5.19 million citations. That gave thecountry the seventh highest citation rate in the world; it had the eighth highest rate in 2010.

This year, each Chinese paper on science and technology garnered an average of 6.21citations. That was a 5.8 percent increase above what the papers had got the previous year,but was still well below the 10.71 citations that papers throughout the world draw on average,the report said.

He Defang, director of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, said theincreasing citation rate shows that scientific research is being better conducted in China.

“The numbers of science and technology papers and their citation rates are an objectivereflection of a country’s scientific acquirements,” He said.

In the past decade, the citation rate for Chinese papers on science and technology hasincreased by 30 percent a year on average. The Science Citation Index, meanwhile, hasincreased by 19 percent a year on average, He said.

“Beyond the sheer numbers, the quality and the citation rate of our papers have gone up too,”he added. “At this rate, our citation rate is likely to become the fifth best in the world by 2014,which is six years ahead of our plan.”

Britain’s national science academy, the Royal Society, published a report in March saying thatChina, Brazil, India and various other countries are becoming scientific powers that can rivalthe United States.

At the same time, though, the report said those countries lack strong foundations in thesciences. It said the increase in China’s citation rate “does not reflect the rapid increase thathas been seen in the nation’s investment or publication output”.

Sun Song, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ institute of oceanology, said scientistsshould pay more attention to the quality of research papers rather than their quantity.

“There are some barriers to the pursuit of quality,” Sun said. “For example, when you arebidding for a research project, publishing a certain number of papers is required. So someresearchers may take what should have been written into one comprehensive paper and split itup into several different papers just to meet the requirement. That lowers the quality of thework.”

The number of papers researchers publish is also used as criteria in the awarding of academicdegrees or promotions.

“On the other hand, using citation rates as the only standard for judging our research is unfair,”Sun said. “For example, there are far fewer oceangraphers in the world than therapists. So themost influential oceanographic paper ever written may not be quoted as many times as a less-influential medical paper.”

Of all Chinese science and technology papers, those about chemistry, engineering andmathematics, material science and clinical medicine led to only 2.09 percent of the citationsthat were made in 2011. The percentage for such papers was similar to the year before.

“China’s clinical medicine has developed greatly in recent years, thanks largely to there beingmore international cooperation,” said Guo Jun, deputy head of the Peking University CancerHospital and the publisher of a dozen of papers on cancer.

Source: China Daily

Mike Reece appointed new Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Applied Ceramics

Maney Publishing is pleased to announce Mike Reece, Professor of Functional Ceramics at Queen Mary, University of London, UK, as the incoming Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Applied Ceramics.

Maney is delighted to welcome Professor Reece who, in addition to his role as Editor-in-Chief, is Chair of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining Functional Materials Committee and Director of Nanoforce Technology Ltd, a spin-out company from Queen Mary. He will succeed Professor Mohan Edirisinghe, the current Editor-in-Chief, from the start of 2012. Professor Edirisinghe steps down after seven years of dedicated service, during which time he successfully re-launched and raised the profile of the journal

Professor Reece has extensive experience in structural and functional ceramics. He is known for producing some of the earliest-reported work on the mechanical fatigue of structural ceramics. This provided some of the first direct evidence that mechanical fatigue effects are significant in structural ceramics and not simply a manifestation of stress corrosion effects as previously thought.

His research at Queen Mary has focused on the electromechanical properties of ferroelectric, ferroelastic and piezoelectric ceramics and he is currently developing layered perovskite ceramics with super high Curie points for application as high temperature piezoelectric sensors. He recently set up the first Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) furnace in the UK, which is being used to develop new and novel structural and functional ceramics and composites.

Professor Reece has strong international and industrial links. He is a visiting Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China and was appointed as an Industry Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011.

 Advances in Applied Ceramics, which is published by Maney on behalf of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, is an international journal that provides high-quality research on functional, bio- and engineering ceramics. Professor Reece’s strong academic and industry-focused experience fits well with the applied nature of the journal and he will provide strong leadership and bring about future changes that build on the journal’s strong foundation. 

From 2012 the journal will focus on expanding coverage in key areas of ceramics, including Spark Plasma Sintering, ferroelectrics, thermoelectrics, carbon nanotube and graphene ceramic composites, biomedical and dental, transparent, and ultra high temperature. The first issue focuses on functional ceramics with publication of a special issue dedicated to energy conversion systems, including photocatalytic, electrochemical, photoelectrochemical and nuclear systems. Lastly, new appointments will also be made to the existing international editorial board including Professor Eduardo Saiz (Imperial College London, UK), Professor Do Kyung Kim (KAIST, Korea) and Professor Xiang Ming Chen (Zhejiang University, China).

Commenting on his new appointment, Professor Reece said:  “I am delighted to be appointed to the role of Editor of Advances in Applied Ceramics. Professor Edirisinghe has left some big shoes to fill after seven years at the helm. I plan to build on his legacy and use my experience of research in functional and structural ceramics to lead the journal in what is an exciting new era for ceramics research and application.”

Emma Leighton, Managing Editor for Maney is delighted with the appointment: “Professor Reece’s research background, international reach and industry awareness is a perfect match for Advances in Applied Ceramics. The planned developments will build on those made by Professor Edirisinghe and will ensure the journal’s continued success. As publisher, we will continue to enhance the technical service that we offer to authors with the introduction of a new production tracking system, ManeyTrack, in 2012, which will improve the speed and transparency of the publication process as well as continuing to maintain the personal attention that authors, readers and librarians have come to expect”.

The British Library in deal with Elsevier & T&F for document delivery outside the UK to non-commercial researchers

The British Library sign agreements with Elsevier and Taylor & Francis for document delivery outside the UK to non-commercial researchers

The British Library has signed an agreement with Elsevier and Taylor and Francis for document delivery outside the UK to non-commercial researchers. The agreement governs the supply of copies of articles from the British Library’s Document Supply Service to non-commercial end users via not-for-profit libraries outside the UK.

Barry Smith, Head of Commercial Services at the British Library said “We are delighted to have agreed a framework licence with Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. This means we can improve the speed of service delivery we offer to our overseas non-commercial users and augment our current Document Supply Service.”

Any articles to be supplied under this new service are solely for an end-user’s own private study or non-commercial research purposes. The terms of the licence are distinct from the Library’s successful service for the supply of articles for commercial purposes, and shall require end-users and not-for-profit libraries to ensure that the differentiation between commercial and non-commercial use of articles is actively monitored and differentiated.

Ian Bannerman, Managing Director at Taylor & Francis said, “The supply of digital content across national boundaries can be fraught with complexity. This is a shining example of publishers working with a national library to arrive at a licensed solution which will have far-reaching benefits for readers.”

Alicia Wise, Director of Universal Access at Elsevier, said, “The British Library and Elsevier share a common goal. We both make tangible efforts to provide, in a sustainable way, access to scientific information to as many and to as wide a variety of researchers as possible. Through this agreement we help the British Library extend its reach to users far beyond the UK’s boundaries. At the same time it provides Elsevier with an additional, valuable channel through which we can share our content with a very relevant group of researchers.”

The framework agreement signed by Elsevier and Taylor & Francis has the backing of three of the relevant trade associations, International STM, The Publishers Association and ALPSP. All three have recommended that the member publishers participate in the framework agreement.

“The framework licence agreed with the British Library offers a balanced model for well-regulated licensed document delivery across international borders for non-commercial use,” said Graham Taylor, Director of The Publishers Association.

The British Library’s Overseas Library Privilege Service will be phased out from the start of 2012.

The British Library will contact all existing licensors of STM content it currently has a direct digital agreement with and who are yet to sign the framework licence agreement. The British Library will also contact all non-UK, non-commercial libraries currently registered to discuss eligibility for the new service and how to proceed.

American Institute of Physics partners with Publishing Technology on next generation Scitation

AIP Publishing, a division of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), and Publishing Technology plc (LSE: PTO) announce a partnership to build the next generation of AIP’s Scitation, scheduled for launch in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The new custom platform will be developed using Publishing Technology’s pub2web hosting solution, enabling AIP and its Member Societies to house an impressive portfolio of journals and conference proceedings as well as Physics Today magazine and historical documents from AIP’s Physics Resources Center.

“With our strategic shift to concentrate our resources on serving our readers, authors, librarians and our Member Society publishing partners, we are excited to find an impressive partner to deliver the best possible way forward,” said John Haynes, Vice President of Publishing at AIP. “Enhanced functionality, discoverability and customer experience are paramount in our business and Publishing Technology has the international expertise to provide the first-class infrastructure our readers expect.”

Designed to put users at the center combining a flexible and extensible architecture with sophisticated information commerce, leading-edge semantic technology and industry standards, the pub2web interface will provide the research community with new opportunities for collaboration and discovery. During the design phases, the user community will be engaged through focus groups, dialogue, training and usability testing. Authors, readers and librarians can expect a seamless transition, new interactive communities and an overall enhanced user experience tailored to their specific needs. According to AIP’s Chief Information Officer Evan Owens, “Publishing Technology’s pub2web hosting platform will provide the foundation for the AIP collection of specialized physics-related content with a rich array of semantic features as well as deliver industry-standard support for the needs of library and individual subscribers. We look forward to working with the company’s development team to revolutionize the user experience.”

Louise Russell, Chief Operating Officer of Publishing Technology’s Online Division, offered, “We are excited by the prospect of providing AIP and its Member Societies with the technology to take their digital strategy to the next level. Focusing on the needs of authors, readers and librarians to deliver new, personalized discovery routes into content will break down traditional silos and allow for experimentation and added value. By bridging multiple content types from multiple member publishers and extending their reach, the new Scitation will be a premier research destination on the Web.”

Springer releases Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing

Springer is pleased to announce the release of the Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. With over 300 entries, in A-Z format for efficient, user-friendly searches, it surveys the concepts behind the significant shift towards parallel computing in today’s computer industry.

Throughout four volumes, leading international experts in the field, including Jack Dongarra, Michael Flynn, William Gropp, David J. Kuck, David E. Shaw, Marc Snir, and Guy L. Steele Jr., present topics related to the critical demand for continued advances in parallel programming.

David Padua, Editor-in-Chief and a leader in the field, said, “Parallel computing has already impacted or will soon impact everyone who uses a computing device, from supercomputers to laptops, tablets, and smart phones.”

Today’s supercomputers are massively parallel machines with thousands of processors. The fastest supercomputer today uses 705,024 processing cores, capable of 10.51 quadrillion calculations per second. Ten years ago the world’s fastest supercomputer used a total of 8,192 processing cores and was only capable of 12.3 trillion calculations per second, almost one thousand times less powerful. This type of accelerated parallelism is critical to science and engineering, enabling discoveries and designs that would not be possible otherwise. For consumer and mobile devices, parallelism is the only viable strategy for continued performance gains, while also allowing chipmakers to optimize for energy efficiency.

With the need for parallelism at an all-time high, the Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing provides researchers and developers with an authoritative reference that pulls together the tools necessary to take advantage of these pioneering concepts.

Key concepts in the Encyclopedia for professionals, researchers and students of parallel computing include:

• Programming models and programming languages

• Debugging and race detection

• Laws of parallel computing

• Theoretical models of computation

• Supercomputer/high-performance computing machines

• Interconnection networks

“This monumental work will be an invaluable resource for practitioners and students in all areas of computer science,” said Alex Nicolau of the University of California Irvine. “In today’s world where parallel computing is ubiquitous – from desktops to cell phones and game consoles – this reference work will be indispensable.”

BioMed Central, BFI launch integrated database and journal, ‘GigaScience’

The recent explosion of genomics technology has revolutionized biology, but it is only really of use if people are able to analyze and use the resulting sequences. Storage of such vast quantities of data is problematic, as the ongoing uncertainty over the future of NCBI’s arm of the Sequence Read Archive shows (SRA).

The BGI, in conjunction with BioMed Central, recently launched GigaScience, a journal aimed specifically at projects generating a lot of data, which can accommodate such large datasets alongside the articles describing them. GigaScience also anticipates becoming a repository for stand-alone datasets such as those resulting from genome sequencing projects. One such dataset has just been released, and it contains the assembled and annotated sequences of genomes from three strains of sorghum, a plant of huge economic importance in the developing world as a source of food, fodder, fuel and fiber. The article describing these data has been published inGenome Biology; the raw reads are available from the SRA, and the assembled reads from GigaScience. This is the first time that a dataset has been cited as a DoI in an article’s reference list, so is the first step in the process leading to researchers getting citation credits for the data they generate.

ISC unveils community-owned content service for higher education institutions

JISC Collections, the membership organisation that supports the provision of digital content for education and research in the UK, is formally launching a new service to consolidate and host a broad range of content including journal archives, historic books and multimedia items. The JISC eCollections service has been funded by JISC, to protect and preserve content investments made by JISC Collections on behalf of UK higher and further education institutions. The service comprises three platforms, developed in partnership with EDINA (JISC MediaHub) and Mimas (JISC Journal Archives and JISC Historic Books). Together they are intended to provide a sustainable, value for money alternative to accessing licensed content on publisher platforms.

Each platform contains a number of resources to which JISC Collections has previously negotiated long-term licences, along with some content that has never before been available online:

JISC Historic Books comprises full text or page images of over 350,000 books published in Britain from 1475 to 1900, including more than 65,000 historical editions from the British Library’s collection
JISC Journal Archives consolidates archives of over 600 journals, from publishers including Oxford University Press and Brill
JISC MediaHub enables users to discover over 500,000 multimedia items – moving images, still images and audio – both in JISC-licensed collections, such as those from the Digital Images for Education, NewsFilm Online and Film & Sound Online resources, and in third-party collections, such as ARKive and The First World War Poetry Archive.
JISC Collections members were previously required to access this content via a range of separate services, each with different user interfaces and administrative requirements. Consolidating each group of resources into one platform simplifies training and supports better discovery, enabling maximum value to be derived from the initial content investments. Administrative features include COUNTER statistics and inbound OpenURL linking for text content, and support for authentication via the UK Access Management Federation.

Institutions will pay a single service fee to support the cost of hosting and maintaining the platforms. Each platform will have an advisory board, comprising lecturers, information specialists, media advisors and technical experts from UK HE and FE, to ensure the service is managed by the community, for the community. “I am delighted to see JISC Collections’ commitment to provide continuing access to these important community resources via one service,” says Graham Stone, Information Resources Manager at the University of Huddersfield, and Chair of the JISC Journal Archives advisory board. “The JISC eCollections platforms are easy to use, and rationalising multiple resources into three consistent interfaces – integrated with our knowledge bases – helps us achieve our goal of providing users with a simple, seamless research experience.”

Publishing Technology announces new Executive appointment

Publishing Technology plc has appointed Peter Blok as EVP of Global Professional Services and member of the executive team.

Peter will be responsible for all implementation projects of Publishing Technology’s flagship enterprise software platform, advance, across its worldwide operations.

Peter has over 30 years’ experience in global commercial operations and technology, including many major multi-site ERP system deployments, the largest of which spanned more than 50 international sites. His expertise includes managing portfolios of systems and management engagements that include ERP, document management, regulatory compliance and business process optimization. Peter’s international experience includes postings in Japan, China, Switzerland, France, the UK, and North America.

George Lossius, CEO at Publishing Technology, commented: “We are delighted to welcome Peter to the team in this new position. His experience in this field will prove invaluable in delivering effectively to our customers as we implement our advance offering at publishers across the continents. In periods of challenging economic conditions and transformational pressures, we see it as even more essential that important projects are delivered effectively.”

Prior to joining Publishing Technology, Peter was Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Celgene Corporation and Vice President of Global Professional Services at Invensys Corporation. He holds a PhD in chemical physics from New York University and received his formal training in finance and operations management from NYU Stern School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Sage Invests In User Experience with TEMIS

SAGE, the world’s leading independent academic publisher, has signed a multi-year agreement with TEMIS, the award-winning provider of Semantic Content Enrichment solutions, to increase the usability of SAGE content.

SAGE will use the TEMIS platform Luxid® for Content Enrichment to enhance its content in order to provide more sophisticated search and discovery tools to users. SAGE will also leverage Luxid® to identify similar and related documents promoting greater user engagement across multiple platforms.

“We know that users are looking for a good experience when it comes to finding what they need. The TEMIS technology allows us to give the users the content they want in a fast, easy to use and accessible way”, said Martha Sedgwick, Senior Online Products Manager, SAGE.

Luxid® for Content Enrichment will be used in the creation of a new platform, SAGE Knowledge, that SAGE will launch in 2012. SAGE Knowledge will contain over 2,500 award-winning titles including an expansive range of SAGE eBook and eReference content, such as scholarly monographs, reference works, handbooks, series and more.

“We’re committed to help SAGE make its internationally regarded social sciences content even more accessible and compelling”, said Guillaume Mazieres, Executive Vice President, North-America Operations, TEMIS. “Luxid® generates rich semantic metadata that will deliver to SAGE users an unparalleled search, navigation and knowledge discovery experience.”

OCLC announces new interface for the FAST prototype

The new user interface simplifies the process of heading selection, in a one-page design.

FAST subject headings were developed by adapting the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) with a simplified syntax, retaining the very rich vocabulary of LCSH while making the schema easier to understand, control, apply, and use.

The FAST interface allows you to investigate FAST authorities directly, or by using the Library of Congress Authorities from which they were derived.

The new interface design combines search box, brief results list, and full view of a selected record on a single page. Several indexes and the ability to restrict the result to a desired FAST facet increase searching accuracy. The default result ranking is by usage, giving the most likely candidate heading near the top of the result, although alphabetic and facet order options are easily available. An autosuggest makes the selection process even easier.

We are particularly interested in users’ experience with the new interface, so we encourage you to explore it and send us your comments and suggestions.

This application was developed primarily by JD Shipengrover, Senior Web & User Interface Designer, and Consulting Software Engineer Rick Bennett.

New RIN report looks at information handling in collaborative research

The UK’s Research Information Network (RIN) has released a new report that looks at how researchers access, use and disseminate information in collaborations between higher education and business, public and third sector partners.

This study, commissioned by RIN and the British Library, comprises a set of case studies focusing on the behaviours and needs of researchers working on both sides of collaborations between higher education institutions and an external partner. They follow previous case studies focusing upon information handling in the life sciences, humanities, physical sciences (to be published Dec 2011), and upon openness in research.

The overall aim of the case studies was to understand how researchers manage the discovery, access, use, creation, sharing and dissemination of information resources, within the research project and with external partners; provide comparisons between the behaviours and needs of researchers in different types of collaborations; and identify barriers to more effective use of information in collaborations, and provide recommendations on how such barriers might be overcome.

Collaborative_research_report.pdf

EBSCO Publishing releases Nursing Reference Center iPhone app

EBSCO is announcing the release of an iPhone application for Nursing Reference Center™. This new app from EBSCO represents the only evidence-based, point-of-care nursing mobile application available today.

The Nursing Reference Center iPhone app allows nurses to access point-of-care nursing content anytime and anywhere with EBSCO’s mobile technology. Users are able to search and browse the content quickly via their Apple iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Available free from the iTunes App Store, Nursing Reference Center customers can take advantage of this mobile technology at no additional cost.
Features available with the new app include the ability to navigate through topics with a table of contents, view recent or saved searches and adjust content that is being searched via a categories page. The app also provides many of the same features that users are accustomed to such as an option to sort by relevance or date, save or email an item and auto complete functionality to suggest a search.

Nursing Reference Center offers staff nurses, nurse administrators, nursing students, nurse faculty and hospital librarians the best available and most recent clinical evidence from thousands of full-text documents. The application features more than 2,200 clinically organized quick lessons, 700 evidence-based care sheets, over 1,100 drug monographs and 1,300 Nursing Practice and Skills & Skill Competency Checklists.

This point-of-care resource supports all five Magnet Components and is updated on a weekly basis. Nursing Reference Center also includes continuing education modules, detailed medical illustrations, the latest medical news, legal cases, research instruments, unique point-of-care reference books, and more.

Nursing Reference Center provides relevant clinical resources to nurses and other health care professionals, directly at the point-of-care. Additional point-of-care resources offered by EBSCO Publishing include DynaMed™, Rehabilitation Reference Center™, Patient Education Reference Center™ and GIDEON™.

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