Elsevier launches ClinicalKey to bring fast, trusted and comprehensive medical content to clinicians

April 11, 2012

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of medical content and solutions, today announced ClinicalKey, the next generation of online clinical information resources. ClinicalKey draws answers from the largest collection of clinical resources, covering every medical and surgical specialty—eliminating physicians’ reliance on less accurate sources. ClinicalKey’s content includes more than 700 textbooks and 400 top medical journals, providing the most current clinically relevant evidence-based answers, as well as expert commentary, MEDLINE abstracts and select third-party journals.

“Physicians are under severe time pressure and want their answers fast and relevant, with comprehensive depth available if they want,” said Dr. Jonathan Teich, Elsevier’s Chief Medical Informatics Officer. “By reducing the time it takes to find the best answer and providing trusted, more comprehensive content, we’re able to help clinicians spend more time with their patients to achieve better outcomes.”

As Elsevier’s new ‘clinical insight engine’, ClinicalKey provides faster, smarter access to the relevant online clinical answers physicians seek. After conducting market research with more than 2,000 physicians, Elsevier designed ClinicalKey to meet the three key search requirements those physicians demanded:

Comprehensive – ClinicalKey includes answers based on the largest proprietary collection of clinical resources in one place online, representing every medical and surgical specialty and information at all levels, from expert opinion to primary data. Resources include textbooks, journals, monographs, videos and images.
Trusted – ClinicalKey provides access to the latest peer-reviewed and evidence-based information available from Elsevier, a world-leading provider of science and health information.
Fast – With its unique technology, ClinicalKey’s speed-to-answer is unmatched, providing more relevant answers to clinical questions than those provided by any other conventional clinical search engine.

Information found on ClinicalKey is also easily shared, helping colleagues and care teams make the best decisions for patients. For example, the built-in presentation maker allows physicians to dynamically communicate the latest medical and surgical information to colleagues and care teams. With one click they can share a paper, chapter, image, or video via email.

Smart Content
ClinicalKey is powered by Elsevier’s Smart Content, tagged with EMMeT (Elsevier Merged Medical Taxonomy), which enables ClinicalKey to understand clinical terms and thus discover medical content that is the most relevant, plus find related content that would be missed by other search engines. Elsevier’s Smart Content has been designed to understand the vast number of relationships between clinical concepts. By organizing these relationships in a hierarchical manner, it guarantees that ClinicalKey provides specific, targeted results to physicians’ questions.

The tool allows clinicians to filter search results by clinically meaningful subcategories (content type, specialty, and by relevant clinical categories like treatment and diagnosis). Specialty-specific tools enable physicians to quickly go from topic overview to in-depth specialty information to meet clinical challenges.

ClinicalKey will initially launch with an institutionally focused product whose primary users will be clinicians at hospitals, healthcare systems and medical schools. Beginning in Q3 2012, Elsevier will market an individual clinician version.

“ClinicalKey is part of Elsevier’s continuing efforts to help clinicians improve quality and efficiency through the smarter use of healthcare information,” said Jim Donohue, Elsevier’s Managing Director, Global Clinical Reference. “Along with Elsevier’s other clinical, educational and administrative resources, ClinicalKey enhances workflow without disruption and ultimately helps physicians deliver better patient outcomes.”

National Library of Medicine Awards $67 Million for Informatics Research Training

April 11, 2012

Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced that the NLM is awarding 14 five-year grants, totaling more than $67 million, for research training in biomedical informatics, the discipline that seeks to apply computer and communications technology to improve health.

For more than 35 years, NLM has been the primary sponsor of biomedical informatics research training in the United States.

“NLM’s informatics training programs produce investigators trained in applying biomedical computing to improve clinical medicine, basic biomedical research, clinical and translational research, public health, and other health-related areas,” said Dr. Lindberg. “In this era of the 1,000 Genomes Project, regional health data repositories, virtual clinical trials and real-time tracking of disease outbreaks, the need for trained scientists who understand the complex health information landscape and can render it more tractable is greater than ever.”

At its current set of informatics training programs, NLM supports more than 200 pre-doctoral and post-doctoral trainees each year. Biomedical informatics requires knowledge of biology and medicine as well as of computer and information sciences, engineering, quantitative sciences and human behavior. Because informatics is interdisciplinary, some NLM trainees have mentors from two or more fields guiding their research. Trainees come to these programs with a range of educational and professional backgrounds; the group includes physicians, nurses, biologists, computer scientists, librarians, statisticians and engineers. “Many of today’s informatics leaders in the public and private sectors received their graduate or post-graduate informatics training at one of NLM’s training programs” noted Valerie Florance, PhD., NLM’s Associate Director for Extramural Programs.

Distributed geographically around the country, NLM’s informatics training programs provide graduate degrees and in-depth research experience in one or more of following areas:

Health care/clinical informatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to direct patient care, such as advanced clinical decision support systems and multimedia electronic health records; design and provision of informational support to health care consumers.
Translational bioinformatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to support ‘bench to bedside to practice’ translational research, such as genome-phenome relationships, pharmacogenomics, or personalized medicine; health effects of environmental factors, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and other similar areas.
Clinical research informatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to support basic clinical trials and comparative effectiveness research; biostatistics; in-silico clinical research trials; merging and mining large disparate data sets that mix images, text and data.
Public health informatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to build integrated resources for health services research, for decision support in public health agencies, to support regional or global health research, or syndromic surveillance; health literacy, health effects of climate change.

The biomedical informatics training programs receiving new five-year awards are located at the following academic organizations:

Columbia University Health Sciences, New York NY

Harvard University Medical School, Boston MA

Ohio State University, Columbus OH

Oregon Health and Science University, Portland OR

Rice University, Houston TX

Stanford University, Stanford CA

University of California – San Diego, San Diego CA

University of Colorado – Denver, Aurora CO

University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

University of Utah, Salt Lake City UT

University of Washington, Seattle WA

University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison WI

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Yale University, New Haven, CT

For general information about NLM’s University-based Research Training Programs in Biomedical Informatics, contact Dr. Valerie Florance, florancev@mail.nih.gov.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the world’s largest library of the health sciences and collects, organizes and makes available biomedical science information to scientists, health professionals and the public. It celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2011. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.nlm.nih.gov.

Gartner Says Worldwide Media Tablets Sales to Reach 119 Million Units in 2012

April 11, 2012

Worldwide media tablet sales to end users are forecast to total 118.9 million units in 2012, a 98 percent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units, according to Gartner, Inc.

Apple’s iOS continues to be the dominant media tablet operating system (OS), as it is projected to account for 61.4 percent of worldwide media tablet sales to end users in 2012 (see Table 1). Despite the arrival of Microsoft-based devices to this market, and the expected international rollout of the Kindle Fire, Apple will continue to be the market leader through the forecast period.

“Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “As vendors struggled to compete on price and differentiate enough on either the hardware or ecosystem, inventories were built and only 60 million units actually reached the hands of consumers across the world. The situation has not improved in early 2012, when the arrival of the new iPad has reset the benchmark for the product to beat.”

“It appears that this year competitors have waited to see what Apple would bring out — because there were very few announcements of new media tablets at either the Consumer Electronics Show or Mobile World Congress. Many vendors will wait for Windows 8 to be ready and will try to enter the market with a dual-platform approach, hoping that the Microsoft brand could help them in both the enterprise and consumer markets.”

Table 1
Worldwide Sales of Media Tablets to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

OS	2011	2012	2013	2016
iOS	39,998	72,988	99,553	169,652
Android	17,292	37,878	61,684	137,657
Microsoft	0	4,863	14,547	43,648
QNX	807	2,643	6,036	17,836
Other Operating Systems	1,919	510	637	464
Total Market	60,017	118,883	182,457	369,258

Source: Gartner (April 2012)

Microsoft tablets are projected to account for 4.1 percent of media tablet sales this year, and grow to 11.8 percent of sales by the end of 2016. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s official entrance into the media tablet market.

“IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers,” Ms. Milanesi said. “This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal.”

Gartner analysts said enterprise sales of media tablets will account for about 35 percent of total tablet sales sold in 2015. These sales will not be clearly defined as enterprise purchases. Gartner expects enterprises to allow tablets as part of their buy your own device (BYOD) program. More of these tablets will be owned by consumers who use them at work.

“This poses a big threat to vendors that thought about focusing on the enterprise market who will now have to become appealing to consumers as well,” Ms. Milanesi said. “This is exactly the same trend that vendors such as RIM had to face in the smartphone market. The difference here is that tablets have been created for consumers first and then relied on an ecosystem of apps and services that make them more manageable in the enterprise. When the deployment will come from the IT department we believe that operating systems such as Windows 8 will have an advantage as long as they are not seen as a compromise in usability for the users.”

Android tablets are forecast to account for 31.9 percent of media tablet sales in 2012. Gartner analysts said the main issue with Android tablets has been the lack of applications that are dedicated to tablets and therefore take advantage of their capabilities. Gartner’s consumer survey data shows that consumers are running many of their apps on their mobile phones and their tablets.

Gartner’s detailed market forecast data is available in the report, “Forecast: Media Tablets by Operating System, Worldwide, 2010-2016, 1Q12 Update.” The report is on Gartner’s website at http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=260&mode=2&PageID=3460702&resId=1952715&ref=QuickSearch&sthkw=milanesi.

Gartner’s Special Report, “iPad and Beyond: The Future of the Tablet Market,” provides insight into what consumers, enterprises and vendors can expect as the market continues to unfold. More than 20 reports examine the tablet marketplace, as well as video commentary. The Special Report is available athttp://www.gartner.com/technology/research/ipad-media-tablet/future-of-tablet-market.jsp.

American Institute of Physics announces two new open-access journals

April 11, 2012

Two new open-access journals will join the distinguished ranks of publications produced by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) later this year. The journals – JAP Materials and APL Materials – will be affiliated with AIP’s two premier applied physics journals, Journal of Applied Physics (JAP) and Applied Physics Letters (APL), and will feature research on materials, their functions, and their potential applications.

“Materials science is an important and growing area of research that touches many disciplines,” says John Haynes, vice president of publishing at AIP. “Establishing these affiliated journals will allow us to extend the brands of two of the field’s most cited and respected publications into the related and growing area of materials science.”

As with the parent journals, articles will undergo a thorough peer review process overseen by an editor and an international team of associate editors. Likewise, the journals will emulate their parent publications in scope:

JAP Materials will provide in-depth coverage on the full breadth of research related to materials science, with a focus on significant new theoretical and experimental discoveries.
APL Materials will feature original research on significant topical issues within the field of materials science, but as a Letters journal it will also emphasize the timeliness of this research.

Both journals will be open access, which means that they will be freely available to the global research community. Authors will retain copyright under a Creative Commons license.

“There has been huge growth in the number of materials science submissions to JAP and APL over the last few years,” says Mark Cassar, AIP publisher. “These new journals will be important additions to the existing body of research publications and will respond to the needs of researchers. They will not only expand AIP’s already well-known and trusted sources of high-quality research information but they will also help authors to share their findings and get the exposure and recognition their works deserve.”

ebrary expands e-book selection across acquisition models

April 10, 2012

To strengthen its new approach to strategic e-book acquisition based on three steps: Transition, Diversify, and Streamline™, ebrary®, a ProQuest business, is expanding its e-book selection across acquisition models.

More than 1,800 new e-books from Wiley and 2,300 new titles from publishers including Princeton University Press and World Scientific & Imperial College Press will be available in Academic Complete™, which will offer unlimited access to a growing selection of more than 75,000 quality titles. An additional 6,300 e-books from publishers such as MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and University of Illinois Press will be available through other ebrary models including patron driven acquisition, short-term loan, and perpetual archive. Titles can be ordered through ebrary as well as partners and book vendors such as YBP.
As libraries transition their budgets from print to digital books, diversifying acquisition models and streamlining the ordering process are key to achieving the greatest return on investment. A number of ebrary customers are benefitting from this approach.

“SJSU started with a subscription to ebrary’s Academic Complete, which is an affordable way to offer our students unlimited access to a broad base collection: Academic Complete has something for everyone,” said Carole Correa-Morris, Head of Acquisitions at San Jose State University. “We have also purchased e-books outright, including those chosen by our subject selectors and requested by faculty. Most recently, we have been examining our Academic Complete usage statistics to strategically expand our patron driven acquisition program. By focusing on higher use subjects, we can better determine which titles to add to our consideration pool and only purchase those that are used. Diversifying models makes sense financially, and by streamlining ordering through YBP we are able to work more efficiently.”

“Two converging trends are driving the need for strategic e-book acquisition: Libraries are investing a larger percentage of their book budgets in digital from print to meet a growing demand, and publishers are producing more books electronically,” said Kevin Sayar, President
and General Manager of ebrary. “We will continue to work with publishers, librarians, and book vendors to develop an integrated e-book solution to serve the progressive needs of one very important common denominator: the researcher.”

For details about ebrary’s new approach to strategic acquisition as well as the ebrary platform, which offers robust research tools, a dedicated mobile iOS app, and the ability for libraries to upload and integrate their own digital repositories with DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast), visit www.ebrary.com.

Wellcome Trust backs campaign for open access academic journals

April 10, 2012

Wellcome Trust joins ‘academic spring’ to open up science.

Wellcome backs campaign to break stranglehold of academic journals and allow all research papers to be shared free online

One of the world’s largest funders of science is to throw its weight behind a growing campaign to break the stranglehold of academic journals and allow all research papers to be shared online.

Nearly 9,000 researchers have already signed up to a boycott of journals that restrict free sharing as part of a campaign dubbed the “academic spring” by supporters due to its potential for revolutionising the spread of knowledge.

But the intervention of the Wellcome Trust, the largest non-governmental funder of medical research after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is likely to galvanise the movement by forcing academics it funds to publish in open online journals.

Sir Mark Walport, the director of Wellcome Trust, said that his organisation is in the final stages of launching a high calibre scientific journal called eLife that would compete directly with top-tier publications such as Nature and Science, seen by scientists as the premier locations for publishing. Unlike traditional journals, however, which cost British universities hundreds of millions of pounds a year to access, articles in eLife will be free to view on the web as soon as they are published.

He also said that the Wellcome Trust, which spends more than £600m on scientific research a year, would soon adopt a more robust approach with the scientists it funds, to ensure that results are freely available to the public within six months of first publication.

Researchers who do not make their work open access in line with the Trust’s policy could be sanctioned in future grant applications to the charity.

Walport, who is a fellow of the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, said the results of public and charity-funded scientific research should be freely available to anyone who wants to read it, for whatever purpose they need it. His comments echo growing concerns from scientists who baulk at the rising costs of academic journals, particularly in a time of shrinking university budgets.

The majority of the world’s scientific research, estimated at around 1.5m new articles each year, is published in journals owned by a small number of large publishing companies including Elsevier, Springer and Wiley. Scientists submit manuscripts to the journals, which are sent out for peer review before publication. The work is then available to other researchers by subscription, usually through their libraries.

Publishers of the academic journals, which can cost universities up to €20,000 (£16,500) a year each to access, argue the price is necessary to sustain a high-quality peer review process.

A spokesperson for Elsevier said the company was open to any “mechanism or business model, as long as they are sustainable and maintain or improve existing levels of quality control”.

He added that the company had been working on open access initiatives with funding bodies. “There has been a constructive collaboration as we’ve worked with the Wellcome Trust to build support and participation among authors … At the same time, we will also remain committed to the subscription model. We want to be able to offer our customers choice, and we see that, in addition to new models the subscription model remains very much in demand.”

To continue reading please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/wellcome-trust-academic-spring

HathiTrust Announces New Board of Governors

April 4, 2012

HathiTrust is pleased to announce the composition of its new 12-member Board of Governors, which will lead the library collaborative into its next phase. The board, which replaces the Executive Committee established by the founding members in 2008, will oversee HathiTrust’s 10-million volume digital preservation repository, research center, and other initiatives. The decision to create the board was made during the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention held in October 2011, which was convened to chart HathiTrust’s governance structure and priorities going forward. Members of the Board elected at-large from the participating institutions are:

Five year terms:

Betsy Wilson (University of Washington)
Robert Wolven (Columbia University)

Four year terms:

Richard Clement (Utah State University)
Patricia Steele (University of Maryland)

Three year terms:

Carol Mandel (New York University)
Sarah Michalak (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)

They will join six other members appointed by the founding institutions, each of whom will serve a term of five years:

Carol Diedrichs (Ohio State University)
Wendy Lougee (University of Minnesota)
Bradley Wheeler (Indiana University)
Laine Farley (California Digital Library)
Brian Schottlaender (UC San Diego)
Paul Courant (University of Michigan)

“The caliber of all the nominees was outstanding, and it speaks well for the future of HathiTrust to have this group of wonderfully qualified, enthusiastic leaders installed as our new board,” said John Wilkin, Executive Director of HathiTrust.

The board officially begins work on April 16, 2012. Among its first priorities will be to implement the remaining proposals passed during the Constitutional Convention. These include the establishment of a distributed archive of print monographs corresponding to the digital copies held in HathiTrust, the creation of an approval process for proposed new initiatives, a fee-for-service model for content deposit, a mechanism for allowing non-partners to contribute content to the repository; and a coordinated effort to expand access to digitized U.S. federal government documents.

HathiTrust is a collaboration of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. The HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the digitized collections of some of the world’s largest libraries, making them discoverable and accessible today and for generations to come. More information about HathiTrust can be found at HathiTrust.org.

MarkLogic Toolkits for Microsoft Office Now Officially Supported

April 4, 2012

MarkLogic Corporation, the company powering mission-critical Big Data Applications around the world, today announced updates to its Toolkits for Microsoft Office. Updates include new, MarkLogic supported versions of the toolkits, a new authoring tool for Microsoft Excel, and updated open source versions of the toolkits. The updated versions of the toolkits are available today at the MarkLogic Toolkits webpage.

“The Toolkits for Microsoft Office enable companies to leverage content in documents, spreadsheets, or presentation decks,” said Gary Lang, senior vice president of products, MarkLogic. “These documents are where most of the unstructured information in many enterprises reside. With the updated toolkits and MarkLogic Server, you can search, reuse, track, and audit that content at Big Data volumes without ever leaving Microsoft Office, increasing productivity across the organization.”

Updates to the toolkits include:

Toolkit Support – The supported versions of the toolkits have gone through rigorous quality testing to meet the expectations of MarkLogic partners and customers. These versions of the toolkits are now officially supported by MarkLogic.
New Authoring Tool for Microsoft Excel – The new authoring app for Excel allows authors to enrich workbooks and worksheets while reusing components, content, and even macros from any Excel document saved in MarkLogic.
Updated Open Source Versions Available – Updated open source versions of the toolkits are available under the Apache 2.0 license.

“We’re looking forward to the updates to the MarkLogic Toolkits for Microsoft Office,” said Eric Severson, CTO, Flatirons Solutions. “We’ve seen our customers do some exciting things with the open source versions of the toolkits, so having a version that is supported by MarkLogic will make it even easier to introduce them into applications. The toolkits have the power to save a lot of time and money for companies looking to leverage existing content in new projects.”

For more information or to download the updated toolkits, please visit the productivity tools webpage on MarkLogic.com.

Maney and MPS launch Production Tracking System

April 4, 2012

Maney Publishing has launched its customised production tracking system, ManeyTrack. ManeyTrack is a comprehensive web-based system which handles the tracking, information, and reporting elements of the journal production process. It has been developed in collaboration with MPS Limited.

The system was custom-built after an extensive search showed that there was no off-the-shelf solution available that fully met Maney’s needs, as identified from a comprehensive workflow analysis.

ManeyTrack has been created in order to introduce a more efficient production process, and is part of Maney Publishing’s end-to-end digital workflow. It enables authors to track the production status of accepted articles, and journal editors to track the status, content, and page and colour budgets of journal issues. Information displayed at article level includes estimated and actual production stages and dates, such as the expected date for receipt of proofs, and publication information. This live information can be accessed by an external author or editor at any time, whilst offering in-house staff a full overview of the real-time status of all material in production.

This new technology also reduces the amount of time between the acceptance of an article and its publication, and provides increased transparency throughout the production process for all involved.

Additionally, ManeyTrack automates functions such as article metadata capture and storage, article and issue tracking, and schedule creation, and also includes partially-automated issue make-up functionality and order generation. It measures supplier turn-around time and has an e-commerce facility for the payment processing of non-subscription revenue items, such as open access and printed colour.

Via MPS, the system is also available for licensing to other publishers, and will be branded as Journal Track. Journal Track has been tailor-made in collaboration with a production manager, to meet the needs of any academic publisher’s production department, which can benefit from a more streamlined, automated workflow and production process. Journal Track can also integrate with existing peer review systems and receive automated tracking data from suppliers.

International research to speak one language

April 4, 2012

Universities and researchers will be able to improve the efficiencies of their research and remove obstacles in their collaborations, thanks to a new strategic partnership between the UK and Canada.

The Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI), a community-driven membership organisation founded in Canada, has invited JISC to be its first UK member. The two organisations will work together to advance a standard data dictionary for research and to advance a common global approach to research interoperability.

CASRAI’s vision is for all research teams around the world to have a single authoritative and reusable ‘file’ on themselves and their projects and be able to quickly produce and exchange any information needed, without retyping.

David Baker, CASRAI Executive Director, explains, “The research community in every country captures largely the same types of data. But three obstacles divide us: meaning, structure and format. These include the classic ‘lift vs. elevator’ problem – same concept with different labels – and the persistent problems of clashing data elements and software systems that can’t speak to each other. A standard dictionary implemented in our systems and exchanges removes these obstacles while keeping freedom of choice in implementation.

“Thanks to this leadership from JISC, we look forward to bringing UK subject-matter expertise and perspective to this evolving international dictionary. In Canada, leading organisations (funders, universities, vendors) have come together to collaboratively advance this mandate. We hope to mirror this broad representation within the UK community.”

In both Canada and the UK research has shown much time is spent administrating rather than conducting research. This was confirmed by an American survey in 2009 that found an average of 42% of research time was spent on administration.

Josh Brown, JISC programme manager, adds, “JISC has a strong history of working with UK universities to deliver time and cost savings within the research administration process and contribute towards making research accessible, discoverable and easier to share.

“We know that one way to increase the visibility of research internationally and increase efficiencies in the research process is to establish a common language for research. This is so researchers, funders and universities have the opportunity to reduce their research administration and concentrate on the job of delivering their work. In just one example, imagine a universal ‘auto-correct’ that resolves terminologies between countries and disciplines and frees the researchers to focus on the concepts. We are delighted to be invited to be part of CASRAI to see how we can help to make this happen.”

The first areas of focus for this partnership will be research impact and research datasets. CASRAI is already an active participant in the JISC-funded DESCRIBE project on research impacts and the partnership will build on that collaboration.

For datasets, JISC and CASRAI will work together to form a joint UK/Canada committee (with associated review circle) to explore how we can incorporate the discovery and accessibility of scientific datasets into the standard dictionary.

Ingram’s Vital Source expands e-textbook reach with Android application

April 3, 2012

As students look for more ways to interact with digital textbooks, they are increasingly turning to smartphones and tablets powered by the Android® operating system. To meet this demand, VitalSource®, the most-used e-textbook platform in the industry today announced the expansion of its mobile footprint with the addition of an e-textbook app for Android.

“We are significantly expanding our mobile capabilities with our new Android app,” said Kent Freeman, Chief Operating Officer, Vital Source Technologies Inc. “As a result, more content from the leaders in education publishing will reach more readers worldwide. Every student has a device and/or operating system preference, and we know that Android smart phones and tablets are becoming an important option.”

VitalSource Bookshelf® is the only e-textbook platform available in online and offline environments with dedicated download apps for a full range of devices including tablets, smart phones, laptops, and desktops. The platform supports Macintosh and Windows operating systems and Apple’s iPad™, iPhone®, iPod Touch® and now Android smart phones and tablets.

The new VitalSource Bookshelf app for Android is a true reader app, and not a web-only tool. Unlike web-only based applications, the VitalSource app can be used both online and offline, giving busy students and professors anytime, anywhere access to content, that syncs highlights and notes regardless of which app is used – online, mobile or desktop.

VitalSource, with more than 2 million users, has a presence on more than 6,000 campuses in over 180 countries. Educators and students have access to tens of thousands of titles in multiple formats from the world’s leading textbook publishers, including Elsevier, Pearson, Cengage, Macmillan, John Wiley and Sons, McGraw-Hill, Wolters Kluwer, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis and many others.

The VitalSource Bookshelf Android app is available for free from Google Play, formerly known as the Android Market.

Hindawi grows to more than 5,000 submissions in March

April 3, 2012

Hindawi Publishing Corporation is pleased to announce that it has received over 5,400 submissions in March across its portfolio of 300+ open access journals, which represents an increase of 80% from March 2011.

“I am incredibly pleased with the growth that we have seen in submissions to our open access journals over the past year,” said Paul Peters, Hindawi’s Head of Business Development. “In addition to the strong growth of our more well-established journals, several of which are expected to receive upwards of 1,000 submissions this year, we are happy to see that many of the newer journals that we launched over the past few years have already built incredible momentum and are on track to becoming leading journals within their respective fields.”

In explaining the reasons for the company’s growth, Hindawi’s Editorial Manager, Mohamed Hamdy, emphasized the importance of the increasing coverage of Hindawi’s journals by the major Abstracting and Indexing services. “As the coverage of our journals within PubMed, the Web of Science, Scopus, and a number of subject specific databases has grown over the past year, we have seen a very positive reaction from our authorship. We now have more than 30 journals indexed in the Web of Science, and close to 150 journals indexed in PubMed, and as the indexing of our journals continues to expand I expect that we will see very strong growth in the submissions to these journals.”

In addition to the journals that are hosted on the company’s main website (http://www.hindawi.com/), Hindawi has been developing a number of independent journal platforms over the past two years, each with a specific editorial focus. The first of these platforms was the ISRN series (http://www.isrn.com/), which launched in mid-2010 with the aim of providing a fast-track review process for all submitted manuscripts, and by March of 2012 the ISRN series accounted for 20% of Hindawi’s total submissions. More recently Hindawi has launched two new platforms including Datasets International (http://www.datasets.com/), which focuses on the publication of Dataset Papers as well as the underlying datasets that they describe, and Conference Papers in Science (http://www.cpis.com/), which publishes peer-reviewed manuscripts that arise from conference presentations and workshops. While it is still too early to evaluate the success of these new initiatives, Hindawi is hopeful that these platforms will be able to build significant momentum over the coming year.