Entries in "Databases, Publishers, & Vendor Updates" ( for this category only)

Sticker Shock - Take 2

Do you know how much journals cost, especially in science and engineering?

Cornell University Library uses real world purchases to show you how much libraries invest in your education and research needs. Check out Sticker Shock 2 for more information. I am scared when they compare journals to cars and international trips.

The original Sticker Shock was completed in 2002.

IEEE Xplore Downtime

An IEEE Xplore upgrade is scheduled for Saturday, 15 March, 2008. During this upgrade, the system will be unavailable for up to four (4) hours beginning at approximately 10:00 am EDT (UTC/GMT - 4 hours).

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

C&EN Online

The Case community now has online access to Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) from 1998 to present. Access was arranged by OhioLINK.

[About C&EN]

Chemical & Engineering News is a weekly magazine published by the American Chemical Society. C&EN editors and reporters based in Europe, the U.S., and Asia cover science and technology, business and industry, government and policy, education, and employment aspects of the chemistry field.

C&EN Online offers Latest News, supplementary material to C&EN print articles, back issues of the magazine since 1998, and special features such as Reel Science, NanoFocus, RSS feeds, and blogs.

Happy 50th Birthday: Physical Review Letters

Physical Review Letters, started by Editor Sam Goudsmit as an experiment, reaches its 50th anniversary in July 2008. They are marking this occasion in several ways.

Mathematical Biology Now Covered by Biology Direct

Biology Direct considers original research articles, hypotheses, comments, discovery notes and reviews in selected subject areas, and will eventually cover the full spectrum of biology. Subject areas already launched include Genomics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Immunology, and Mathematical Biology.

Andrei Yakovlev wrote an editorial that kicked off the new commitment to Mathematical Biology.

Modern mathematics offers a much richer arsenal of tools and ideas than those that are frequently employed to describe the enormous diversity of biological phenomena.

Reminder: Older Versions of SciFinder Retired

Please note that on January 2nd, 2008 CAS retired the following versions
of SciFinder/SciFinder Scholar, as communicated to customers in mid June
2007:

• SciFinder and SciFinder Scholar 2004.2 (MAC OS 9 and Windows)
• SciFinder and SciFinder Scholar MAC OS X 1.0
• SciFinder 2007.0 for Windows

Knovel Unit Converter

Knovel has added a unit converter to its collection of resources. It can be freely accessed by anyone, even nonsubscribers.

Unit Converter: www.knovel.com/unitconverter

Other free content is available for those that sign up.

Reminder:
For the Case community, the Kelvin Smith Library subscribes to Knovel content for your convenience.

FREE ASM Trial Membership through October 1

Become an ASM Member or Trial Member to be eligible to WIN up to $10,000 in ASM products and services in the $35,000 ASM's Everything Material Sweepstakes.

FREE Trial Membership through October 1, 2007, no purchase necessary.

MathSciJournalWiki

MathSciJournalWiki is a freely-editable resource for information on scholarly journals, especially in mathematics. It aims to be a central resource for understanding the journal system, both in its academic and economic aspects.

It lists the price history and numbers of pages for many of the journals used in mathematics and physics. It also highlights various news in the math and science publishing industry.

K-Theory Editorial Board Resigns

The Not Even Blog reported that the entire editorial board of K-Theory (Springer) has resigned and in 2008 will be publishing a new journal called Journal of K-Theory (Cambridge University Press) at about half the subscription cost.

IEEE Spectrum Announcement

IEEE Spectrum and Make magazine are joining forces to call attention to the coolest and cleverest do-it-yourself electronics projects. If your university students have designed and built something that they'd like to share with the combined readerships of Spectrum and Make - more than 1 million people - please enter it into the contest.

If you are a finalist, you'll get:

• An archive of back issues of Make
• An official IEEE Spectrum Baseball hat
• Your name in a future issue of IEEE Spectrum identifying you and your project as a finalist

If you win, you'll receive:

• Coverage of your project in the print and/or online editions of both Spectrum and Make
• Transportation and accommodations to attend the next "Maker Faire" Make magazine's jamboree for do-it-yourselfers. 20-21 October at the Travis County Fairgrounds in Austin, Texas where they will describe and demonstrate their project

Entry deadline is 1 September 2007.

To enter, send a brief description of your project and include an estimate of how much it cost. Include a photo, a parts list, and a schematic if possible. E-mail them to: spectrum-diy-contest@ieee.org, or send them to: Spectrum/Make DIY contest, 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5997 USA.

Research ShowCase

I would like to thank Mohan Sankaran, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, for co-submitting a poster with me. We hope it gave other educators ideas on how to use library resources as a teaching tool, rather than only a research tool. Look for the poster in Digital Case in the future.

Knovel as a Tool for Engineering Research and Education
Knovel is a virtual technical library that includes over 800 full-text engineering and scientific reference works, handbooks, and datasets. Originally purchased by the Kelvin Smith Library to supplement the traditional print reference collection, it has become an important tool in engineering classroom instruction. Knovel data can be sorted, filtered, and exported from "live tables". Equations can be solved and graphs plotted, thus allowing students to capture values from existing graphs and perform "what if" experiments on the data.

The Case Western Reserve University Research ShowCase poster winners have been listed.

The Kelvin Smith Library also announced the winner of the geohunt contest.

SAE Publications Board to Review Digital Rights Management Controls for Education

SAE International’s Publications Board temporarily will suspend full activation of Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls as applied on the Society’s Digital Library of technical papers for licensees at colleges, universities and other academic institutions. See full story for more information.

Update: ICIS Creates a Students Portal - Includes Chemical Prices

ICIS has fixed the format of the chemical price list that is contained within their student portal. It formally did not view correctly in the Firefox browser, but it should work for all major browsers now.

IEEE Xplore Demonstration

The Kelvin Smith Library is sponsoring two sessions for Case faculty, staff, and students to learn more about the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Xplore Database. The campus community is invited to participate from 11:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. on April 18 in White Hall, Room 411. The session will include pizza and a chance to win prizes. RSVP to Brian Gray.

An alternative session will occur from 2-3 p.m. the same day in Nord Hall, Room 310.

Sign Up for IEEE Standards Alerts via Email or RSS

IEEE Xplore now features opt-in standards alerts to keep you up-to-date on standards revisions available through email or RSS. This free service has recently been expanded to enable any IEEE Xplore user to be notified whenever a new standard or draft is published or a standard is revised. Users have the option to sign up for standards alerts based on industry or version number. To sign up, visit: ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocalerts_signup.jsp

[VIA: What's New @ IEEE for Libraries, March 2007, Volume 8, Number 3]

Continue reading "Sign Up for IEEE Standards Alerts via Email or RSS"

ICIS Creates Student Portal

ICIS is working on a new student portal, or "knowledge zone". Right now it links to some resources available to students. In the future, they "hope it will turn into a space in which students and academics worldwide can communicate and discuss issues with each other, and showcase their best work to the wider world, not least potential employers."

Several librarians have contacted and discussed the lack of chemical prices for student projects with ICIS. In the past, I documented and shared my concerns directly with ICIS. Randy Reichardt has taken similar steps. He has personally been involved in the recent developments.

ICIS with the announcement of this new student portal has helped to fill this need for chemical prices. ICIS now provides "you with historical chemical prices. Note that these prices are a guide only, and must not be used to guide real-time business."

I understand chemical prices are hard to locate and maintain, even for a major chemical publisher, so this historical resource fills a major need for chemical engineering students.

Thank you ICIS and Randy Reichardt!

Continue reading "ICIS Creates Student Portal"

UK PubMed Central Launched

The British Library Press Release
UK PubMed Central Launched
9 January, 2007

From today scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research and to submit their own published results for inclusion in a new online resource. Based on a model currently used by the US National Institute of Health, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to a permanent online archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences. See: www.ukpmc.ac.uk.

See also PubMed Central (PMC), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

RefWorks Training for Engineering

If you are a Case faculty member, researcher, or a student in engineering or other sciences and want to learn how to organize your research better, the Kelvin Smith Library offers just the tool for you! RefWorks is a web-based tool used to store and manage citations, create bibliographies, and create in-text references. The RefWorks trainer will be presenting in Nord Hall 516 from 2pm-3:30pm on February 27th, and she will specifically be focusing on using RefWorks with the various engineering resources the library has made available. Please RSVP to Brian Gray (bcg8@case.edu).

Rexa - Computer Science Literature

Rexa is a digital library and search engine covering the computer science research literature and the people who create it. Rexa aims to facilitate research progress and collaboration by providing efficient browsing, search, associations and analysis among papers, people, organizations, venues and research communities.

• Keyword search on over 7 million papers (mostly in computer science)
• Cross-linked pages for papers, authors, topics and NSF grants
• Browsing by citations, authors, topics, co-authors, cited authors, citing authors; (find who cites you most by clicking "Citing authors" on your home page)
• Web-2.0-style "tagging" to bookmark papers
• Automatically-gathered contact info and photos of author's faces
• Analysis of research topics, their impact, and how they relate

Check out the FAQ for more information.

Descriptions pulled from About Rexa and Rexa FAQ.

Rexa blog also provides more information and highlights additional resources.

Lets go Case Students - Win the Knovel University Challenge

Knovel University Challenge kicks off its spring 2007 season on February 5th and will run through April 5th. The University Challenge provides students the opportunity to master their research and analysis skills while competing for 9 prizes. This year's winners will receive a $1500 scholarship or 1 of 8 iPod Shuffles. The University Challenge, now in its third season, is open to students of hard sciences, mathematics and technology-related courses of study at universities with access to Knovel Library or Knovel K-Essentials.

To participate in the Spring University Challenge, go to http://www.info.knovel.com/challenge/.

Ohio Note:
In Fall of 2006, a University of Cincinnati student won a 30G Video iPod.

Google Snippets Still Illegal in Belgium

The Library Journal has reported that a Belgian court upheld the earlier ruling that Google "snippets" of Belgian newspapers in Google News violated Belgian copyright laws.

[VIA: Library Journal Academic Newswire, February 15, 2007]

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Website Downtime

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) website (http://www.rsc.org) will be unavailable on Saturday 2 December 2006 from 09.00 to 17.00 GMT for essential maintenance.

The RSC apologises for any inconvenience that this downtime may cause.

Customer Services
Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, UK

Topology - Entire Editorial Board Resigns

Several sources, such as the ACRLog, have announced that all the members of the editorial board of the mathematics journal Topology have resigned due to the pricing policy of its publisher Elsevier.

We have heard other reports like this over the last few years, and may see more actions like this in the future as journal prices climb quicker than the money available for their purchase.

Case has access to Topology through the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center.

New Purchase - Encyclopedia of Biostatistics Online

The Encyclopedia of Biostatistics (2nd Ed.) offers the definitive reference to support the development and use of statistical methods for addressing the problems and critical issues that confront scientists, practitioners and policy makers engaged in the life and medical sciences. With the growing importance and application of biostatistics, reflected in the increasing number of statisticians employed in the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare sector and medical schools, this new edition will find widespread application in basic medical science; the planning, financing and distribution of health care; and the measurement of health care status and progress in the population.

The Encyclopedia now includes many contributions that focus on the rapid growth of bioinformatics and its pivotal role in studying the human genome.

• Expanded and enhanced coverage of key topics including bioinformatics, clinical trials, computation, genetics, and Bayesian methods and applications
• Containing over 1300 articles, 182 entirely new to this edition, with more than 300 revised and updated to reflect current research and developments
• All encompassed in 8 extensively cross-referenced volumes

The Case community has access to the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics through the Research Database list. Eventually it will also appear in the library catalog.

No Google Snippets in Belgium

Google has lost a court case in Belgium to include "snippets" of newspaper articles in Google News. In the U.S., publishers have been asking Google to index more content in order to push subscriptions and pay-per-view purchases. I guess Google needs to walk a real interesting tight rope.

[VIA: Library Journal - Academic Newswire, September 28, 2006]

Continue reading "No Google Snippets in Belgium"

Knovel: Take the University Challenge! - For Case Students

If you have not already entered the Knovel University Challenge, please give it a try.

For Case Students Only - I will offer an added bonus. Stop by the Engineering Reading Room in Nord Hall 508 and pick up a paper entry for a chance to win one of two Knovel gift packages. It will have the same exact questions that Knovel is collecting for their giveway. Fill out the paper form and bring the entry to Nord Hall 510. Nord 510 is the office where faculty, staff, and students can stop by for assistance from me, the Engineering, Mathematics, and Statistics Librarian. It is located on the 5th floor of Nord Hall in the hallway attached to Sears. If I am not present, please slide the entry under the door.

I will only accept one entry per student, and the 2 winners will be selected from everyone that submits the correct answers. The Case-Only Contest will end at midnight on Monday, November 13, 2006.

Continue reading "Knovel: Take the University Challenge! - For Case Students"

BMC - Summary of Biomedical Funding Agency Policies on Open Access

BioMed Central has compiled a summary of the open access policies of different biomedical funders, linking to official policy statements from those funders where available.

ICIS Chemical Business Americas - Update

I am glad to see Randy Reichardt at the University of Alberta got a little further with a response towards why the publication (Chemical Market Reporter) was drastically changed with no feedback or warning to academia. I only received a standard response from several people at ICIS that basically already told me the obvious - "we are only covering about 100 prices and focusing more on news". I made it clear to ICIS that the strength, and what made them unique to academic libraries, was that they covered such a large amount of chemical prices. The current price coverage was much weaker than they were promoting and probably of minimal value for engineering students. Chemical industry news had many publications and organizations that focused in this realm and they were leaving a niche market (chemical prices) that academia relied heavily on CMR for.

Randy Reichardt received another response from Penny Wilson, ICIS Global Editorial Director, that reaffirmed a commitment to students. I hope this statement is not just an attempt to keep current subscribers. Their past efforts have not shown that students were considered much in their decisions, or they did not truely understand their subscibers or future subscriber needs. I am hoping it is the later, and they just did not understand how much academia needed chemical prices before they dropped the prices from the print CMR, rigged together a clunky online access with no IP recognition, and finally slashed hundreds of prices from their inventory.

Knovel: Take the University Challenge! - Win an iPod

Case students are eligible for this opportunity!

This contest is open to current students in all schools with trials and subscriptions to the Knovel Service. One entry per person. The contest starts 9/13/06. You have until (midnight) Monday, November 13 to submit your answers and contact information (full name, school, mailing address, email address, and time to complete) via the link at www.info.knovel.com/ipod.

All entries with a total of 5 correct answers will be placed into a random drawing for one of (6) 30G Video iPods and (8) iPod Shuffles and (1) $500 Visa Cash Card. The drawing will take place on November 10, 2006. The Prizes will be awarded to entrants in the US, Canada, Asia, Eastern Europe,Western Europe and all other regions. All winners must present correct answers to all 5 quiz questions. The winners will be contacted by Knovel Corporation.

The correct answers and winners of the contest will also be announced and featured in K-News on www.knovel.com. All entries become Knovel Corporation’s property and will not be returned. Each participant consents to the use of his or her name and picture on the Knovel Web site for informational and/or promotional purposes, without compensation.

Connecticut Legislators Are Fighting Back Against Textbook Publishers

This comes at no shock to anyone that has ever bought a textbook:

Government analysts say the price of textbooks has risen at twice the annual inflation rate since 1986.

Boston.com News has reported that Connecticut legislators are trying to fight back against textbook prices.

Legislators are considering legislation that will require publishers to inform professors of all books available on a particular subject, how long they will remain on the market and the wholesale price they charge to bookstores. It would also allow Connecticut students to purchase their books the first week, even if financial aid has not been finalized.

ICIS Chemical Business Americas - More News

Seems like ICIS Chemical Business Americas (Chemical Market Reporter) may be writing its own ending in academic libraries. Randy Reichardt has discovered that up to 75-80% of the prices that were historically tracked have been removed from the online price index.

I looked today (September 12, 2006) at the price index. Only 86 prices were listed for 51 unique compounds. Last year when we spent the EXTRA money over 500 entries were included. In addition, many of the items that are included rarely come up in a chemical engineering design project at my institution. For example, I have never helped a student look up the following items nor did I need them a couple of years ago when I worked on my own chemical engineering design projects: coconut oil (2 entries), clover leaf oil, cotton oil (2 entries), canola meal, fish oil (4 entries), etc.

I will be updating my chemical engineering research guide to include other alternative resources and tricks for students to find chemical prices, as the value of this resource may no longer be a luxury academic libraries can afford.

Timeline of events:

• Chemical prices are removed from print edition
  
• Case spends the money to add online prices with an initial price of $415 for over 500 chemicals
  
• Announced name change
  
• Entry about poorly timed updated
  
• Today less than 100 entries exist

CMR Now Called ICIS Chemical Business Americas

UPDATE to my earlier posting and formal annoucement from publisher:

CMR is now ICIS Chemical Business Americas. As of the 4th September CMR has been reborn as ICIS Chemical Business Americas. As part of ICIS, we aim to leverage our strengths and reflect this in our branding. With our global and extensive resources from around the world we can present our readers with the most comprehensive publication in the sector.

ICIS Chemical Business Americas will continue to provide our readers with all the content that they have grown to rely upon at CMR, from news of the week to expert coverage of key markets. And we are sure our readers we love our new fresh design and our regular new sections.

The Case Community can continue to gain access from the Library Catalog under "Chemical Market Reporter", until the name and links have all been changed.

Chemical Market Reporter Publisher Again Shows No Respect for Academia

As you may recall previously, I worked with the publisher of Chemical Market Reporter to establish electronic access for the Case community. This came after many librarians expressed great concern to the publisher for not considering the needs of their users.

CMR was one of the few resources available for students to establish chemical prices for their many projects. The publisher switched to online-only without asking academic users what they needed the most. They tried to make things better by offering an online subscription, but many libraries were still left in the dark as they required a single password login and wanted more money. This publisher forgot that the future purchasers of CMR would be the very students they were ignoring now.

ICIS has again decided to ignore academic subscribers. They are changing CMR to another publication, but shut down operations right when many academic librarians were directing students to this resource. A "coming soon" message does not help students complete their assignments.

OAIster - Digital Collections from Hundreds of Institutions

OAIster is a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. Their goal is to create a collection of previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone.

As of September 2, 2006, OAIster contained 8,995,140 records from 670 institutions. Users can search these records by keyword, title, author, subject, or language, while limiting by media type. Users can also browse by institution.

Marquis Who's Who on the Web - Now Available

The Kelvin Smith Library has acquired electronic access to Marquis Who's Who on the Web. It offers biographical data on leaders and achievers from around the world in the areas of business, law, science, medicine, the arts, government, entertainment and more - in one convenient source. Comprehensive biographical coverage, including birth and death information, family history, education and degrees, career history, creative works, awards, achievements, memberships, and more. Coverage includes 1985 to the present.

It is available for the CASE community from the Research Databases list.

When finished using Who's Who, please click on "log off" in the upper-right corner or the next user will need to wait 10 minutes to gain access.

ICIS Jobs - Coming Soon

UPDATE:
ICIS jobs is now available.

---

ICIS jobs will be available soon, with searchable chemicals jobs and careers information.

ICIS is an information provider for the chemical and oil industry.

Google & ACS Trademark Case

According to CNET News.com, the Google Scholar trademark case ends with the American Chemical Society.

ACS, which was founded in 1876 and claims to be the world's largest scientific society, sued Google in 2004. The suit claimed that the free "Google Scholar" journal-search service unfairly competes with ACS' "SciFinder Scholar," which appears to be more comprehensive but charges a fee.

Directory of Published Proceedings is Now Free

The InterDok Directory of Published Proceedings (DoPP) database is now available free of charge online. This resource began in print format in 1965. It is particularly useful in identifying hard to find conference literature in the sciences, engineering, medicine, technology, social sciences and humanities. As of today, DoPP maintains over 50,000 records and also provides procurement assistance for any title located in DoPP, with most being available at below publisher list price.

(VIA: KSL Reference Weblog, June 9, 2006)

IEEE Downtime - Saturday, July 29th

On Saturday 29 July, IEEE will release a major system upgrade to the IEEE Xplore digital library.

As a result of this upgrade, users may experience up to 8 hours of downtime beginning at approximately 8:00 EDT.

IEEE Xplore 2.1.4 will be OpenURL compatible, which provides a standardized syntax for organizing bibliographic metadata and identifiers in a URL and transferring data between information services. Links are enabled between unsubscribed content in IEEE Xplore to a library resolver, leading users to appropriate resources within their institution. With this enhancement, librarians can work with commercially available link resolver software to fully enable their publication catalog. OpenURL will be provided in these areas:

• Search results,li>References
• Brief abstracts
• IEEE Book abstracts

Other features of the IEEE Xplore 2.1.4 upgrade include:

• RefWorks and Bibtex format downloadable citations from IEEE AbstractPlus records, search results, and tables of contents
• Monthly lists of each periodical's most-downloaded articles
• Watermarked PDF documents, illustrating the value of your library subscription

This release continues our successful launch of IEEE Xplore 2.0, and incorporates many of the requests we have heard from our customers.

An additional update is planned for release before the end of 2006.

If you have any questions regarding this upgrade, please let us know.

Thank you,
IEEE Online Support
onlinesupport@ieee.org

More IEEE Content

CASE subscribes to IEEE Xplore and thus has access to this new content as described in the following IEEE announcement.

The IEEE this week made available to its online subscribers the earliest issues of its first technology journal, dating back to 1913.

Currently known as "Proceedings of the IEEE," the journal was titled "The Proceedings of the IRE" when it premiered in January of 1913.

The IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) was one of two predecessor organizations which merged to form the IEEE in 1963.

This week's update brings the first seven years of the title online (1913 - 1919). "Proceedings of the IEEE" issues from 1963 forward were previously available online through the IEEE Xplore digital library. Issues from later years will follow in the coming months.

Papers in the first issue included "A Discussion on Experimental Tests of the Radiation Law for Radio Oscillators," "High Tension Insulators for Radio-Communication," and "Recent Developments in the Work of the Federal Telegraph Company."

"IEEE has made a commitment to digitizing our entire journal backfile, along with past editions of many of our conference publications," said Barbara H. Lange, Director, IEEE Publications Product Line Management and Business Development. "This is a small part of a two-year plan to bring our historic, scholarly content to new generations of researchers and practitioners."

IEEE will continue to digitize the historic backfile of its journals over the coming months.