Monthly Archives: February 2009

CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics 2008-2009

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The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is now in its 89th edition.

The current print edition is @ Lewis (Information Desk) Reference QD65 .H3 

*New Feature – Structure searching!

Now you can search the handbook by chemical structure. Simply download the intuitive Marvin Sketch Java Applet from ChemAxon and then draw your structure query. Search over 10,000 compounds! Try Structure Searching Now >

New Tables  include:

  • Energy Content of Fuels
  • Global Warming Potential of Greenhouse Gases
  • Weather-Related Scales    

VADLO — a search engine for the Life Sciences

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VADLO search engine, developed by 2 biologists, caters to all branches of biomedicine and life sciences. Searchers may delve within five categories: Protocols, Online Tools, Seminars, Databases and Software.

"Protocols category will let you search for methods, techniques, assays, procedures, reagent recipes, plasmid maps, etc. Online Tools will cater calculators, servers, prediction tools, sequence alignment and manipulation tools, primer design etc. Seminars are essentially powerpoint files for presentations, lectures and talks. Databases will take you to, well, databases, resources, compilations, lists etc. It is here that you can also search for your favorite genes and proteins. Software category is for bioinformatics experts who are looking for codes, scripts, algorithms, executables, downloadable programs and collaborations"

Direct to VADLO

Taken from the VADLO site, and reproduced in the latest ResourceShelf Newsletter, No. 397.

e-Science — a Research Guide from the Library of Congress

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Science Reference Services of the Science, Technology & Business Division of the Library of Congress, has created this research guide E-SCIENCE dated January, 2009.  There are many useful research guides at their website;  they list key books, journals, databases, technical reports, dissertations, etc.   The series is called "Science Tracer Bullets Online"

The definition of "e-science" from the introduction to the guide:

"The term e-Science refers to large scale science that is carried out through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet. Typically, such collaborative scientific enterprises require access to very large data sets, very large scale computing resources, and high performance visualization. e-Science is a digital infrastructure that allows scientists to conduct research in new ways. Common terminology related to e-Science include cyberinfrastructure, grids, grid computing, distributed networks, and high performance computing."

University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship–A Call to Action

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"US Leading associations call for universities need to promote broader dissemination of research and scholarship – 16 Feb 2009

Four leading associations serving research universities – the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) – have issued a joint statement, ‘The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship.’ The statement is a call to action for universities to ensure the broadest possible access to the products of their work.

The statement is an outgrowth of a roundtable discussion hosted by the four organisations that engaged provosts, chief research officers, chief information officers, senior faculty, and library and university press directors. These leaders identified a set of actions that should be taken to expand the dissemination of the full range of products of the university community’s research and scholarship. The call to action offers a broader vision for the university’s role and provides a series of recommended actions, both for campus leaders and for collective action by the university community.

The complete document, ‘The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship—A Call to Action,’ is available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/disseminating-research-feb09.pdf."

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Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

Rice Database, formerly Rice Bibliography

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The International Rice Research Institute’s Library is responsible for maintaining the Rice Bibliography. Whereas the library catalogue contains a large collection of books and journals of interest to scientists researching rice or rice-related topics, the Rice Bibliography is a comprehensive bibliography of all books and articles directly pertaining to rice. It endeavours to include all articles and books relating to rice in the world, and is the world’s largest and most complete source of scientific information about rice with almost 8,000 new references added each year. All articles pertaining to rice are sought out for the Rice Bibliography and IRRI Library acquires copies of the article whether or not it holds the particular serial in its collection.Over the years the Rice Bibliography has been mounted on a total of four software packages. The version on the screen before you contains references from 1970 onwards. Older references, a few going back to the mid-18th century, are available for searching at IRRI Library.

From their website and from the announcement by ALA (ACRL-STS) of the 2009 (biennial)Oberly Award for Bibliography in the Agricultural or Natural Sciences.

Portico Archive now holds 10 million articles

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US Ten million journal articles preserved within Portico archive – 06 Feb 2009

"Non-profit electronic archiving service provider Portico, US, has announced that more than 10 million journal articles are preserved within the Portico archive. Launched in 2005 with support from JSTOR, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ithaka, and the Library of Congress, Portico provides a permanent archive of scholarly literature published in electronic form.

The Portico archive is supported by both publishers and libraries and is increasingly central to the digital preservation and permanent access strategies of institutions around the world.

The growth of the archive underscores the importance of preservation archives in facilitating a secure transition from print to electronic collections. At the close of 2008, 68 publishers producing journals and e-books on behalf of hundreds of scholarly societies participated in Portico and have entrusted over 8,200 journal titles and 4,600 e-books to the archive. Libraries from the global community have been equally supportive of Portico with nearly 500 current participants from 13 countries.

Click here"

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

Open Access & Article Depostion from Nature Pub. Group

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 Nature Publishing Group and ASGT announce open access and article deposition services for authors – 26 Jan 2009

Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, and the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) have announced the launch of two new services to help authors comply with funder and institutional mandates for public access. Under the initiative, Molecular Therapy, the official journal of the ASGT, will now offer authors the option of immediate open access on publication, including deposition in PubMed Central, subject to the payment of a publication fee. In addition, as a further author benefit to aid compliance with several funding body mandates, NPG will deposit all Molecular Therapy articles to PubMed Central upon final publication, to be made public after 12 months.

Upon submission of original research articles, authors have the option of publishing their articles as open access for a publication fee of £2,000 / $3,000 / €2,400. Open access articles will be freely available upon publication. By paying this one-time fee, authors are also entitled to self-archive the final published PDF of their articles on a website, institutional repository, or other free public server upon publication. Open access articles will be designated by the MTOpen logo in both the print and online editions of the journal and will be freely accessible via PubMed Central immediately after publication.

Open access articles will be published under a Creative Commons license. Authors may choose between the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported and the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence. The Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Licence permits derivative works, ensuring that authors can comply with funders such as the Wellcome Trust. Under both licenses, the final published version of MTOpen articles can be downloaded and shared as long as the author and original publication are cited.

Under the terms of NPG’s License to Publish, self-archiving is encouraged on all original research articles published in Molecular Therapy. In all cases, the author’s version of the accepted manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication. This applies regardless of whether the authors choose the MTOpen option.

Molecular Therapy joins The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports and British Journal of Cancer, which already offer an open access option to authors. NPG also announced the introduction of an open access option on ten further journals.

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Knowledgespeak Newsletter, 26 Jan., 2009

AuthorMapper.com — free online analytical tool — Springer

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German Springer launches free analytical online tool, AuthorMapper.com – 04 Feb 2009

STM publisher Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, has launched AuthorMapper.com, a free analytical online tool for discerning trends, patterns and subject experts within scientific research.

The portal currently searches over three million journal articles to deliver a variety of useful information. The current searchable content is from all Springer journals. Metadata from other STM publishers will be included in the near future. The tool can provide a variety of analyses, such as keyword tag clouds and "Top 5" bar charts for various important metrics, and includes an interactive world map of the results.

AuthorMapper.com’s advanced search function also allows complex queries using keyword, discipline, institution, journal and author. The results can identify new and historic scientific trends through timeline graphs and bar charts of top statistics, allowing for identification of trends in the literature, discovery of wider scientific relationships, and locating other experts in a field of study.

The trend timeline graph, for instance, allows authors to see whether their area of expertise is growing or has already peaked. Users that are only interested in open access content can restrict their searches accordingly, and all search results provide link-outs to content on SpringerLink. For graduates, post-docs and emerging researchers, AuthorMapper.com shows which institutions are the most prolific in specific research areas and allows for their comparison.

AuthorMapper.com’s can even be useful for members of the general public seeking to identify experts, for example, medical specialists, working close to where they are located.

Click here

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter (2/4/09)