Commercial Digest, a once a week digest of messages containing
informational content from commercial bodies (i.e., publishers, vendors,
agents, etc.)

This week's digest contains 2 messages:
1) 8,000 authors favour Open Access and see direct evidence of the
positive impact
2) RSC Publishing and University of Southampton drive the chemical
semantic web

---------------
Message #1:

Subject: 8,000 authors favour Open Access and see direct evidence of the
positive impact
From: Jennie Johnson <jennie.johnson@tbicommunications.com>
Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 17:46:02 +0100

Dear all,

I thought you might be interested to learn that InTech, an Open Access
publisher, last week published a White Paper entitled 'Author Attitudes
towards Open Access Publishing' - making available results from a recent
survey of over 8,000 authors to determine their attitudes towards Open
Access.

The benefits of the Open Access (OA) model continue to be debated by
publishers and librarians, but relatively little research has been
undertaken to understand the attitudes of researchers. It was with this
in mind that InTech commissioned TBI to survey its 25,000-strong
author-base to help better understand researcher awareness of and
attitudes towards this evolving model. By sharing the results of this
survey, InTech hopes to dispel some of the myths about what researchers
truly value relating to OA and peer review.

I've copied yesterday's press release below for your information, or to
read the White Paper and see for yourself the full results of the
survey, go to:
http://www.intechweb.org/public_files/Intech_OA_Apr11.pdf

I do hope this is of interest; please let me know if you would like any
more information.

All best wishes,

Jennie Johnson, TBI Communications

Tel: +44 1865 875896

//Press release//

/8,000 authors favour Open Access and see direct evidence of the
positive impact/
Today InTech, an Open Access publisher, has made available results from
a recent survey of over 8,000 authors to determine their attitudes
towards Open Access.

The benefits of the Open Access (OA) model continue to be debated by
publishers and librarians, but relatively little research has been
undertaken to understand the attitudes of researchers. It was with this
in mind that InTech, a commercial Open Access publisher with a focus on
book publishing, commissioned TBI to survey its 25,000 author-base to
help better understand researcher awareness of and attitudes towards
this evolving model.

The survey attracted a very high response rate – 32% (over 8,000) of
InTech authors responded, showing a high level of interest and
engagement. Responders were drawn from all over the world, and most
defined their role as ‘researcher’ (78%) covering a broad range of
specialties.

“We are excited but not particularly surprised by these results” said
Goran Candrlic, CEO, “At InTech we work very hard to continually improve
all of our processes and provide the best service possible for authors
and it is good to see that our authors recognise our achievements.”

Key findings of the survey include:

- There is overwhelming approval amongst researchers for free access to
their work (75% rate as ‘important’ or ‘very important’), whatever their
country of origin

- Authors are generally accepting of the need to cover Article
Processing Charges (APC), but are concerned that the charges remain
affordable both for them or their institutions

- Authors want to see direct evidence of the positive impact that OA has
for them and their work if they are to be persuaded to pay publication
charges

- Peers and colleagues are the most important source of recommendations
for authors when choosing a publisher, but librarians are also extremely
influential

- Researchers are concerned with the quality of OA publications as
publishers have little incentive to reject work as they are paid based
on volume of output rather than quality

- Peer review remains a highly valued service, and one that authors
still expect publishers to provide

- There remains widespread misunderstanding and some mistrust of the OA
model and OA publishers

The full results of the survey can be downloaded at:
http://www.intechweb.org/public_files/Intech_OA_Apr11.pdf

By sharing the results of this survey, InTech hopes to dispel some of
the myths about what researchers truly value relating to OA and peer
review, so that the scholarly communications community can continue to
innovate and evolve its business models to suit the needs of the authors
that they serve.

For more information, please contact:

Ms Ana Nodilo

nodilo@intechweb.org

+385 51 686 165

---------------
Message #2:

Subject: RSC Publishing and University of Southampton drive the chemical
semantic web
From: Louise Peck <peckl@rsc.org>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 13:24:52 +0100

* * * Apologies for cross posting * * *

The Royal Society of Chemistry's (RSC) free chemical database ChemSpider
has added Resource Description Framework (RDF) functionality to its
interface, in collaboration with the University of Southampton's School
of Chemistry. The availability of RDF allows the database records to be
found and understood by semantic web tools, another step in ChemSpider's
mission to create a public chemical information infrastructure.

= = = = = = = = = = = =

Richard Kidd, Informatics Manager at the RSC says "we are delighted to
work with top academic teams pushing forward what's possible with
semantic chemistry, and we hope others will use the RDF representation
of ChemSpider to support their own developments"

= = = = = = = = = = = =

ChemSpider as a Linked Data source for oreChem

The machine-processable representation was specifically developed in
order to leverage the core competencies of the ChemSpider database:
resolvable identifiers; high-quality, curated metadata; and rich linking
to the extensive RSC corpus. Furthermore, as part of the Microsoft
Research-funded oreChem project, OAI-ORE technology is being used to
facilitate the discovery and re-use of the chemical information in the
correct context.

= = = = = = = = = = = =

Prof Jeremy Frey and Dr Simon Coles commented "it is a pleasure for
Southampton to work with the RSC's ChemSpider as a culmination of our
contribution to the Microsoft-funded oreChem project. As a member of the
Southampton Chemistry eResearch team, this work forms the core of
graduate student Mark Borkum's PhD thesis."

= = = = = = = = = = = =

"Enabling open, semantic chemistry in this way is a monumental step
forward for the domain," notes Lee Dirks, director of Education &
Scholarly Communication for Microsoft Research, "We're thrilled to have
played a role in facilitating the creation of this resource and
extremely pleased to see Southampton and the RSC innovating and leading
the field."

= = = = = = = = = = = =

Another oreChem participant, Carl Lagoze, the Associate Professor,
Cornell University Information Science, Co-Director Open Archives
Initiative added "it's wonderful to see the results of our work on
OAI-ORE in this exciting application. It fulfils our goal of making the
results of research easier to disseminate and reuse"

= = = = = = = = = = = =

ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database providing fast access
to over 25 million structures, properties and associated information. By
integrating and linking compounds from more than 400 data sources,
ChemSpider enables researchers to discover the most comprehensive view
of freely available chemical data from a single online search.

For more information
GO TO <www.chemspider.com>

The Southampton work builds on work from the RC-UK & EPSRC funded
e-Science CombeChem and Platform projects (GR/67729, EP/C008863,
EP/G026238, EP/F05811X) and JISC Data Management projects.

To review this news item online
GO TO
<http://blogs.rsc.org/technical/2011/05/16/rsc-publishing-and-southampton-university-drive-the-chemical-semantic-web/>

Kind regards

Louise
Louise Peck, Library Marketing Specialist
Royal Society of Chemistry, Thomas Graham House,
Science Park, Cambridge, CB4 0WF, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 432669, Fax: +44 (0) 1223 420247
www.rsc.org/publishing
peckl@rsc.org

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