Elsevier Offers 950 New Health Titles to Research4Life

Elsevier is contributing an additional 950 electronic books to Research4Life, a public-private partnership working to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing developing world access to critical scientific research. Building on the 800 existing Elsevier science and technology books, the new electronic books cover Clinical Medicine (438 titles), Health Professions (332 titles), Veterinary Medicine (174 titles), and Clinical Dentistry (24 titles). These include seminal works such as Clinical Gynecology, Cancer Pain, Pain Medicine, Spinal Cord Injuries, and Saunders Manual of Small Animal Practice and will be accessible to users by the end of the year.

"Health practitioners and researchers in developing countries will benefit greatly from this increased ebooks offering, said Kimberly Parker, HINARI Programme Manager at the WHO, "We greatly appreciate the efforts made by Research4Life partners to continuously improve and update their content offering to those who need it most."

"Contributing clinical titles helps to support doctors and nurses in the developing world to treat their patients and enhance their quality of life. It also benefits researchers in the developing world by providing them with access to critical, current information and supports them to become fully integrated into the international research community." remarked Alicia Wise, Director of Universal Access at Elsevier, "Research4Life is central to our goal of achieving universal access to scientific, technical and medical information, so we're very pleased to make this contribution and to work in partnership with everyone involved in Research4Life."

Elsevier is a founding member of Research4Life and the leading contributor of content with over 1600 participating journals, 1800 electronic books and SciVerse Scopus, a web-integrated literature research tool with direct links to 18,000 full-text articles from 5,000 publishers. The program's key partners include: WHO, FAO, UNEP, WIPO, Cornell and Yale Universities, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, 150 publishers and technology partner, Microsoft.

Research4Life is the collective name for four public-private partnerships which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. Since 2002, the four programmes, Health Access to Research (HINARI), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) and Access to Research for Development and Innovation (aRDi) program have given researchers at more than 5,000 institutions in 105 developing world countries free or low cost access to over 7,000 journals provided by the world's leading science publishers.

Contest for Mosby's Nursing Suite Sets out to Identify Real-Life Superheroes in the Nursing Profession and Draws 6,500+ Facebook Fans

This nationwide US campaign set out to identify real-life superheroes in the nursing profession in four key categories: The Validators; The Achievers; The Educators and The Protectors.

The four hero categories were chosen to align with how the products in Mosby's Nursing Suite help nurses provide better care. The campaign featured content illustrating how using these products has contributed to creating real-life nurse superheroes, including videos and Facebook posts about the superhero personas.

Each month we called for nurses to nominate their colleagues, peers, managers and staff for a particular category. After our internal team narrowed down nominees to three finalists, we let our Facebook fans vote for the winner of that category. The four winners were asked to keep their identities secret until the big reveal at the ANCC (American Nurses Credentialing Center) National Magnet Conference in Maryland in October.

We are now conducting in-depth interviews of each of our heroes to tell our community the full stories of how these four came to be the heroes they are today. These profiles will be featured on ConfidenceConnected.com and on Facebook.

Elsevier Launches Bilingual International Nursing Skill Training and Management Platform: Nursing.China.com

NursingChina.com is the first bilingual, nursing online reference product available in China, featuring skills within specialties such as Critical Care Nursing, Emergency Nursing, Pediatric Acute and Critical Care, Maternal/Newborn, Mental Health, Neonatal, Perioperative, Oncology and more. Building from Mosby Nursing Skills, NursingChina offers Chinese nurses, nursing students and educators Mobsy Nursing Skills' convenient online access to evidence-based nursing skills and procedures.

NursingChina's content has been translated to Chinese from Mosby Nursing Skills, an authoritative nursing resource with insights from leading nursing societies, including American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN), Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN), and American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.), and is continuously updated to reflect the latest in evidence-based practice.

"I am very glad that one of the most authoritative nursing resources in the world, Mosby's Nursing Skills, is available in Chinese now. This bilingual version provides Chinese nurses and students resources and tools for them to systematically study the latest evidence-based nursing skills, and brings international best practices in nursing to China," Guifang Guo, President of Nursing School, Beijing University, said of the online reference product.

NursingChina presents nursing skills in multiple formats such as quick sheets, video/animations, images and extended texts to help students understand core nursing facts and procedures more easily. Online competency tests and checklists allow students to test their skills, meanwhile for nurse educatorsa convenient management training system is providedto facilitate their planning, monitoring and evaluation training, is also available.

The launch of NursingChina follows the 12th five-year plan of the China Government's Health Development Planning Framework and the China Nursing Development Planning Framework (2011-2015). NursingChina plays an active role in the standardization of nurse training in China. It enhances the capacity of nursing services and improves nursing technical skills across the country, through 24/7 access to one of the top international nursing skills online resources for more than 2 million Chinese practicing nurses and students.

The Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series

Planned as an annual event, the Cell Press – TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series are held in three Indian cities each year and are aimed at bringing internationally renowned scientists face to face with the Indian scientific community.

This year, Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese physician and celebrated adult stem cell researcher, will deliver the Third Edition of The Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series in Bengaluru, Chennai, and New Delhi in January-February 2012. His Lecture is titled "New Era of Medicine with iPS Cells".

Professor Yamanaka's scientific breakthrough was the creation of embryonic-like stem cells from adult skin cells. Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University, has said that Yamanaka's work "is likely to be the most important stem-cell breakthrough of all time. The ability to generate an unlimited supply of patient-specific stem cells will revolutionize the future of medicine."

The stated goal of Professor Yamanaka's laboratory has been to generate pluripotent stem cells from human somatic cells. The ability to "reprogram" adult cells back into an earlier, undifferentiated state has helped to reshape the ethical debate over stem-cell research by providing an approach for obtaining pluripotent stem cells that does not require that they be taken from an embryo. Once established, these pluripotent stem cells may be used in regenerative medicine and also to elucidate disease mechanisms and to screen drugs.

The Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series is co-sponsored by Cell Press, an Elsevier imprint for biological research and reviews, and TNQ Books and Journals.

Lecture Schedule:

• Bengaluru: Monday, January 30, 2012, 4.30 p.m., JN Tata Auditorium, National Science Seminar Complex, Indian Institute of Science, C.V. Raman Road.
• Chennai: Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 6.00 p.m., Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall, (Lady Andal School Premises), Harrington Road, Chetpet.
• New Delhi: Friday, February 3, 2012, 4.30 p.m., Teen Murti Auditorium, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti House, New Delhi.

Elsevier receives millionth response to Editor, Author and Reviewer Satisfaction Survey

As part of our feedback program the quarterly Editor, Author and Reviewer Satisfaction Surveys give us insights into how our customers think and feel about our products and services. The feedback helps and inspires us to improve our products and services. The sheer scale of responses indicates how invested our customers are in helping us improve our products and services.

Rewarding the millionth respondent

In March, we received the millionth response to our surveys. To commemorate this milestone, a prize was awarded to the millionth respondent, Dr. Agnieszka Sobczak-Kupiec, PhD, who specializes in material engineering, chemical engineering, technology and nanotechnology at the Krakow University of Technology, Poland. She completed the survey after she published her article titled "The influence of calcination parameters on free calcium oxide content in natural hydroxyapatite" in Elsevier's Ceramics International.

Ewa Kittel-Prejs, Publishing Director for Elsevier in Poland presented her the prize: an iPad and a $250 Elsevier WebShop gift certificate – as well as eBook subscriptions worth more than €10,000 for her institution.

Looking ahead

We continuously aim to help our authors, editors and reviewers improve their outcomes and work processes. To do so we need to repeatedly think about the value we offer them, not just in absolute terms. The Editor, Author and Reviewer Satisfaction Surveys help us identify where we can make the greatest difference, so that we can continue helping researchers advance science and improve and save lives.

Using feedback constructively

Some examples of initiatives that have come about from listening to our authors, editors and reviewers over the years are detailed below:

• Driving up quality - When deciding where to publish authors have consistently told us that the quality of the journal is important. A relentless focus on quality over the last several years has seen our share of citations improve – we are now 7% above the industry average.
• Improving publication time - Authors have also identified the speed of publication as a priority. Article-based publishing makes the article available much quicker. Authors no longer have to wait for the compilation of the journal issue itself. This is a key part of Elsevier's efforts to find new ways to speed up and enhance the publication process.
• Making peer review more efficient - For years our editors have been searching for better, faster ways to find and retain reviewers. Reviewer Finder, a new feature in Elsevier Editorial System (EES) tool makes the search for qualified reviewers more straightforward and simple. It allows editors to find potential reviewers, by providing information such as a reviewer's affiliation and area of expertise to identify a good match or a potential conflict of interest. Automated Reviewer Reminders, another new feature in EES helps editors speed up the peer review process by sending out automated reminders to their reviewers to submit their article reviews.
• Making it easier to submit to another Elsevier journal - An improvement to the manuscript submission process is the Article Transfer Service (ATS). Through ATS, an article that is not accepted by an Elsevier journal is submitted to another Elsevier journal for which it may be more appropriate, after author's approval. It is designed to not only save authors time but also to reduce the risk of reviewers receiving the same manuscript twice.
• Ensuring authors know when they are cited - CiteAlert is a service which automatically notifies authors by email when their work is referenced by a newly published article. Authors will receive a CiteAlert soon after their work is cited, provided that the relevant journal is being indexed by SciVerse Scopus.
• Improving the structure and expanding the content of the article - Our Article of the Future project seeks to improve the scientific article on SciVerse ScienceDirect in all areas of content, context and presentation. This year, all articles on ScienceDirect are under a new three-pane format. The format is more dynamic, makes content and data more accessible and includes apps that researchers can use to get better results or work more efficiently.