Springer and Lavoisier have signed an agreement for the sale of Springer-Verlag France’s French-language STM publications to Lavoisier.

The transaction is effective as of 1 September 2014. Archives and the articles to be published up to and including December 2016 will continue to be accessible online via SpringerLink. All past and current subscribers will have continued access to the journals archives on the Springer platforms.

The French-language products published by Springer Healthcare in Paris and those published by Springer Group entities, including Professional Publishing, are not part of this transaction and will remain with Springer.

Going forward, Springer-Verlag France will focus its activity on English-language STM publishing, playing a valuable liaison role to researchers, libraries and institutions in France, as well as serving as a base for the Sales operation for France, Southern Europe and the Maghreb.

“Lavoisier is a trusted name and an established brand in French-language publishing, and it plays a significant role in the market. We are confident that our French-language products are in good hands,” said Guido Zosimo-Landolfo, President of Springer-Verlag France.

Nathalie Huilleret, Deputy Managing Director of Springer-Verlag France, said “We will now focus on our development efforts for English language assets, and we will continue to remain in close contact with the research community in France.”

September 2, 2014

Author: James Douglas

SAGE, one of the world’s leading independent and academic publishers, has today announced the purchase of education journals publisher, Symposium Journals Limited. The sale was announced jointly by Roger Osborn-King of Symposium Journals and Ziyad Marar, SAGE’s Global Publishing Director.

With a journals publishing career spanning nearly 40 years, Roger founded Symposium Journals 12 years ago in which period he has established a high quality portfolio of education journals publishing international research within the field of education for researchers and professionals. Symposium’s journal portfolio includes leading academic journals within childhood studies, educational policy, contemporary educational practice, international education and teaching assessment, as well as the flagship journal of one of the prominent educational societies, European Educational Research Association. The acquisition results in Symposium’s entire journal portfolio of nine titles becoming a part of SAGE’s journal program, including all of the following titles:

· Citizenship, Social and Economics Education (CSEE) – a focus for scholarly and professional studies in the fields of education, socialisation, curriculum development and aspects of economics, sociology, politics and social psychology.

· Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood (CIEC) – forum for researchers and professionals who are exploring new and alternative perspectives in their work with young children and their families.

· E-Learning and Digital Media (ELDM) – explores the ways that different disciplines and alternative approaches can shed light on the study of technically mediated education.

· European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) – publishes aspects of educational research which illuminate the cases and contents of the emerging borderless space of European educational research.

· Global Studies of Childhood (GSC) – provides an opportunity for researchers, university and college students and professionals who are interested in issues associated with childhood in education, family, and community contexts from a global perspective to present, share and discuss their work.

· Policy Futures in Education (PFE) – promotes debate in education among university academics, practicing policy analysts in government and local government, national and international policy advisors, politicians, members of policy think-tanks and world policy agencies such as the World Bank, OECD and the European Union.

· Power and Education (PE) – promotes critical studies of contemporary educational practice and challenging the complicit practices and assumptions of mainstream educational research.

· Psychology Learning & Teaching (PLT) – devoted to enhancing knowledge of how to improve learning and teaching of psychology.

· Research in Comparative & International Education (RCIE) – concerned with research and its methods. It seeks to publish new research in the field of comparative and international education, broadly defined, or which address theoretical and methodological issues in comparative and international education with clear research relevance.

Speaking of the acquisition, Ziyad Marar, SAGE’s Global Publishing Director commented:

“We are delighted to welcome the highly regarded education journals of Symposium publishing to SAGE. The nine titles, including the flagship journal of the European Educational Research Association, represent an international range of well-regarded research and complement our strong presence in education publishing extremely well. We look forward to working with the impressive array of editors and authors on each journal and to using SAGE’s global reach and international sales and marketing presence to substantially increase the profile, visibility and accessibility of these important titles.”

Commenting on the transfer of its publishing program to SAGE, founder Roger Osborn-King remarked:

“I am delighted to be handing my journals publishing business to SAGE, a publisher that has impressed me by their company vision, their social science and humanities specialism, and our shared values. I am confident SAGE will continue to nurture the academic growth of the editorial and research base of these journals, and to open up for them many exciting new opportunities. SAGE has the foresight, market presence and infrastructure to ensure this, and I look forward to seeing their continuing development and impact on the field of educational research.”

Roger will continue work with SAGE to support the transition and will continue to publish each journal through to the end of 2014 following which all production, editorial, marketing and sales of the journals will move to SAGE. Roger will continue to wholly own and run his long-established book publishing company, Symposium Books Ltd. Further information on the acquisition and information for subscribers can be found here: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/symposium.sp

September 15, 2014

Author: James Douglas

Nature Publishing Group is pleased to announce a new partnership with The Systems Biology Institute, Tokyo to launch npj Systems Biology and Applications, an online open access journal dedicated to publishing high quality research. The journal will begin accepting submissions in November 2014 and publish its first articles on nature.com in Q1 2015.

npj Systems Biology and Applications, which will be formally launched on 15th September at The International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB) in Melbourne, Australia, aims to provide a home for articles that help define the developing and interdisciplinary field of Systems Biology. The 15th ICSB attracts top system biologists from all over the world to an environment that encourages integration of biology, computer science, engineering and chemistry, and that spans leading areas of biomedical research. The Systems Biology Institute is a non-profit private research institution established in 2000 with the aim of promoting systems biology research and its application to medicine and global sustainability.

Areas of interest for the journal include fundamental biological systems and drug discovery, but also systems-based applications to healthcare, medical practice and implementation, big data, biotechnology, food science, human behaviour, broader biological systems and industrial applications of systems biology.

Martin Delahunty, Global Head of Partnership Journals at Nature Publishing Group said: “We’re delighted to partner with The Systems Biology Institute on npj Systems Biology and Applications, the latest addition to our Nature Partner Journal portfolio. These open access, online-only journals disseminate high-quality, online-only subject specific research, demonstrating our continued commitment to open science.”

Dr Hiroaki Kitano has played a pivotal role in establishing and promoting the discipline of systems biology, which employs modern computing to study living systems as an intergrated whole, and is now part of the research program at hundreds of universities and institutes around the world.

Dr Hiroaki Kitano, Editor in Chief said: “Systems biology has now turned into mainstream biology. We all know biological systems from subcellular systems to global eco-systems are vastly complicated systems. At the same time, there are underlying principles to how such systems have formed, and are functioning. Uncovering such principles, relating them to tangible findings, applying them to medical, healthcare, biotechnology, and global sustainability is what has been expected from systems biology. I have been carefully watching the progress of this, and am convinced that we now have arrived at the stage to seriously boost the field. Nature Publishing Group is an ideal partner to bring the field into the next level.”

npj Systems Biology and Applications will encourage all approaches, including network biology, application of control theory to biological systems, computational modelling and analysis, comprehensive and/or high-content measurements, theoretical, analytical and computational studies of system-level properties of biological systems, ICT healthcare solutions, mobile devices, and computational/software/data platforms enabling such studies and applications.

The journal will publish research articles and review articles, as well as editorial summaries. Systems Biology is an interdisciplinary field and this is reflected in the broad audience of npj Systems Biology and Applications: researchers in basic biology and biomedicine, researchers and managers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnological and healthcare industries as well as policy-makers in the biomedical sciences.

September 15, 2014

Author: James Douglas