Over the past couple of months, we have been working to provide you with key information, including updates and new consortia.  Here are the latest developments from the CDO Team.

JISC Banding Changes

An overhaul of the JISC Banding scheme began recently, after much consultation.  JISC Collections has revised its banding structure, which is now divided into 1-10, for all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).  It was felt that changes in the way educational institutions were funded required changes in banding.  The new banding for HEIs, which as of yet is the only revised sector, reflects a broader range of data.  It takes into account all relevant income relating to research, teaching and “other knowledge-based activities”.  It will be used as the basis for pricing of all renewals as of 1 August 2014, and new license agreements as of 1 August 2013.

More information on the new scheme is available here.

Elsevier Deals with Consortia in Russia

Elsevier has made deals with two, new Russian consortia: the Far Eastern Consortium and the Siberian Regional Universities Consortium.

Elsevier will be providing access to ScienceDirect and Scopus from 2013 onward.  The Far Eastern Consortium, with which it made a five-year deal from January, is led by Far Eastern Federal University (FEF) in Vladivostok and consists of more than 50 universities and other academic institutions. It is looking to increase its research output, create opportunities for international collaboration and improve academic ties.

The Siberian Regional Universities Consortium is a very new consortium, formed in November 2013.  As of now, it consists of only nine members from Central Siberia, led by Novosibirsk State Technical University.  However, Novosibirsk is a significant scientific research center in Russia, and the consortium expects to strengthen in its efforts to educate researchers with foreign scientific information.

We are looking into both these consortia.

CAMS and ISPG

The Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) has made a deal with the Independent Scholarly Publishers Group (ISPG), a selection of high-impact publications hosted by Highwire Press.  The agreement, which includes access to 37 medical journals and runs for three years, was negotiated by the Charlesworth Group.  CAMS, a major state institution under the direction of the Chinese Ministry of Health, conducts multi-disciplinary medical research.  Its goal is to improve patients’ health and apply biomedical research to the training of Chinese medical professionals.

New Consortia Added to CDO

Since the last newsletter, we have added many new consortia, including two from Taiwan.  CDO now contains information on well over 400 consortia from 100 countries. The following are some recent additions:

As always, please feel free to voice your tips and suggestions about future CDO developments.  We would love to hear from you.
We can be reached at info@ringgold.com. 

Stephanie Jones, CDO Editor.