Scientific organizations representing over 130 countries have agreed to overhaul existing world data centers and services to create a World Data System, the International Council for Science (ICSU) has announced. The existing networks for collecting, storing and distributing data in many areas of science are seen to be inadequate and not designed to enable the [...]

A message from Dean Cooter: As you may know, a three-year classroom renovation project was approved last spring and the first phase of the project, which includes the “07″ (207, 307, 407) rooms in Jefferson Alumni Hall, began this summer. The first few months involved development of the floor plans and AV upgrades as well [...]

From the press release: The Journal of Biomedical Science is transitioning to open access format, published by BioMed Central. The journal is indexed in MEDLINE and Web of Science and has an Impact Factor of 2.02. It is now accepting submissions via its new BioMed Central website and will publish its first open access articles [...]

The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) has released its latest Hospital Performance Report, covering October 2006 – September 2007. The report includes information about risk-adjusted mortality, readmissions, lengths of hospitalization (stay), and hospital charges for patients admitted to 162 Pennsylvania hospitals. The print version evaluates hospital performance across 31 common medical procedures and [...]

October 14 was the first international Open Access Day.   In recognition of the day, several announcements were made: 1) BMJ celebrates 10 years of offering open access content online by formally declaring themselves as Open Access (OA) publishers. In 1998, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), published by medical publisher BMJ Group, UK,  became the first [...]

In its most recent update, RefWorks has added 58 new output styles and a number of style corrections or enhancements.  This set emphasizes health literature heavily — all the new styles are now automatically included in your RefWorks account.  There’s no need to download anything or otherwise update your account.  You’ll find them now on [...]

Open access journal PLoS Medicine has published a paper that analyzes the current system of publishing medical and scientific research, and concludes that the system distorts the reality of scientific data that are generated in the laboratory and clinic. The team of authors  - Neal Young of the National Institutes of Health; John Ioannidis of Tufts University School [...]