It appears that Web of Science will be offered…

“in conjunction with Google’s Library Links, article-level links to subscription full text [in Google Scholar search results] for patrons affiliated with a participating library”

Which means that…

“Thomson Reuters is pulling its Web of Science content from discovery services such as Summon, EBSCO Discovery Service, and Primo as early as the end of this year [2013].”

Perhaps this is partly a logical market recognition of the superiority of Google and Google Scholar over web-scale discovery services? That’s what I hear in reviews and tests. [Primo vs. Scholar | Primo, Summon, EDS, WorldCat Local vs. Google, Google Scholar]. One of the biggest differences seems to be that web-scale discovery assumes the data it uses is correct, whereas Google’s bots actively check/harvest/discard on a constant basis. I guess the downside of that is that over-zealous bots can occasionally suck dodgy links into the index.

A downside of the Web of Science integration into Scholar may be that university users will more than ever assume that Google Scholar + Google Library Links is all they need, not realising how much it leaves out. For instance, a 2011 study of Scholar by art historians found that Scholar was indexing only half of the DOAJ’s 30 art history titles. Adding WoS to Google Scholar doesn’t seem likely to cure that problem.

More news about how academic journal corruption works in China…

“… a report in the U.S. journal Science [told of how] “China’s publication bazaar,” as it is described, allows unscrupulous scientists to pay big money — up to $26,300 — to become authors of scientific papers they didn’t write. […] They don’t do any experiments or research either [but are catered to by China’s] “flourishing academic black market involving shady agencies, corrupt scientists and compromised editors — many of them operating in plain view,” according to Science.”

Some of these dodgy papers are not simply published behind the Great Firewall of China. For instance, one was found in a legitimate western journal called the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences.

“Publishing in journals — especially those with international credibility — is often key to academic promotion and is seen as critical in China. “People are sparing no expense in order to get published in international journals,” Fan Dongsheng, a neurologist and former vice-president of Peking University Third Hospital, told Science.

Academia.edu has been hit with thousands of DCMA takedown notices from commercial publisher Elsevier, because academics had posted their own papers on the site.

NewJour has just launched its new website. The new listings are now at a different URL, here.

Marvin Minsky’s book The Society of Mind (1987) is now free under Creative Commons.

WordPress.com is increasingly seeing the improper use of DCMA taketown notices…

“… we’ve seen an increased number of improper notices. … [and one example is]…

“Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus are experienced science journalists who operate Retraction Watch, a site that highlights and tracks situations where published scientific papers may not be everything they seem. One reader apparently disagreed with a critique published on Retraction Watch – so he copied portions of the Retraction Watch site, claimed the work as his own and issued a DMCA takedown notice against the original authors.

While there are no legal consequences (like fines) under the DMCA for copyright abusers, there is a provision that allows victims of censorship (and their web hosts) to bring legal action against those who submit fraudulent DMCA notices.

So today, we’ve […] take a small strike back at DMCA abuse. We’ve filed two lawsuits for damages under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, which allows for suits against those who “knowingly materially misrepresent” a case of copyright infringement.”

Excellent news. The BBC is reporting that…

“Google has defeated a legal action mounted to stop it scanning and uploading millions of books. In 2005, the US Authors Guild sued Google alleging that its plans to create a digital library amounted to massive copyright infringement. In its defence, Google said its plans constituted “fair use” because it was only putting excerpts of texts online. U.S. judge Denny Chin has now sided with Google and dismissed the case brought by the Guild.”

Wired has the full text of the ruling.

Read a lot of news feeds? My desktop RSS reader FeedDemon has sadly just stopped development, with a new final 4.5 version. But the developer Nick Bradbury has very kindly made the latest FeedDemon Pro 100% freeware…

“As promised, this last version of FeedDemon is completely free. All of the features of the Pro version are available, and ads are no longer shown in the bottom left of the screen.”