STLQ

:: I attended the annual IEEE Breakfast at the SLA conference this morning. Following a delicious morning meal, IEEE presented its slide show of the latest news and forthcoming upgrades to their publications and digital products. Among the highlights:

• an extensive analysis has been done for IEEE on patents referencing IEEE journals, conferences and standards. Data show that IEEE publications are referenced for more than other commercial and non-commercial publishers; the statistics flew by too quickly for me to record any numbers
  
• Patents referencing IEEE have higher citation impacts than peer patents (in the same categories
  
• Top patenting organizatgions reference IEEE papers seven times as papers from other publishers; remove conferences, still five times as many
  
• 95% of references to IEEE come from the companies filing the patents; 5% are added by the patent examiners at USPTO
  
• According to IEEE figures, IEEE publications increased in cost by 6% in 2005; "competitors" increased by 8%; IEEE's average page count per publication increased by 15%, "competitors" by 4% in 2005
  
• new content being added to IEL, such as the Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  
• many IEEE publications now including multimedia content
  
• 27 of 114 titles now posting articles online once they are approved for publication
  
• in 2005, two more releases for IEL: 2.1 will include:
  • IEEE press integration; abstract records for IEEE press books with links to Wiley
    
  • single sales of IEEE standards
    
  • enhancements to OPAC listings
• Release 2.2 will include:
  • My Profile functionality
    
  • Open URL source capability
    
  • Known citation searching
    
  • improving readability to address small font problem
    
  • More legacy content; example: backfiles of the Proceedings of the IEEE will be added as follows: 1963-1987 in 2005; 1913-1962 in 2006
    
  • watermarking PDFs

I was surprised that no mention was made of integrating RSS into any IEEE products or dbs. In 2005, RSS feeds for journal tables-of-contents is a no-brainer. But they did say they are considering adding RSS in the future. Overall a good presentation (as it is every year at SLA), combined with a good morning meal. Thanks to IEEE for hosting this session again.