IRELAND'S RESEARCH PROMISE
University Researchers Receive BIOSIS Boost
Philadelphia, PA USA-London UK - 04/01/2005 — Today, Thomson Scientific, a business of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) announced that the world's leading life sciences database is now available to all researchers, staff and students at Irish universities. The agreement enabling universal access to BIOSIS Previews® was made possible by the Irish Research electronic Libraries (IReL) initiative, part of a government initiative that has seen the largest investment in scientific research in history.
IreL is funded by The Higher Education Authority (HEA) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), who are investing up to €20m over the next five years to fund electronic information resources at a national level in all seven Irish university libraries. The initial focus is on enhancing Ireland's strengths in the fields that underpin biotechnology and information and communications technology (ICT), as these fields currently promise to drive scientific and economic advancement in the decades ahead.
Dr. William C Harris, Director General of SFI said that access by researchers to electronic journals is a vital element of the infrastructure required to attract, recruit and retain leading researchers in Ireland-an essential practice for major research-driven countries.
Paul Sheehan, Chairman of the CHIU Librarians Group, said that the group decided to make BIOSIS a part of the IReL offering because "Our researchers need access to the best tools to compete at the top level, and BIOSIS Previews is considered to be the leading life sciences database with a tremendous breadth and depth of coverage."
The BIOSIS Previews agreement is the latest step in strong partnership between Thomson and the Irish Universities. BIOSIS Previews is part of the ISI Web of KnowledgeSM premier research platform. Therefore, Irish researchers will benefit from more complete results by simultaneously searching BIOSIS Previews with other information resources such as Web of Science®, conference proceedings, and Journal Citation Reports®.
"Our academic and research staff demand high standards in library and information service provision," said John Fitzgerald, University Librarian, The Boole Library, University College Cork. "Web of Science was first selected by UCC in order to support and promote our dynamic research culture as we have found it to be the most comprehensive, multidisciplinary database of scholarly journal literature. The addition of BIOSIS Previews expands our coverage of life sciences and biomedical sciences literature and will help our staff and students to go deeper and stay current on a wider range of subject areas."
About the Irish Research Electronic Library - IReL
Developed by the CHIU Librarian's group and jointly funded by Science Foundation
Ireland (SFI) and the Higher Education Authority (HEA), IReL is a national initiative
which provides access to a wide range of electronic journals for researchers
in Irish universities. The scheme's focus is in the fields of Biotechnology,
Information and Communications Technology and related disciplines.
Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com), with 2005 revenues of approximately $8.5 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. Thomson provides value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate e-learning and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With operational headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Thomson has approximately 40,500 employees and provides services in approximately 130 countries. The Corporation’s common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).
Scientific is a business of Thomson Reuters. Its information solutions assist professionals at every stage of research and development—from discovery to analysis to product development and distribution. Thomson scientific information solutions can be found at www.scientific.thomson.com.
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