Patent Medicines Get A Belated Chemical Checkup

Ads for patent medicines and medical appliances dominate a 1930s storefront in England.

General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

Ads for patent medicines and medical appliances dominate a 1930s storefront in England.

General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

The patent medicines sold in days gone by may, contrary to the name, not have had real government patents. But that didn't stop their makers from claiming the concoctions could cure ailments ranging from indigestion to jaundice and fever.

Now, researchers have put some of these old elixirs and pills in the Henry Ford Museum's large collection of patent medicines to a modern test. They found a mix of potentially harmful metals like lead and mercury along with benign ingredients, including calcium and iron.

Library research only goes so far in understanding the once-popular medicines. "They can find out what they were supposed to cure, they can find out based on old newspapers what they caused," says chemist Mark Benvenuto who led the research for the Dearborn, Mich., museum. "But they can't necessarily find out what was in them."

Dr. Sawen's Magic Nervine Pills contained calcium, iron, copper and potassium. Despite advertising claiming they were free of lead and mercury, both elements were found in the pills.

Courtesy of Mark Benvenuto

Dr. Sawen's Magic Nervine Pills contained calcium, iron, copper and potassium. Despite advertising claiming they were free of lead and mercury, both elements were found in the pills.

Courtesy of Mark Benvenuto

Hundreds of these patent medicines were sold in stores, by mail order and from traveling medicine shows in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were called patent medicines because people put their names on them. Take, for instance, Hollister's Golden Nugest Tablets and Dr. Sawen's Magic Nervine Pills.

"Before the creation of the Food and Drug Administration in the early 1900s, people could claim to cure anything, and they didn't have to list what was in them," says Mary Fahey, chief conservator and head of preservation at the museum.

Benvenuto and seven of his students at University of Detroit Mercy analyzed studied 25 medicines using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence to identify metals and nuclear magnetic resonance to look at all compounds, including carbon-based chemicals, or organics.

So, did the analysis find any of the ingredients actually listed on the label? "It's tough to make that call with the organics," Benvenuto says. "None of them were nice, clean and pure for just one compound. So by NMR, you're going to see all the compounds at once. And the other thing is these things have been sitting in a bottle for 120 years ? organics tend to break down."

Because the mixture of organic substances proved to be a challenge, research on them is ongoing. The preliminary results were recently presented at the American Chemical Society's National Meeting & Exposition in New Orleans.

For now, the researchers focused on identifying elements first because they are much less ambiguous. "I found a lot more iron, calcium and zinc than I did mercury and lead," Benvenuto says.

For example, the team found iron, calcium and a little bit of silver and copper in Reynold & Parmely's Female Health Restorative. The pill claimed to contain coffee, ceratrum, nux vomica, pulsatilla, cocculus, cimifuga and chamomile. But just because the researchers weren't able to discern the listed organics in their analysis, doesn't mean they weren't originally included.

And then there was P.P.P. Parson's Purgative Pills which was said to contain aloes, colmel, powdered colocynth, gamboge, soap, mandrake root and peppermint oil. That actually had a significant amount of mercury in them.

When they first found mercury in a couple of them, they were reminded that medicines containing the metal were a common treatment for syphilis. "It kills the spirochete," Benvenuto says. "It almost kills you, but it kills the spirochete."

Some patent medicines were known to contain other risky ingredients like cocaine and heroin.

The modern chemists aren't able to determine a drugmaker's motive. "I don't know if people were in it just to sell stuff or actually thought they had something that would solve a problem," Benvenuto says. "But if you stop and think about this, what we were analyzing here is kind of a first step into where we've come to today. If you go back to the year 1800, the way people got rid of ailments was a lot of home remedies."

In hindsight, we can say someone had a virus and their body would have dealt with it regardless of what they ingested, he says. So taking a patent medicine and then getting better was just coincidence.

"You and I might say they didn't really do a controlled study on this sort of thing, but no one had really conceived of controlled studies back then," Benvenuto says. "That doesn't mean they cured nothing."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/08/176561880/patent-medicines-get-a-belated-chemical-checkup?ft=1&f=1007

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Was McConnell's Senate Staff Digging Up Dirt on Ashley Judd?

Was McConnells Senate Staff Digging Up Dirt on Ashley Judd?

Along with the mystery surrounding who secretly recorded Mitch McConnell and his staff discussing campaign strategy at his campaign headquarters is another issue the tapes raise: the possibility that the Kentucky senator's legislative staff was helping dig up dirt on Ashley Judd and other potential opponents.

Democrats are seizing on it, but it's still unclear whether McConnell's staff did anything wrong.

In the recording, obtained by Mother Jones magazine, the aide doing the presentation thanks a group of people:

"So I'll just preface my comments that this reflects the work of a lot of folks: Josh, Jesse, Phil Maxson, a lot of LAs, thank them three times, so this is a compilation of work, all the way through. The first person we'll focus on, Ashley Judd - basically I refer to her as sort of the oppo research situation where there's a haystack of needles, just because truly, there's such a wealth of material," the aide says to laughter from the group. "Ah, you know Jesse slogged through her autobiography. She has innumerable video interviews, tweets, blog posts, articles, magazine articles."

"Jesse" may refer to Jesse Benton, McConnell's campaign manager, but the word "LA" probably refers to Legislative Aides or Legislative Assistants, people who work in his senate office.

Two other possible Senate staffers are Phillip Maxson, who is listed on the National Journal Almanac as Legislative Assistant, Projects Director, and "Josh," which may refer to Josh Holmes, McConnell's Senate chief of staff. It's common and legal for senate staffers to work on a campaign, but only if they take vacation time when they are working on the campaign and are volunteering.

In a statement this afternoon, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee criticized "McConnell's use of taxpayer-funded legislative aides to do opposition research for his reelection campaign."

"Mitch McConnell is desperate to play the victim," DSCC Executive Director Guy Cecil said in a statement. "The DSCC doesn't know if this tape came from a disgruntled Senate staffer who was forced to dig up dirt on their boss' potential opponents or another source, but its content is a clear example of how Mitch McConnell is the living, breathing embodiment of everything that is wrong with Washington. It is beneath the office of Minority Leader to engage in this kind of trivial politics."

The ethics rules read explicitly that, "Senate employees are free to engage in campaign activity, as volunteers or for pay, provided they do so on their own time, outside of Senate space, and without using Senate resources."

"Because Senate pay should be commensurate with Senate duties performed, when an employee intends to spend additional time on campaign activities beyond regular working hours and any accrued annual leave, a Senator should either reduce the salary of or remove the employee from the Senate payroll, as appropriate," the rules read.

Larry Noble, the head of Americans for Campaign Reform, said the work can just not be done "on Senate time."

"If they are referring to Senate staff working on this, the question is: Were they working on opposition research for the campaign while they were on the Senate payroll, while they were being paid by the Senate?" Noble said.

The meeting took place on Feb. 2, which was a Saturday, giving credence to the argument these staffers were volunteering their time, but as Noble points out it "doesn't mean the research was done on the weekend."

Noble said they also can't use any "any of the resources of the Senate office," adding, "There is no indication they were."

Benton, McConnell's campaign manager, would not comment only saying: "We're not commenting on the substance of illegally obtained recordings."

McConnell's Senate staff would not comment, instead directing all questions to the campaign.

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/were-mcconnells-senate-staff-digging-dirt-ashley-judd-225756863--abc-news-politics.html

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New evidence that natural substances in green coffee beans help control blood sugar levels

Apr. 9, 2013 ? Scientists today described evidence that natural substances extracted from unroasted coffee beans can help control the elevated blood sugar levels and body weight that underpin type 2 diabetes. Their presentation on chlorogenic acids ? widely available as a dietary supplement ? was part of the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, being held here this week.

Joe Vinson, Ph.D., who led the research, pointed out that type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes, is an increasing global health problem. In the United States alone, almost 26 million have the disease, in which the pancreas does not produce enough of the insulin that enables the body to use sugar, or cells resist the effects of that insulin. Blood sugar levels rise, increasing the risk of heart attacks, stroke and other health problems. Current treatments focus on oral medications that stimulate insulin secretions and/or reduce insulin resistance, dietary changes that control blood sugar levels and weight loss that reduces insulin resistance.

"A simple natural pill or capsule that would both help control blood sugar and foster weight loss at the same time would be a major advance in the treatment of type 2 diabetes," Vinson said. "Our own research and studies published by other scientists suggest that such a treatment may, indeed, exist. There is significant epidemiological and other evidence that coffee consumption reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes.

"One large study indicated a 50 percent risk reduction for people who drank seven cups of coffee a day compared to those who drank only two cups a day. I am trying to make the coffee and diabetes story as clear as possible for the public. The evidence points to chlorogenic acids as the active ingredients in coffee that both prevent diabetes and improve glucose control in normal, pre-diabetic and diabetic people."

Chlorogenic acids are a family of substances that occur naturally in apples, cherries, plums, dried plums and other fruits and vegetables. Vinson, who is with the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, which funded the research, pointed out that coffee ? due to its popularity as a beverage ? is a major dietary source of these substances. Large amounts of chlorogenic acids exist in green, or unroasted, coffee beans. However, the high temperatures used to roast coffee beans to make them suitable for use in coffee breaks down much of the chlorogenic acids. Thus, the focus has been on using concentrated extracts of green coffee beans, which contain higher amounts of chlorogenic acids.

In a previous study, Vinson found that overweight or obese people who took such an extract lost about 10 percent of their body weight in 22 weeks. The new study sought to document the effects of various doses of a commercial green coffee extract on the blood sugar levels of 56 men and women with normal blood sugar levels. They got a glucose tolerance test to see how their bodies responded to the sugar. Then over a period of time, they took 100, 200, 300 or 400 milligrams (mg) of the extract in a capsule with water. Follow-up glucose tolerance tests showed how the green coffee extract affected their responses.

"There was a significant dose-response effect of the green coffee extract and no apparent gastrointestinal side effects," Vinson said. "All doses of green coffee extract produced a significant reduction in blood sugar relative to the original blank glucose challenge. The maximum blood glucose occurred at 30 minutes and was 24 percent lower than the original with the 400 mg of green coffee extract and the blood glucose at 120 minutes was 31 percent lower."

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/WpHNwSPJ67s/130409124741.htm

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LG 23ET83V-W

LG monitors have always blended style and functionality, and the new LG 23ET83V-W is no different. This sleek 23-inch monitor sports an IPS panel and 10-point projected capacitive touch technology to deliver a colorful and responsive touch-screen experience. Its cool, white finish and seamless glass design will draw a fair amount of attention, and its color and grayscale performance will satisfy all but the most demanding users. However, it's missing some of the features that I've come to expect from the new crop of touch-screen monitors.

Design and Features
Taking a page from the Apple stylebook, the 23ET83V-W's 1,920-by-1,080 resolution panel is housed in a slender (1.7-inch) glossy white cabinet and sports a sheet of edge-to-edge glass over black borders. There's an LG logo in the center of the bottom border and five touch sensitive function buttons and a power switch off to the right.

The cabinet is supported by a white base and mounting arm that offers 30 degrees of tilt, but unlike Dell S2340T, it doesn't allow you to fold the panel flat so that it is parallel with the desktop surface. Nor does it offer height, swivel, or pivot adjustments. The stand is permanently attached, which prevents you from mounting the cabinet on a wall.

The rear of the cabinet houses two HDMI ports, a VGA port, and an upstream USB 2.0 port. There are no downstream USB ports on the 23ET83V-W, which is disappointing, nor are there any speakers, but there is a headphone jack. The monitor ships with a USB (upstream) cable and a VGA cable but doesn't include an HDMI cable. A resource CD and Setup Guide are also included in the box. LG covers the 23ET83V-W with a one-year parts and labor warranty.

The on-screen menus are uncluttered and easy to navigate. There are five picture presets while operating in PC mode (Custom, Text, Game, Cinema, Photo) and five AV modes (Custom, Vivid1, Vivid2, Standard, Cinema). Basic image settings include Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, Black Level, and Overscan, and Advanced settings include Gamma, Color Temperature, and Six Color, which lets you adjust hue and saturation levels for red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow colors. One of the buttons is a hot key for the Super Energy Savings (SES) feature which, when enabled, lowers the screen brightness and shows you total power reduction, CO2 reduction, and how many trees you have saved with the SES feature enabled.

Performance
The 23ET83V-W offers excellent touch-screen functionality. I had no trouble swiping in the Windows 8 Charms bar and gestures such as pinching, zooming, and scrolling were smooth and accurate. Moreover, the stand kept the panel firmly in place while using the touch-screen.

On the DisplayMate 64-Step Grayscale test I observed a trace of compression at the light and dark ends of scale but the effect was minimal and still much better than what you'd get from a TN panel. As with any IPS panel worth its salt, colors remained sharp from every angle.

As illustrated in the CIE (International Committee on Illumination) chromaticity chart below the 23ET83 produced fairly accurate colors; reds and blues were right in their respective zones (each small box represents the ideal color coordinates set forth by the CIE) and greens were just a tad off, but not enough to affect overall color quality or cause tinting.

The monitor averaged 24 watts of power usage during testing, which is typical for a 23-inch IPS panel. Engaging the SES (Super Energy Savings) feature had very little effect on picture quality and only saved 2 to 3 watts. No trees were saved during my testing either.

With the LG 23ET83V-W you get a gorgeous 23-inch touch-screen monitor that delivers robust colors and relatively good grayscale performance. Its responsive 10-point touch technology is ideal for navigating Windows 8 and it has dual HDMI ports so you can stay connected to external peripherals without having to swap out cables. However, it's missing a few key components found on similarly priced touch-screen monitors, including downstream USB connectivity, speakers, and a flexible stand. If USB connectivity and speakers are a must, consider our Editors' Choice for touch-screen monitors, the Acer T232HL.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/TbhkolZ44f0/0,2817,2417482,00.asp

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Education Schools Innovate to Supply STEM Teachers

Biologist Kaleigh LaRiche spent most of her first two years after college working in wildlife education at the Akron, Ohio, zoo. Today, she's a first-year science teacher in a Cleveland middle school.

LaRiche, who earns her master's in education from the University of Akron this spring, thanks the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship for her confidence in the classroom. The two-year master's program recruits accomplished science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) college graduates, as well as career changers like LaRiche, and puts them through their paces in preparation to work in high-need schools.

[Explore the Best Education Schools rankings.]

It is one of several model programs leading the charge to fulfill President Barack Obama's call for 100,000 highly qualified STEM teachers over the next decade, and to get them ready for the much-anticipated new K-12 math and science standards. With only 26 percent of U.S. 12th graders now deemed proficient in math, most states have adopted more rigorous new Common Core Standards for what kids should master at each level.

These guidelines stress depth over breadth; a separate effort, the Next Generation Science Standards, emphasizes questioning and discovery rather than rote memorization.

The Wilson Fellowship partners with several graduate schools of education in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and New Jersey, including the University of Indianapolis, Ball State University, the University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Montclair State University.

Almost from the start, fellows are immersed for the school year in local K-12 classrooms. LaRiche's four-day-a-week internship at a Canton, Ohio, middle school provided a $30,000 stipend and two mentors to show her the ropes. Course work included classes in the biology department and on problem- and project-based learning.

LaRiche is now a licensed teacher at Cleveland's Harvard Avenue Community School. When covering renewable and non-renewable energy in her sixth grade science class, she breaks students into groups and has them examine which renewable energy alterative would work best for a fictitious town and why.

"They are not used to learning this way," she says. "They are used to a teacher lecturing, taking notes, doing worksheets and labs." The goal is to make clear that science is a process.

Such innovations reflect the latest thinking about what is needed to put better science and math teachers - all kinds of teachers, in fact - into classrooms: an emphasis on subject content knowledge, abundant field experience and high-caliber candidates, as outlined in a 2010 National Research Council report.

Additionally, teacher-prep programs are creating subject-specific methods courses - so a biology candidate can study how best to teach biology, say - that provide training in problem-solving and project-based instruction.

"Woodrow Wilson really opened us to innovation and thinking creatively," says Jennifer Drake, dean of the college of arts and sciences at the University of Indianapolis. The university therefore has embedded intensive hands-on practice in all of its teacher-prep programs, is moving to require elementary-ed candidates to take more math and science courses and has deepened cross-pollination between the arts and sciences and education schools.

"In math, there is always a right answer, but there are always different ways to get there," says Christopher Lewine, a third-year teacher in Redwood City, Calif. So instead of moving to the next problem when a correct answer is given to an algebraic problem, Lewine's class at Everest Public High School is just getting started.

Rather than lecturing, he prompts students to discuss and defend how they solved the problem, discovering different approaches from one another. He learned this technique while getting his master's in the yearlong practice-heavy Teacher Education Program at Stanford University.

[Stay up to date with the High School Notes blog.]

Though the pace of innovation has picked up, teacher-prep programs vary widely in quality, and far too many still prepare teachers in a bubble, disconnected from the realities of the classroom, says Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and author of "Educating School Teachers," a milestone 2006 report.

You want "strong support in a total immersion program," preferably one that partners with K-12 schools and provides teacher-mentors, says Charles Coble, co-director of an Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities initiative to overhaul teacher training. That effort, the Science & Math Teacher Imperative, has sparked a move toward these sorts of best practices at 132 public and flagship universities and 13 university systems, which together produce more than 40 percent of the nation's math and science teachers.

Some of the new master's options aimed at scientists and mathematicians are modeled on the clinical training medical residents get. Kevin Perry was headed for a career in surgery when he decided he'd rather teach middle-school biology in New York City instead. He gets his teaching certification in middle- and high-school science this summer after a year in New York University's Clinically Rich Integrated Science Program (CRISP).

"On the second day of the program, we were put in the classroom," Perry says. After several weeks observing during a summer session last July, he was paired with a biology teacher in September to observe and then begin co-teaching at East Side Community School in Manhattan.

Each week, Perry and fellow teaching residents are led by NYU and K-12 school faculty in instructional "rounds" in which they discuss what works and what doesn't. He also takes courses in science, teaching methods, literacy and language acquisition and data and assessment.

Perry receives $30,000 in scholarships from NYU's Steinhart school and New York State, along with a $20,000 living stipend. Similar residencies are offered by the University of Pennsylvania, University of Delaware and Georgia State University, among many others.

[Discover ways to pay for graduate school.]

How can current teachers beef up their STEM bona fides and get set for the coming standards? Part-time and online options are springing up to meet their needs.

The University of Maryland, for example, has created a teacher-oriented master's of education in middle-school mathematics.

"This truly has made me a better teacher," says Germantown, Md., algebra teacher Adam Ritchie, who finished the Maryland evening and summer program in December. "I was able to apply [course work] right off the bat in the classroom."

Besides studies that encouraged exploratory and inquiry-based learning and gave him the know-how to better challenge all kids regardless of ability, Ritchie took algebra, geometry and statistics, and now feels much more ready for the Common Core in math, which gets rolled out in county middle schools next year.

The other welcome payoff: a 20 percent bump in salary.

This story is excerpted from the U.S. News Best Graduate Schools 2014 guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings, and data.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/education-schools-innovate-supply-stem-teachers-144757267.html

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Dave Wood Offers An Assortment Of Unique 40th Wedding ...

40th wedding anniversary gift

A round of applause to the couple who are soon to be commemorating their 40th wedding celebration anniversary! 10 years later and you will be celebrating your half a century wedding event anniversary! Nevertheless, before that, 40th wedding event anniversary is also an excellent explanation to commemorate.

You possibly a person who has actually been invited to a fortieth marriage anniversary celebration. Or, you are an individual that wants to make this turning point memorable for your spouse. Then you should choose 40th wedding anniversary gift that are agent of four many years of togetherness. The red colored ruby is both the conventional and modern gift concept for the 40th marriage wedding anniversary.

Various other methods to celebrate your 40th wedding anniversary:

Making a CD containing lengthy tracks that you and your partner made use of to listen closely prior to the both of you are married is likewise an excellent concept for 40th wedding anniversary gift. Tunes played throughout the wedding celebration dinner or wedding ceremony can be placed in the CD too.

A photo cd filled with memories is constantly an excellent 40th wedding anniversary gift idea. Nonetheless, rather than just having photos of you and your partner, feature the other additions that your loved one can bring out. Stories from your youngsters or grandchildren are constantly an excellent means to end the picture album to reveal the progression that had actually been made nevertheless these years.
A poem in ruby red ink is one more good gift idea. Think about words that best describes the things that had actually occurred to you and your partner for the past 40 years. Framing the poem in ruby red framework is a good way to add to the finishing touches of your poem.

As mentioned the 40th wedding anniversary has always been taken into consideration as a vital one. 40 years is a long time, and individuals always thought that alone been worthy of to be effectively commemorated. Traditionally, the 40th wedding anniversary is called the Ruby Anniversary. This is the label people inflicted her as it is taken into consideration as one of the most important, if not the most important anniversaries in a marriage. And rubies have actually always been the rarest, and the most costly of gems. Unfortunately, just as rubies, wedding anniversaries like these are likewise unusual today. If you reach have one, you ought to actually try and get a traditional present to your partner for your 40th anniversary: ruby charms. Nevertheless, since many individuals simply could?t afford something such as this you may attempt and make a present that may remind your partner of the rubies, and the worth they stand for. A container of great red vine, or a box of chocolate, covered in abundant red box. Likewise a red climbed, or red nasturtiums. All these can easily remind you and your partner of the style of rubies, which is appropriate for the 40th anniversary.

The 40th wedding anniversary, the Ruby Wedding anniversary is a point to keep in mind, and a thing to cherish. If you are among those privileged sets that manage to get to it, ensure you make it a day that you will never forget.

With all this details nearby and the varied 40th wedding anniversary gift buying choices offered, choosing anniversary presents for loved ones was never this simple. So, what are you waiting for, make this anniversary party something to be remembered by with a beautiful shock 40th wedding anniversary gift for your unique a person.

Click Right here for getting more details associated with 40th wedding anniversary gift

Source: http://shopping-product-reviews.com/dave-wood-offers-an-assortment-of-unique-40th-wedding-anniversary-gift/

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Mom: 'BUCKWILD' star a Christian, now in heaven

FILE - This Jan. 2, 2013 file photo shows Shain Gandee, from MTV's "Buckwild" reality series in New York. Gandee was found dead Monday, April 1, in a sport utility vehicle in a ditch along with his uncle and a third, unidentified person, authorities said. Gandee died doing what made him famous: careening through huge mudholes in his SUV, taking chances most others won?t, living free and reckless in front of reality-show TV cameras. His death further blurs the line between entertainment and real life in an age where fame is easier than ever to attain. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Invision/AP, file)

FILE - This Jan. 2, 2013 file photo shows Shain Gandee, from MTV's "Buckwild" reality series in New York. Gandee was found dead Monday, April 1, in a sport utility vehicle in a ditch along with his uncle and a third, unidentified person, authorities said. Gandee died doing what made him famous: careening through huge mudholes in his SUV, taking chances most others won?t, living free and reckless in front of reality-show TV cameras. His death further blurs the line between entertainment and real life in an age where fame is easier than ever to attain. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Invision/AP, file)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) ? For all his on-camera carousing and cussing, "BUCKWILD" reality TV star Shain Gandee was a publicly proclaimed and baptized Christian, and his mother told hundreds of mourners Sunday that she will see him again.

"I know where Shain is," Loretta Gandee told the family, friends and fans crammed into the Charleston Municipal Auditorium. "He said about a month ago, 'I know when I die I'm going to heaven.'"

Dressed in a hot-pink "Gandee Candy" T-shirt and jeans, she spoke only a few words but bellowed out an unaccompanied hymn, her voice echoing through the auditorium in prayer for their reunion.

Gandee, his 48-year-old uncle, David Gandee, and 27-year-old friend Donald Robert Myers were found dead April 1 in a sport utility vehicle that was partially submerged in a deep mud pit near Sissonville. They had last been seen leaving a bar at 3 a.m.

Autopsies determined all three died of carbon monoxide poisoning, possibly caused by the tailpipe being submerged in mud. That could have allowed the invisible gas to fill the vehicle's cabin.

Shain Gandee, nicknamed "Gandee Candy" by fans, was a breakout star of the show that followed the antics of young friends enjoying their wild country lifestyle. Season one was filmed last year, mostly around Sissonville and Charleston.

The Rev. Randy Campbell told the many young people in the crowd he understands that life bombards them with difficult choices. But he urged them to follow Shain Gandee's lead and embrace their faith now, while they are energetic and engaged.

"This life will hand you a lot of things and call it pleasure, but there is nothing that brings greater joy to a person's heart than serving the Lord," Campbell said. "You may think at this point, you're having fun, but those days will pass."

When they do, he said, God is all that matters.

Cameras were not allowed at the funeral or private family burial in Thaxton Cemetery.

As hundreds filed past the two closed coffins on the auditorium stage, a slideshow of family photos showed the simple life that Shain Gandee lived long before TV cameras started following him.

Set to country music were snapshots of him as a uniformed pee wee football player, as a teenager in a tuxedo for prom, then graduating from high school in a black gown and mortarboard.

In other images, he kissed a bride and held babies. In several, he wore hunting camouflage, displaying a slain buck by its antlers and lining up a batch of gray squirrels on a bench.

Gandee favored four-wheelers, pickups and SUVs over cellphones and computers, and "mudding," or off-road driving, was one of his favorite pastimes.

It was no coincidence some mourners arrived in mud-splattered trucks.

Dreama and Charlie Frampton, who live a few doors down, said Gandee had been playing in the mud since he was 5.

"If it wasn't a four-wheel drive truck," Dreama said, "it was a four-wheeler or a dirt bike."

"He was dedicated to the sport," Charlie added. "That's all you can do out in the country."

Gandee's family asked mourners to wear camouflage or the neon-colored Gandee Candy T-shirts to the service because Shain didn't like to dress up.

Ricky Sater, 23, said his friend would have loved the sea of camo and T-shirts that filled the auditorium.

"He probably would walk in there going, 'BUCKWILD!'" he said.

Sater has known Shain since middle school and last saw him a week ago, when he came over to borrow a pin for a trailer hitch.

"He said, 'See ya, Rick!' and I said, 'See ya, drunk!" recalled Sater, who got the terrible news days later in a phone call.

"My sister told me about it, and it being April Fool's, I thought she was joking. But she wasn't," he said, swallowing hard. "I try to keep my emotions balled up, but I started breaking down about six hours later."

Shooting was underway on season two at the time of Gandee's death, but MTV spokesman Jake Urbanski said film crews were not with him over Easter weekend and hadn't filmed him since earlier that week.

MTV says it will be weeks before producers and cast members decide whether to continue. For now, the network said, everyone is focused on supporting Gandee's family.

Katrina Burdette, 25, of Cross Lanes, didn't know Gandee but is friends with his cast mate, Ashley Whitt. Burdette has watched every episode and wants to see more.

"I think it should go on. Give them time to mourn and everything, but he'd want the show to go on," she said. "He wanted to be in the show and keep it going, so why not ? in his memory ? keep it going?"

MTV said the half-hour series in the old "Jersey Shore" time slot was pulling in an average of 3 million viewers per episode since its premiere and was the No. 1 original cable series on Thursday nights among 12- to 34-year-olds.

Others, like his neighbors the Framptons, say the show just won't be the same.

"They should just leave well enough alone," Charlie Frampton said.

But he won't object if the show survives. It's bringing people to West Virginia, and he rejects the notion that it portrays the state in a negative light.

"They're just showing what true country is," he said. "It's no worse than that 'Teen Mom.'"

Associated Press

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Cops: Gang abducted, raped Philadelphia college student

By Karen Araiza, NBC10.com

Philadelphia's La Salle University has offered counseling services to a student who reported being abducted and raped on Easter Sunday.

The school is also defending its decision not to notify students of the off-campus assault when it happened, saying administrators did not view it as an ongoing threat to their campus community.

"This case is still very active," said Captain John Darby, who heads up the Special Victims Unit (SVU) of the Philadelphia police department.

The attack happened about a mile away from the school. The 20-year-old woman told police she was walking on the 4800 block of 10th Street around 10 p.m.

She said a black van pulled up beside her and four men jumped out, grabbed her and forced her inside. Police are not revealing where the men took her, but the woman told detectives she was sexually assaulted several times before the attackers dropped her off in an unknown location and fled.

Police say the men are between the ages of 20 and 25. One had "MM" tattooed on his face.

"We here at SVU take these reports very seriously. We have a very good working relationship with the University and we're in constant communication with them," Darby said.

As news of the incident spread around campus, students like sophomore Karla Fernandez were concerned. "It couldv'e been anyone," she said.

Read more from NBC10.com

Some students complained that the school didn't notify them about the attack. Federal law requires universities to issue safety alerts and advisories when there are serious or ongoing threats to the student or staff. This specific case, did not fit those guidelines, according to the school.

"Based on what we know, (which we cannot detail) it was decided a safety alert/advisory was not required, as we believed there was no serious or ongoing threat to our students or employees as a result of the reported incident," said Jon Caroulis, La Salle's Director of Media Relations.

Four days later, the school sent out a Safety Reminder to students, notifying them of the attack and offering the following tips:

Refrain from walking alone, particularly at night, in off-campus areas.

Travel in well-lit areas. Avoid shortcuts through driveways.

Report suspicious persons to Security and Safety or Philadelphia Police.

Be constantly aware of your surroundings at all times.

Use university shuttle and escort services.

"This is a very pro-active approach," said Capt. Darby. "They took this opportunity to remind folks of the steps that could be taken to minimize risk."

The latest crime statistics from La Salle are complete through the year 2011.

They show that on the main campus, a total of 4 sex assaults were reported in 2011, none in 2010 and two in 2009.

The bulk of student offenses are drinking and drug-related and most of that behavior goes on in the school's residence halls, according to the statistics.

The 10-year trend is down for drinking, and up for drug-related cases where students were disciplined.

La Salle University is located in the northwestern section of Philadelphia, on the edge of Germantown. According to the school website, the total student body is made up of over 7,300 students.

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Matisse in Norwegian museum was once Nazi loot

OSLO, Norway (AP) ? The family of a prominent Parisian art dealer is demanding that a Norwegian museum return an Henri Matisse painting seized by Nazis under the direction of Hermann Goering, in the latest dispute over art stolen from Jews during World War II.

The painting at the center of the dispute, Matisse's 1937 "Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair," depicts a woman sitting in a living room. It has been among the highlights of the Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo since the museum was established in 1968 through a donation by wealthy art collector Niels Onstad and his wife, Olympic figure-skating champion Sonja Henie.

Museum Director Tone Hansen said it had been unaware the painting was stolen by the Nazis until it was notified in 2012 by the London-based Art Loss Register, which tracks lost and stolen paintings.

She said Onstad bought the painting in "good faith" from the Galerie Henri Benezit in Paris in 1950. The Benezit gallery "has no record of collaborating with the Nazis, as many galleries did," she said in an interview.

Although the war ended almost 70 years ago, disputes over looted art have become increasingly common in recent years, in part because many records were lost, and in part because an international accord on returning such art was only struck in 1998.

But the case of the Matisse is somewhat different in that its former owner, Paul Rosenberg, was one of the most prominent art dealers in Paris before the war, which he survived by fleeing to New York. Art Loss Register Director Chris Marinello said the records in this case are unusually clear.

According to a biography published by New York's Museum of Modern Art, Rosenberg was one of the preeminent modern art dealers of his day, and personal friends with Picasso and Matisse, among others.

Art Registry documents show he purchased "Blue Dress" directly from the painter, having noted the purchase in 1937 and put it on display in the same year, Marinello said. After the war, Rosenberg re-established his business and sought to recover more than 400 works that had been taken by the Nazis.

Marinello showed The Associated Press documents that name the piece now on display in Norway as among those missing after the war.

He slammed the Henie Onstad art museum for "stonewalling."

"The evidence is overwhelming. They just don't want to resolve this," he said.

Paul Rosenberg died in 1959. His family has remained prominent, as his son Alexandre was a war hero and later began his own art dealership.

Among surviving family descendants are Anne Sinclair, the French journalist and ex-wife of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss Kahn.

Another granddaughter, American lawyer Marianne Rosenberg, said Friday she didn't wish to antagonize the museum, but hoped that it would come to realize that it is wrong in every sense of the term.

The paintings seized from Paul Rosenberg and other Jewish victims of Nazi aggression were taken "under difficult conditions, in a cruel and unfair situation," she said in a telephone interview from her office in New York. "We honor my grandfather Paul's memory ... by doing what he would have done: we wish to recover that which we consider ours."

The lawyer representing the museum, Kyre Eggen, said it was significant that Onstad didn't know where the painting came from.

Under Norwegian law, if a person has had an item in good faith for more than 10 years, that person becomes the rightful owner, he said.

That argument runs against the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, to which Norway is a party. The principles say that owners of looted art should take into account the difficulty that Jewish war survivors faced in reclaiming lost property after the Holocaust, and that owners of looted art should in all cases seek a fast and fair solution.

The Seattle Art Museum returned a Matisse to the Rosenberg family in 1999, after initially making similar arguments.

Eggen also argued that it is possible Rosenberg sold the painting himself between 1946 and 1950.

But Marianne Rosenberg rejected that possibility. Art Loss Register documents show Paul Rosenberg notifying French authorities the piece was missing in 1946, and his family again listing it as among missing pieces it was seeking in 1958.

"The Rosenberg family has since the end of the war assiduously and continuously sought the recovery of the paintings it lost," she said. "We have never sought to recover paintings not lost."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/matisse-norwegian-museum-once-nazi-loot-191439837.html

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Huge disparities in hypertension seen across U.S. counties

Apr. 5, 2013 ? One in five Americans is completely unaware that he or she is at risk for the second leading cause of premature death: high blood pressure. In the first ever analysis of awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension for every county, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington revealed significant differences across the US.

The study found the largest burden of hypertension in the Southeast, the lowest prevalence in Colorado, and differences among genders, ethnic groups, and geographies. But despite high prevalence of hypertension in the Southeast, the region also had the highest levels of treatment, suggesting a major step forward.

The findings are published in an article titled "Prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in United States counties, 2001-2009" in the journal PLoS ONE.

IHME analyzed hypertension data by county, sex, and race for adults over 30 in the US from 2001 to 2009. Across US counties, the median rate of hypertension prevalence for men in 2009 was 37.6% and county-level rates ranged from 26.5% in Eagle County, Colorado, to 54.4% in Holmes County, Mississippi. For women, the median rate of hypertension prevalence in US counties in 2009 was 40.1% with 28.5% in Pitkin County, Colorado, to 57.8% in Holmes County, Mississippi.

The study also highlights the need for increased efforts to raise awareness among women about the dangers of high blood pressure and the need for prevention and treatment. Bristol Bay Borough, Alaska, was the only community of the 3,133 studied nationally where, between 2001 and 2009, the percentage of women receiving treatment had increased more than the percentage of men on treatment.

These findings build on work IHME released in 2011 and 2012 that provided county-level life expectancy estimates for the past two decades and showed that women in particular were faltering in comparison to the improvements in life expectancy seen in Europe and the high-income countries of the Pacific.

"By identifying these rising blood pressure rates, now we can see the evidence for why life expectancies are stagnating in hundreds of counties nationwide," said Dr. Ali Mokdad, the head of IHME's US County Performance team.

The study uses data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a yearly state-level telephone survey that monitors leading risk factors for premature mortality and morbidity, and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative cross-sectional health survey. By applying new small area estimation methods, IHME is able to make estimates at the county-level that were not possible just five years ago.

Researchers also found significant regional disparities in hypertension treatment and control:

• Texas had some of the highest disparities among counties in treatment levels for both men and women.
• California had treatment levels below the national averages for both men and women while Florida had rates of uncontrolled hypertension for both sexes that were higher than the national averages.
• Counties in four states accounted for the 10 highest rates of hypertension prevalence -- Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi -- but the percentage of people in those states whose hypertension was being treated or was controlled increased between 2001 and 2009.

"The message seems to be getting out in the South, where doctors are doing a good job of helping their patients control their hypertension," Dr. Mokdad said. "There's certainly room for improvement, but there have been some great success stories within particular counties."

County-level results from the study are available for download in the "Data and Methods" section of Related Content, and in an online data visualization.

In addition to geographic disparities, the study also found disparities due to gender and race. Black men and women had the highest total prevalence of hypertension, at 50.8% and 54.4%, respectively. Prevalence rates for Hispanic men were 38.1%, and 42.6% for Hispanic women. The states with the largest disparity between the genders in uncontrolled hypertension were Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia.

Researchers noted the significant risks of uncontrolled hypertension, which kills 1 in 6 adults in the US. IHME's Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) found that, in 1990 and 2010, high blood pressure ranked second as a cause of premature death for women and third for men.

"This hypertension work shows the power of a disease-burden analysis that delves into the differences within a country," said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray. "IHME is in a unique position to produce county-level data that communities can use to evaluate what works locally and help set priorities."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Casey Olives, Rebecca Myerson, Ali H. Mokdad, Christopher J. L. Murray, Stephen S. Lim. Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension in United States Counties, 2001?2009. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (4): e60308 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060308

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/JFMZdJcRLwE/130405184623.htm

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T-Mobile USA gains subscribers

NEW YORK (AP) ? T-Mobile USA's subscribers were more likely to stick with the company in the last three months, a welcome trend for a carrier that's struggling against larger competitors.

T-Mobile, the U.S. arm of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, on Thursday said it gained a net 3,000 customers under its own brand in the first quarter. It was the first report of a quarterly gain in years. In the same quarter last year, it lost a net 261,000 branded subscribers.

It ended the quarter with 26.1 million customers under its own brand, and another 7.8 million on wholesale access deals.

Customers may have been more likely to stick with T-Mobile because they knew it is getting the iPhone soon, analyst Kevin Smithen at Macquarie Securities said. T-Mobile starts selling the iPhone on April 12.

Deutsche Telekom's stock rose 2 percent in Frankfurt trading Thursday.

As has been the case for years, T-Mobile lost subscribers from contract-based plans, which are the most lucrative. However, the loss of 199,000 subscribers was smaller than usual, and beat Smithen's estimate of a loss of 500,000. T-Mobile was also helped by a slack season at the three bigger carriers ? Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel ? in the absence of a new blockbuster phone release from Apple or Samsung, Smithen said.

The news comes as T-Mobile is trying to buy MetroPCS Communications Inc., the fifth-largest carrier. That deal is awaiting approval from MetroPCS shareholders, some of whom have voiced opposition. The improving trends at T-Mobile are good news for MetroPCS shareholders, since their share of the combined company could be worth more, Smithen noted.

Shares of Dallas-based MetroPCS rose 20 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $11.15 in late trading.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-04-T-Mobile%20USA-Subscribers/id-67c902ad81d24628ba4111674d4bbedd

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Taking Aim: Dr. Karen Remley Brings Visionary Leadership to ...

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Written by Alison Johnson

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Last year, when Dr. Karen Remley was still State Health Commissioner, she assembled a standing desk in her Richmond office so she could do a little dancing while answering emails. Since resigning that post and taking a leadership position at Eastern Virginia Medical School last month, Remley has upped the calorie-burning ante a bit: she ordered a standing treadmill desk.

At 56, Remley believes in tapping all available resources to be as healthy as possible. She?s bringing that same vision to her new job as founding director of EVMS? M. Foscue Brock Institute for Community and Global Health, which aims to connect medical students, residents and faculty even more closely with their surrounding communities.?

The more doctors know about the populations they serve-?specific health data and trouble spots, cultural diversity and existing resources-?the better they?ll be at helping individual patients and planning outreach and service projects, says Remley, also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Health Professions. ?

?Our vision is to be the most community-oriented medical school in the country,? she says. ?It?s about understanding what a community really needs and wants, versus what you just think is a good idea.?

An out-of-state medical student, for example, might not grasp how the region?s bridges and tunnels can impact where people want to go for care, or the issues that affect retired military populations. The institute, named for a well-loved community physician, aims to help EVMS target its clinical, research and education programs and student-led clubs to areas of greatest local need.? ?

Remley has approached health care from many sides during her career, as an emergency room pediatrician at Children?s Hospital of The King?s Daughters, a hospital vice president, the medical director at an insurance company, a leader of two medical charities and, from 2008 to 2012, the state?s health commissioner, or principal advisor to the governor and legislature.?

?Our vision is to be the most community-oriented medical school in the country,? she says. ?It?s about understanding what a community really needs and wants, versus what you just think is a good idea.?

Last October, Remley stepped down over concerns about the politically-charged process to develop new regulations for the state?s abortion clinics. ?It was the hardest decision I?ve ever made in my life,? she says, calling herself ?humbled and honored? to hold the post. Highlights of her tenure include improved infant mortality and vaccination rates, narrowing health disparities between racial groups and stronger communication between public health leaders and doctors in private practice.?

A native of Las Vegas, Nevada, where her father was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, Remley earned her undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a Master of Business Administration from Duke University. She moved to Hampton Roads in 1991 to work at CHKD and teach at EVMS. ?So now I?m back-?it?s like I took a very long sabbatical,? she says with a laugh.?

Remley and her husband John Onufer, a cardiac electrophysiologist, have two daughters: Kathleen, 27, an urban planner in New Orleans, and Emily, 25, who?s a second-year medical student in Richmond. The couple still divides time between homes in Virginia Beach and Richmond, which means Remley has to work harder at her New Year?s resolution of building more physical activity into her day. She usually gets on a rowing machine for 30 minutes at 5:30 or 6 a.m., watching the sun rise and listening to National Public Radio, and tries to take 10,000 steps daily.?

As for her mental health, Remley likes to read, garden and laugh with family and friends. Plus there?s her stress-busting office boogying?or, with the treadmill desk, walking and running?done to music mixes made by her daughters. And Remley also draws energy from her work. ?

?I?m so excited to continue my passion for uniting public health with clinical healthcare, and reaching young people just getting into the medical profession,? she says. ?They?re not going to be in their 30s and 40s, still trying to figure out what their community looks like.?

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Source: http://www.thehealthjournals.com/2013/04/karen-remley-evms/

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Discovering Scholarship on the Open Web - Digital Humanities Now

Online publications that aggregate content from a wide variety of sources have become increasingly valuable to readers and publishers. The academy, however, is still unsure how to efficiently identify, collect, survey, evaluate, and redistribute the valuable scholarly writing published both formally and informally on the open web. Fortunately, some scholarly communities are developing methods to draw attention to upcoming work in their fields.

This report outlines the current state of the aggregation, curation, evaluation, and distribution of scholarship on the open web. We describe the primary types of websites where open collections of scholarly work can be found, specifically repositories, aggregators, curated content, and forums for post-publication review. We suggest an eight-point rubric for analyzing similar sources of web-published scholarship. Finally, we offer an annotated bibliography of outlets for scholarly communication on the open web.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Aggregating and Curating Scholarly Content on the Web
3. Conclusion: Moving toward a Rubric
4. Appendices

I. Introduction

In the third decade of the web, scholars have become used to ? even if they have not entirely embraced ? accessing scholarly writing online. Formally published original research appears in open access journals, or through institutional subscriptions to individual journals or databases such as JSTOR or EBSCO. At the same time, research centers and individual scholars are sharing the equally important and much more timely ?gray literature? of grant reports, research notes, writing of various lengths, presentations, and pre-print and open access versions of their publications through their own web presence, on privately-held social networking sites like academia.edu, figshare.com, or researchblogging.org. Increasingly, they offer, or are required, to place published works in their own institutional repository. The burden of discovering new work, both formally published and gray literature shared in these ways, however, falls to the researcher who must monitor the field by assembling and aggregating their own web sources of information from repositories, blogs, and Twitter.

Academics, along with other research and writing professionals working with large amounts of information, want to tame the firehose of information. In fact, everyone from individual readers to media giants and academic communities seek methods to identify, evaluate, collect, and highlight the information desired without getting overwhelmed or sidetracked.

Online publications that aggregate a large number of sources of information have become increasingly valuable to readers and publishers. Sites with an additional layer of editorial oversight ? from human editors or algorithms ? that curate the aggregated content are even more valuable to readers than simple aggregation. This white paper reviews the state of aggregated and curated scholarly content on the open web.

To some degree every reader is his or her own aggregator and curator by selecting the sources they read regularly and the links that they follow. The more committed create personalized aggregation feeds through various subscription methods, from email digests to Twitter lists and RSS. A ?reader? or bookmark program like Instapaper or Pocket (formerly Read It Later) can make it easier to see everything within the same interface and quickly determine what is new. Web services to help users stay abreast of their own social network have appear regularly in the past few years, such as Flipboard, Summify, paper.li, and Tweeted Times, that publish newsletters and magazines based on user criteria. Joining the free filter services like news.me are subscriptions like Percolate or proprietary software such as Fever. But many individuals still rely on the old-fashioned method of going directly to web pages on a regular basis ? hourly to weekly ? for information, work, or pleasure.

Media entities such as the Daily Beast and Huffington Post made their name by reliably providing their readers with content that had the most buzz. Techmeme, Technorati, and MetaFilter have been successful by aggregating information, creating methodologies to curate the content, and attracting, even amassing, attention from a large number of readers. The aggregation and curation of online content is an extension of the traditional activities of the media, and so they have led the way in developing technological methods and workflow to do so.

Scholars have the skills required to curate content. Central to graduate training in every discipline is the ability to identify and survey a vast amount of information, evaluate its usefulness, and highlight the most important components. Unfortunately, academic organizations and non-profits have not been able to replicate the reach or success of media entities because the technical means are proprietary, and/or the necessary editorial staff is difficult to sustain. The importance of communicating research and advancements in the field to academics, policy makers, and the public is great, and necessitates an improved system.

As a whole the academy is still unsure how to navigate, identify, survey, evaluate, and highlight the large amount of scholarly writing, research, and publications available on the open web. Fortunately, some scholarly communities are developing methods to direct attention to new and valuable work and conversations in their field. This report outlines the current state of the aggregation, curation, evaluation, and distribution of scholarship on the open web. We describe the primary types of websites where open collections of scholarly work can be found, specifically repositories, aggregators, curated content, and forums for post-publication review. We suggest an eight-point rubric for analyzing similar sources of web-published scholarship. Finally, we offer an annotated bibliography of outlets for scholarly communication on the open web.

Return to Table of Contents

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II. Aggregating and Curating Scholarly Content on the Web

Collections of scholarship on the open web fall into one or more of the following genres: the traditional journal reproduced online, repositories of articles or data, collections of aggregated content for the reader to peruse; curated content influenced by editors, and post-publication review sites meant to evaluate research.

Scholarly content on the open web is most likely to be found in a repository or post-publication review site. The sciences and social sciences in particular have embraced these formats, with the humanities lagging behind in every category. In all fields, the greatest need is for the creation of reproducible, efficient, and effective aggregation and curation methods.

Repositories

Repositories offer scholars a central location to find and deposit their work. The best examples of repositories of scholarly content are the very active and established arXiv.org and Social Science Research Network (SSRN) which attract pre-publication papers, working papers, and gray literature such as conference papers. For readers seeking new work in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, and an array of the social sciences, arXiv.org and SSRN are the first place to look, rather than printed journals.

Not surprisingly, given that arXiv.org and SSRN?have replaced printed journals as the source for new work, both sites were initiated and developed in the 1990s outside of professional organizations (in fact, SSRN is a privately-held corporation). Currently most scholarly organizations publish newsletters and journals that require a paid subscription rather than developing their own open access repositories or curating topical content found elsewhere on the web. Scholarly organizations may begin to follow the lead of the American Folklore Society, however, which has initiated Open Folklore to make new work and making previously published content available and accessible at no charge.

In the quantitative sciences and social sciences, then, sharing pre-publication material in open repositories is common, and there are established locations for uncovering new work. In the life and biomedical sciences, however, formal publication remains the priority. The open access journals of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have become an important outlet for these fields for this reason, because these journals are not limited in the number of articles they publish and so are able to bring more research to light at a faster rate than print journals. (They do, however, charge article-publishing fees in order to release as open access.) PLoS also has initiated the PLoS One journal as a hybrid respository-journal because it provides a basic and fast review of the integrity of the content to ensure quick publication. PLoS One requires the readers to determine the significance of a piece, and includes an online forum to encourage discussion of the content. The humanities and liberal arts lack an equivalent repository for pre-print materials, gray literature, or broad disciplinary journals for quick and open publication.

Successful repositories rely on users to validate their existence through the provision of content and interest in accessing the content. When acknowledged and accepted by disciplinary communities, as they are in the sciences and social sciences, they are extremely useful. They do not, however, provide context for understanding, and only minimal evaluation of the content available from metrics such as views and download history, or user ratings. Ultimately, the user of a repository must rely on their own searching and evaluation skills to determines the value of the repository and the content.

Collections of Aggregated Content

There are fewer examples of informal scholarly communities who have organized group efforts to identify and aggregate new work. The best of these is Science Seeker, which aggregates and categorizes work from hundreds of blogs. Readers can visit the main page to see all recent posts, sort by category, or subscribe to topics of interest in order to stay on top of the most recent writing on science blogs. For the digital humanities community, 2cultures.net?syndicates blog posts from 100 different sources, with no obvious editorial hand or commentary from the single organizer Craig Bellamy; it is simple republishing by linking.

Curated Content

Many successful publications on the general web aggregate and curate information through a heavy editorial hand, with Daily Beast and Huffington Post leading general news category. The Browser has joined Arts & Letters Daily as a source of high-quality long-form writing through reliance on multiple editors. Recently the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis began to link to a curated selection of art news around the world from their home page. The Walker considers their web presence to be a publication and staffs it accordingly, and may prove to be the model for museum websites in the coming years. The few examples of sites that curate scholarly material from the open web are discussed below.

Two general web publications, Techmeme and Technorati and all their affiliated sites, have had success using algorithmic methods of filtering as a form of curation. Techmeme uses algorithms to gather and prioritize news stories from around the web, with categorization and publishing overseen by human editors. Technorati provides a ranking of ?authority? for blogs in topical categories through algorithms based on crowdsourcing: the number of links to the site, and the number of times it is referenced by other sites. Like Techmeme, Technorati is produced by a private company, employs editors, and is supported through ad revenue. The reliance on paid development and editorial staff by these two successful sites suggests the two biggest challenges to recreating these methods in the non-profit, academic environment: lack of time and money.

Some individual scholars have taken it upon themselves to curate and distribute information relevant to their field. Jay Rosen of New York University, for example, broadcasts news and commentary on developments in journalism and the media industry to more than 110,000 followers on Twitter and readers of his blog,?PressThink, and Tumblr page. Rosen?s audience is not surprising for a field like media studies, with its contemporary focus and interaction with current events. It is a major effort, however. Even Rosen, who personally monitors more than 1,000 blogs and Twitter feeds, including a number of aggregation and curation sites, does not have a simple method to stay on top of all this information; he intentionally and repeatedly visits his sources of information, rather than pulling it into one single platform to monitor, review, link, draft, and publish.

There are three notable and recent experiments in the curation of scholarly material coming from disparate groups and fields: PLoS Hubs, Cl?o?s?Radar, and RR-CHNM?s Digital Humanities Now. PLoS Hubs are topically-focused sites on Biodiversity and Clinical Trials that are prepared by several expert editors. Each Hub reproduces articles from across PLoS journals along with additional content and linked data to provide more complete context in which to understand a topic, such as biodiversity. The French organization Cl?o, host of the Hypotheses blogging platform and Open Edition press among other projects, has been experimenting with the Radar project in which eight editors survey their respective fields and provide links to the most important information. Finally, RR-CHNM has been running Digital Humanities Now for more than two years, and in its third iteration has moved towards a greater reliance on editorial evaluation of aggregated information, while continuing to experiment with crowdsourcing content and selection.

Although there are different disciplinary values for the projects that curate scholarly content, behind each of these curated projects are human editors with their own methodologies for surveying large amounts of information, identifying connections, assessing quality, and selecting content for publication.

Post-publication Review and Community Discussion

Finally, there are very active sites for post-publication peer review. For the biomedical sciences, Faculty of 1000 (F1000) is a subscription-based digital-only publication that provides post-publication peer review. Vetted scientists called ?Faculty Members? review, rank, and draw attention to most interesting articles in their research areas. Economists can look to the open access EconJournalWatch, a post-publication review site, for original analysis, rather than highlights, of previously published content. For legal studies, the open access JotWell provides a similar service: reviews of recently published journal articles meant to help readers stay on top of their field and aware of developments in the broader discipline. Once again, the sciences and social sciences lead the way in the number and success of post-publication review sites.

Whether a site functions as a repository, aggregator of content, curated collection, or post-publication review site, there are a variety of ways to acquire content. Most often a repository requires direct submission from a user or active oversight from an administrator. Sites that aggregate content, like Science Seeker or 2cultures.net, have passive submission through feeds and social media. Curated sites, such as?Cl?o?s Radars and Digital Humanities Now may rely on passive submission, but have active editors. The post-publication review sites are completely dependent on authors providing the reviews.

The editorial oversight on these sites ranges as well. There may be a monarchical single editor, like Jay Rosen, an oligarchy of multiple editors with specific areas of oversight, like F1000, an active democracy of readers directly winnowing out the content they want to see by ranking articles in PLoS journals, or a passive democracy of readers supplying metrics such as the download and citation numbers visible in SSRN. No matter the type of editorial oversight, the criteria for which scholarly content gets published on curated sites are not that different from criteria for traditional publication: quality of ideas and relevance to a field.

The methods used to determine the quality and relevance of scholarship may differ, however. The most traditional option is editorial oversight by content experts. The web makes two additional types of criteria possible: metrics based on use of key words, length, or citations; and metrics based on reader interaction through views, downloads, user rankings, or number of comments, citations, and social media.

For the moment, the reproduction of quality information is dependent on the critical eye, and time, of dedicated and knowledgeable editors. The challenge is to automate as much as possible the filtering out of non-essential information, to make the editors? jobs easier, and to increase opportunities for crowd-sourcing the identification and evaluation of quality scholarship.

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III. Conclusion: Moving toward a Rubric

There are a handful of notable projects that aggregate and curate scholarship on the open web. The sciences and quantitative fields are the most established in this landscape. arXiv.org is the best example of community-organized and supported repository. Science Seeker shows that there are a great number of scholars that will independently provide insight and results from their research, and that aggregating scholarly work makes communication easier within, and across fields. The audience for post-publication peer review is so great that it even can be lucrative, as F1000 proves.

In each of these cases, it is informal communities of scholars, or privately-held companies, that provide the foundational work of identifying and cultivating the scholarly work on the web. Scholarly societies for the most part have not taken the lead in creating open repositories for new research or gray literature, or to aggregate and/or curate content from their members.

Clearly, scholarly communities will do the work required to gather and share knowledge with each other. What is needed is a thorough evaluation of the extent to which these projects have impacted scholarly communication and met the needs of their respective communities.

In addition, a free, replicable, efficient, and effective method to automate the aggregation and curation of scholarly content is needed. A customizable tool for the algorithmic methods of discovery and evaluation, along with a place for internal or crowd-sourced editorial conversation, will be necessary for any group that wishes to collect, select, and publish scholarly content from the web. It is these needs that will inform the creation of the forthcoming PressForward suite of plugins for the WordPress publishing platform.

Based on our extensive examination of sites and services (please see the Appendices), we offer the following rubric for analyzing new and existing outlets for scholarly communication on the open web.

Rubric for Scholarly Communication Outlets on the Open Web

1. Function of Site
   • Repository of content
   • Aggregated content
   • Curated content
   • Community discussion
   • Traditional journal
2. Type of Content
   • Original content
   • Previously published content
   • Post-publication commentary and discussion
3. How Content Submitted
   • Solicited and developed by editors
   • Direct submission by user
   • Passive submission through feeds/social media
4. Who Controls Content
   • Monarchy: Single Editor
   • Oligarchy: Multiple Editors
   • Democracy: Readers
5. How Published Content Is Determined
   • Editorial oversight
   • Algorithm
   • Active reader participation
   • Passive social media
6. How Content is Selected for Review
   • Traditional editorial criteria of identifiable quality
   • Amount of interaction (comments, citations, links, alt-metrics, etc.)
7. How Distributed/Consumed
   • Static website
   • Twitter feed
   • RSS feed
   • Email notifications
8. Business and Sustainability Model
   • Advertisements
   • Membership or reader-supported
   • Author-supported
   • In-kind labor
   • Paid staff

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IV. Appendices

Appendix A: Sites Reviewed

1. MetaFilter
2. TechMeme
3. Technorati
4. Microsoft?s Academic Search
5. PLoS One, Blogs, Hubs
6. Scientific Reports
7. arXiv.org
8. viXra.org
9. dspace.org
10. SSRN
11. Research Papers in Economics
12. Philpapers
13. Phygg (no longer active)
14. Open Folklore
15. Journalists Resource
16. Merlot
17. Jotwell
18. Faculty of 1000
19. Econ Journal Watch
20. Third Reviewer
21. Polymath Blog
22. Journalists on Twitter
23. Science Seeker
24. Science Blogs
25. ScienceBlogs
26. Scientopia
27. PressThink
28. Marginal Revolution
29. The Volokh Conspiracy
30. Cliopatria
31. BLDGBLOG
32. MediaCommons
33. The Art of Theory
34. academicblogs.org
35. hypotheses.org
36. Scholarly Exchange
37. The Conversation
38. Nature Precedings
39. science.io
40. up2date
41. 2cultures
42. Immanent Frame
43. Peer Evaluation
44. Sympose
45. Mathoverflow
46. Arts and Letters Daily
47. The Browser
48. Poynter Institute
49. Walker Art Center
50. Nieman Labs
51. Digital Humanities Now
52. academia.edu
53. figshare.com
54. researchblogging.org

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Appendix B: Tools and Services Examined

The following tools are used for aggregation, curation, and creation of scholarly content on the web. Their services may complement, or be integrated into, the PressForward suite of plugins for the WordPress publishing platform.

1. Anthologize
2. Scholastica
3. Digress.it
4. Annotum
5. Postrank
6. Feedrank
7. Percolate
8. suu.sh
9. StrawberryJ.am (no longer active)
10. paper.li
11. Flipboard
12. TweetedTimes
13. Yahoo pipes
14. Summify
15. Bottlenose
16. Scalar
17. Fever
18. Storify
19. ThoughtMesh
20. news.me
21. Scoop.it
22. Zementa

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Appendix C: Scholarly Communication Outlets on the Open Web

Repositories

1. arXiv.org?is a non-profit, online repository for papers in the sciences, particularly physics, math, computer science, and quantitative fields. The site allows registered users to submit articles of original research that are pre-print, works in progress, completed, or already published. Articles may be revised and resubmitted multiple times by the author. Before submitting articles, registered users must be endorsed by existing members/authors. This is not a peer review process, but a way to ensure that the author will submit appropriate content. The article abstracts and author information are viewable on the site and the entire document is available for download in PDF, PostScript, DVI, or as Source files. The author?s submission email is viewable by registered users. arXiv.org is a non-profit organization housed in the Cornell University library system and also partially funded by the library. In order to meet their budget of approximately $600,000, arXiv.org has requested financial support from the most frequent user institutions.
2. MERLOT?is a digital repository for teaching resources in multiple disciplines. There are a wide variety of materials available, including tutorials, collections, learning objects, assignments, case studies, and textbooks. A portion of the material is peer reviewed by site members through a process overseen by the editorial board. Registered members can interact with the site by contributing comments or new materials, creating a personal collection, or providing peer review upon assignment from the editors. The materials are posted as finished products; revisions are not grouped. There is a star system for ranking, both for peer reviewers and member comments. MERLOT is sustained by the University of California system, other partners in higher education and philanthropy.
3. Nature Precedings?is an open access repository for pre-publication research in the sciences and medicine. Manuscripts, posters, and presentations may be submitted in Word, Powerpoint, or PDF formats and then are approved by editors for availability on the site, although they are not peer-reviewed. Site members provide feedback on the works by commenting on the papers or showing their support by ?voting.? The archive is meant to provide permanent site to locate, archive, and share preliminary findings, discussion, and establishing priority. ?Nature Precedings is run by Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Nature Publishing Group is a trading name of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, and Nature America Inc., a wholly-owned US subsidiary of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.?
4. PhilPapers?is an independent repository and filter site for academic philosophy. Visitors can browse recent journal issues, directly view open access publications, or browse through curated and categorized materials. In addition to locating papers, site members who are ?professional authors? (either PhD or already published in an academic journal) can submit papers to the repository, which are made available without peer review. Site members also can comment on individual papers, participate in larger discussions in a categorized forum, or create their own library. All site visitors see suggested related materials and can export citations to reference managers. PhilPapers is based in the UK, and edited by two academics working under an advisory board of six members. The project has in-house developers, and makes its software available as xPapers. Philpapers is sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy School of Advanced Studies, University of London; the UK?s Joint Information Systems Committee (Information Environment Programme); and the Centre for Consciousness, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. It is endorsed by The International Association for Computing and Philosophy.
5. Research Papers in Economics?(RePEc)?is a repository of working papers, journal articles, software, and an index for publications and personnel in the economics field. Institutions and individuals can contribute full-text, abstracts, or links to the database. The database includes an index of published literature, so not all the material in the database is full-text or available for download in PDF format. Access to the information is free to all visitors. The database is accessible through a number of different websites. All the sites pull from the same database, but not all information is available on all databases. IDEAS, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, and EconPapers hosted by the Swedish Business School at Orebro University provide access to the complete database. RePEc is staffed by volunteer ?editors? and grew out of the ?NetEc group, which received support for its WoPEc project between 1996-1999 by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK Higher Education Funding Councils, as part of its Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib).? It is unclear how it is financially sustained at present.
6. science.I/O?is a [beta-version] repository for academic work in the computer science and information systems fields. The repository consists of material pulled from arXiv.org, the table of contents from journals and conferences, and submitted by registered users. The content includes conference and journal abstracts, as well as full-text documents. Registered users can submit materials. The materials can be sorted by date or recommendation. There also is an application to build a personalized research feed. The project was founded and developed by a single creator.
7. The Social Science Research Network (SSRN)?is a digital repository for abstracts and articles in the social sciences. Visitors can read the latest abstracts provided by journals, publishers, and institutions t the Abstracts Database. Visitors also can read the full text of pre-prints or working papers that individual registered users submitted to the eLibrary. The full text materials are available as PDF downloads. Authors may revise and resubmit later versions of the same paper, and the version history is visible. In addition, the Research Paper Series are topic-based collections by institutes or centers. The Institution Series is specifically for collections provided by institution. SSRN provides article and category-level metrics for downloads, citations, and submissions. SSRN is produced by Social Science Electronic Publishing Inc. (SSEP), an independent, private corporation. They seem to have some revenue from advertising, although it is not clear how they fund the repository.
8. viXra.org?is a repository for e-prints of scientific writing. It allows any viewer to download the materials via PDF. viXra.org currently accepts submissions via email. viXra.org was created to directly compete with arXiv.org because of a disagreement over arXiv.org?s requirement for papers and authors to be endorsed. viXra.org is run by volunteers with donated server space.

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Aggregation Projects

1. Muckrack.com?is an aggregation site that collects Twitter posts from journalists. The tweets are presented chronologically, or visitors can browse by news organization, hashtag, topics, or author. The most used and trending hashtags also are visible, as are the latest links included in the tweets. Contextualization, further details about a news event, and informative or administrative content are available on the blog posts. The site is produced by a for-profit company called SawHorse Workshop, which produces a number of websites based on Twitter.
2. ScienceBlogging Aggregated?is a filter blog, or aggregator, of science blogging and writing. Science Blogging Aggregated gathers the content from science publishers around the web through RSS feeds to develop a homepage with the most current information, organized by source. Science Blogging Aggregated also publishes a printed annual anthology of writing from science blogs, called Open Laboratory. Science Blogging Aggregated is a forerunner of ScienceSeeker.
3. ScienceBlogs is a meta blog of science writing. The site sponsors the sites of more than 80 bloggers to provide content. The featured posts have selected text and a link from the main page. Also provided are direct links to their curated collection of science blogs and RSS feeds. ScienceBlogs is run by a private company and partially funded through advertising.
4. ScienceSeeker?is a filter blog for science blogs that is curated and organized by topic. The titles and links for new posts from member blogs are constantly appearing on ScienceSeeker, categorized by topic, and identified by author. The blogs found on ScienceSeeker either are submitted by the blog authors, other readers, or found by the editors. Human editors categorize the content of each blog. ScienceSeeker is run by the editors without any financial support.

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Curation Projects

1. The Conversation?is an Australia-based publisher of original writing that provides academic perspectives on current events, politics, science, and society for a broad audience. Academic authors with detailed credentials provide the content, and trained journalists provide editorial oversight for a consistent writing style across the site. The content is updated twice daily. The academic authors are not paid for their writing, but it is a way for them to prove their public engagement and social impact, which is a required part of their promotion dossier. The Conversation is sponsored through a collaboration of research universities, private companies, and the Australian government.
2. Journalist?s Resource?produces and aggregates scholarly resources for professional and student journalists and educators. The website provides links to peer-reviewed policy studies. It also provides reference articles on learning and teaching journalism. All of the materials on the site are curated by the project staff and are attributed to an author. Accompanying links to original studies are an abstract of the research findings and teaching notes. Reference and educational materials are viewable on the site, and these also have an identified author. Material on the site is tagged by topic. Site visitors can comment on the site, but so far is does not seem to be a site for conversation. The project is produced by twelve institutions, and run by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. It is funded by the Carnegie Corporation and the James L. Knight foundation.
3. MetaFilter?is a community-run filter blog that provides summaries and links to interesting materials around the web. Visitors can read the summaries, follow the links, and read the commentary by community members. Community members can post, link, and comment on site materials. The content is organized by date. The MetaFilter community is restricted to those who purchase an account and meet the expectations of membership. The community has explicit explanations about standards of conduct. There is a $5 charge to initiate an account. The ability to post is delayed for a few days after registration. Only after providing a few comments is a member allowed to make a post on the main page. MetaFilter is supported by revenue from ads and user registrations.
4. Phygg.com was an experimental filter website that aggregated and highlighted the papers promoted by visitors to arXiv.org. Viewers read a paper and voted up to move the paper to the main page, or down to move the paper lower on the list. The intended purpose was that visitors to phygg.com could identify the papers considered most valuable to the other readers of arXiv.org. Phygg used a web application named ?Pligg? to aggregate the materials. It was produced by a single programmer, which resulted in unreliable site maintenance.
5. PLoS Biodiversity Hub?is a digital project that aggregates and supplements articles from PLoS journals within the theme of biodiversity. Curators select content from PLoS materials, and add value to the articles by providing relevant, supplementary, and publicly available data such as taxonomy, species images, and maps. Site users are able to comment on materials, or share them using social media. PLoS is a non-profit organization supported by philanthropic sources, and revenue from publications fees (APC), advertising, sponsorship, and membership.
6. Techmeme?is a news aggregator focused on the tech industry. Techmeme does not produce original content, but provides links to original content produced by other sources. Techmeme consists of one single page that highlights the most relevant headlines, along with the opening lines, of articles from around the web. The original byline and source appear above the headline, and the viewer follows a link to the original story, or links to other publications covering the same story. The most recent headlines are featured in a sidebar. The site is continuously updated. Software algorithms automatically gather news stories from around the web. Human editors then group and curate the stories according to importance or topic. In July 2010 Techmeme reported 260,000 readers and three million hits per month. The site is run by a private company that employs its editors and is supported by advertising revenue.
7. Technorati?is an aggregator and filter of information from blogs around the web. Technorati functions as a ranker, search engine, and directory for the blogosphere. The site also feature original content from member writers. The home page includes summaries, links, and images for a few featured stories written for Technorati. The category tabs at the top link to original content written for Technorati. Below the fold is information pulled from other sources, including a constantly updated list of top blogs, top tags, and the first few lines of linked blog posts. Technorati provides a ranking of ?authority? for blogs through crowdsourcing algorithms: it is determined by the number of links to the site, and the number of times it is referenced by other sites. The authority ranking is in the context of topical categories. The authority, credentials, and sources of its own writers is less clear. Technorati is produced by a private company and employs editors and writers. It is partially supported through ad revenue.

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Post-publication Review and Community Discussion

1. Econ Journal Watch?is an online publication that consists of post-publication peer review of articles in economics journals. The reviews are specifically to offer critical reviews rather than highlight important work. Editors referee, and outside reviewers peer review the reviews as well as original essays about the field. The journal is published in editions, available for viewing online and in PDF. Registered users can ?talk balk? to articles in the journal by writing a comment, and authors of the reviewed materials are given a forum to respond. The journal uses the web application ?Journal Talk,? developed specifically for visitor comments. Econ Journal Watch is published by the American Institute for Economic Research and edited by academic economists from George Mason University, the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Montana State University.
2. Faculty of 1000 (F1000)?is a digital-only publication, available by subscription, which provides post-publication peer review in the sciences and medicine. Vetted scientists called ?Faculty Members? review and draw attention to most interesting articles in their research areas. These reviews are meant to help specialists can stay on top of their field, and help non-specialists quickly identify what is most valuable in related fields. Articles are ranked by the Faculty Member reviewer, and a ranking system for journals is coming soon. F1000 also provides two open access services: a repository for posters, and a journal providing reviews, or ?reports? on the trends in research. Faculty Members are selected by nomination, and Junior Faculty Members are sponsored by seniors. F1000 is based in the UK, and is supported through subscription rates tailored to the means of the country in which an institution is based: free for low-income; lower-middle income countries can be sponsored by active Faculty Members. Faculty members do not pay, and authors without an institutional subscription are invited to comment on an evaluation of their article. F1000 is part of the Science Navigation Group, ?a group of independent companies that publish and develop information services for the professional biomedical community and the consumer market.?
3. Jotwell?is a website that offers post-publication peer review of legal publishing. The site is divided into topical sections, each with two Section Editors, who oversee ten or more Contributing Editors. Each Contributing Editor provides at least one essay of post-publication peer review that highlights a scholarly work they think deserves attention. Section Editors also approve unsolicited essays for publication. The essays are 500-100 words that summarize and reflect upon the importance of the article under discussion. Site visitors can comment on the essay. All materials are published on the site using WordPress. The project is sponsored and hosted by the University of Miami School of Law.
4. The?polymath blog?is a communal project dedicated to solving complicated mathematical problems through collective efforts (called polymath projects. Visitors use commenting tools, a wiki, research threads, and discussion threads to advance the work. Visitors can identify comments that are ?useful? or ?needs work? in order to solve the problem. Commenting and the Wiki are open to anyone, which makes it a target of spam. The polymath blog uses WordPress and is run by volunteer moderators.
5. ThirdReviewer (site currently down)?is a site for post-publication peer review, or ?journal club,? for the fields of microbiology, neuroscience, and immunology. ThirdReviewer aggregates abstracts from nearly a dozen major journals, so that comments on the work within the field appear in one venue. ThirdReviewer allows anonymous commenting, and visitors can either ?agree? or ?disagree? with the comments. ThirdReviewer runs on WordPress and is maintained by one individual who oversees the Neuroscience section, with two others overseeing the Microbiology section. It was active in 2010, but seems to be less active in 2011. They are currently working to incorporate PubMed publications as well.

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Options for Traditional Publication on the Open Web

1. BioMed Central?is a digital publisher of peer-reviewed open access science and medicine journals. It began as a free and open publisher, but since its purchase by Springer Science+Business Media, now requires an article processing charge (APC) of $1685 standard, or $550 up to $2570 depending on the journal. BioMed justifies the APC for maintaining and developing open accessibility, tools, and design. A few journals require a subscription access because they ?add value to raw data? by commissioning reviews. BioMed journals function like traditional journals in that they have editors, blind peer review, and accept submissions continuously.
2. OpenEdition?is the portal site for the three main programs of The Centre for Open Electronic Publishing (Cl?o) that support open source publishing for the humanities and social sciences. Revues.org is the platform is for journals, Hypotheses is the platform for blogs, or ?research notebooks,? and Calenda is a centralized calendar for the humanities and social sciences. Journals apply to the Centre for their hosting support. The Centre provides training for the editors of their published journals and blogs. The Centre also provides support to subscribing libraries.
3. The Public Knowledge Project?is an educational center that develops open source software to support the publishing of open access scholarly materials on the internet. These include: Open Journal Systems, Open Conference Systems, Open Harvester Systems, and Open Monograph Press. Open Journal Systems is a locally-installed program that allows editors to manage a journal?s content, submissions, access, indexing, and reading tools. Open Conference System is a locally-installed program that allows editors to create conference websites, collect submissions, allow editing, post conference proceedings, post data sets, register participants, and host online discussions. Open Monograph Press is a locally-installed program to manage the editorial workflow for monographs. The Public Knowledge Project is a partnership of three institutions in Canada and the United States: University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and Stanford University. Their work is funded by Canadian and American government programs, private organizations, and private foundations.
4. Public Library of Science?is a non-profit publisher of open access journals in the sciences. The journals have open submission policies, but the editors oversee the content and peer review process. The articles are available as HTML, PDF, or by reprint when purchased. They are published as final documents, rather than continuously revised documents. PLoS journals provide article metrics, related articles, and commenting and rating functions. PLoS runs on the TOPAZ platform. PLoS relies less on philanthropic support and more on our revenue from publication fees, advertising, sponsorship and membership programs. PLoS charges a publication fee to support the expenses of publication including peer review, journal production, online hosting and archiving. Institutional members are granted discounts on publishing charges, and those from developing countries are not charged. For everyone else, the fees range from $1350-2900.
5. Scholarly Exchange?is a not-for-profit corporation that provides hosting and support for scholarly journals using the Open Journal Systems platform. Scholarly Exchange provides free hosting, a user-ready installation of Open Journal Systems, and support for the first year of a journal?s publication. Journals are able to choose their domain, language, and customize their editorial process. Each journal can determine its own content, copyright, and revenue policies. The costs of the first year are covered by Scholarly Exchange. After the first year, a charge of $750 annual fee covers the cost of Scholarly Exchange?s services. Journals also can choose to collect revenue through Google Ads, or pay extra to keep the journal ad-free.

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Source: http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/2013/04/editors-choice-discovering-scholarship-on-the-open-web-communities-and-methods/

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