SciVal Strata: new tool to measure academic performance

Elsevier announces a new tool to "measure individual or team performance using customizable indicators."

See this article from ReadWriteWeb: Strata Allows You to Play Fantasy Football - With Scientists

Another study questions the impact of open access journals

Mr. Philip M. Davis, a researcher in the department of communication at Cornell University, publishes a study in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology journal and concludes that "open access publishing may reach more readers than subscription access publishing, although additional readership may not translate into more citations."

Open access, readership, citations: a randomized controlled trial of scientific journal publishing

Milestone: more people get their news online than in print

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest report on the "State of the Media." 

The study finds that, "When it came to any kind of news, 46% of people now say they get news online at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first time."

Source: Nielsen Media Research, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Audit Bureau of Circulation

TED talk: Let's use video to reinvent education

Salman Khan talk at the TED conference.

Professional Ranking of World Universities

2011 results of the Ecole des Mines ranking. This is the fifth edition, for previous years click here.
This school ranking is based on the number of alumni now CEOs (or equivalent) on the Fortune 500 2010 list.

Top 5

1. Harvard
2. Tokyo
3. Keio
4. HEC, France
5. Kyoto

NYU Stern drops GMAT requirement for EMBAs

Like Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Cornell's Johnson or others, Stern now drops GMAT requirement for EMBAs

• FT article
• Article from J. Byrne (Poets & Quants for Executives website)

New player in digital content access and management

Official press release
Related HBR article discussing The Present and Future of Digital Publishing

Higher Education Emerging Technologies for 2011

Per Educause press release:

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2011 are:

Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Electronic Books
• Mobiles

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Augmented Reality
• Game-based Learning

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Learning Analytics

Does online access boost citations?

This is the question posed by two researchers in their working paper:
Did Online Access to Journals Change the Economics Literature? (SSRN)

Mark McCabe, adjunct professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, and Christopher Snyder, economics professor at Dartmouth College question the often reported 'citation advantage' to publishing in online open-access journals.

This Steve Kolowich article explains more about the study and its potential  impact for the proponents of open-access publishing.

Data visualization tools

Brief round-up of data visualization tools mentioned on the web lately:

O'Reilly Radar started a new series this month tagged: Strata Gems
Example: using Twitter for graphs:

Taken from post.

Google Books and Google Labs released: Book Ngram Viewer, here is more about this new product.

Example:

Finally, this post details 10 Best Data Visualization Projects:

Example: Where the Tourist Really Flock (using Flickr)