When the Bibliosight project began back in June, Thomson Reuters’ new Web of Science Web Services had not been released and we were very grateful to the company for giving us full access to their “general API”. After discussion with Thomson, we understood this to be an unrestricted version of WS Lite. However, we have now subscribed to the service which, in actual fact, appears to be a different enough product to need another reasonable chunk of time to learn and implement, which is a little frustrating this close to the end of the project!

There is some consolation that a number of components appear to be shared; query format for example, though Mike hasn’t had enough time with the documentation to fully digest all the similarities.

The resulting XML is also different but more useful (we think), though right now this is based on the documentation which is much more thorough and which should make our life easier and also others wanting to implement the service.

To register for WS Lite users will need to review the Terms & Conditions at the following URL which will take you to a registration form: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/info/terms-ws/

Well I have the answer to my own question about free lunches, having been to the Abacus 21st Birthday Party on Friday.

The event was fantastic – 125 friends and former colleagues, a great venue and excellent food. The night vanished far too quickly and the only real complaint was that we’d had to wait 21 years for this event.

In the words of Conrad Young, on why we were having a party
” Now felt like a good time to celebrate, and besides, we have a bit of spare cash lying around!”

No-one is publicly saying exactly how much the purchase of Abacus by Thomson Reuters cost, but a number of sources put it in the £20M to £30M bracket. For my money, that should easily pay for a party and change for a few more :- )

And so to my original question, is there such a thing as a free lunch? Well there was no obvious hard sell, no veiled recruiting and no washing of dishes afterwards. It really did feel like a pure celebration so I guess there is such a thing as a free lunch after all!

If you went and have an opinion, let me know if you agree.

From Jeff Jarvis “The half-life of news“,

“At a Yale conference a week ago, Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer talked about the life cycle of the value of news in his business.

When a piece of financial news come out, it is at its most valuable for a very short time, he said. I asked him later how long that is. “Milliseconds,” he replied. Milliseconds. That’s as long as a computerized trader has to take advantage of news before the market knows it, before the news is knowledge and is thus commodified and loses its unique and timely value.”

If you’re in Times Square tonight, then be sure to look up at 7 Ave & 43 St. at the NASDAQ and Thomson-Reuters screens for advertising for tomorrow’s women’s open calls in NY and LA. If you can’t make it to Times Square, then take a peek at the Times Square Squared live Web cam. We hope to see you tomorrow in either NY or LA at the W Hotel from 12 pm – 4 pm. For more information, please visit the pre-registration page.

Times Square Advertising for NY / LA Open Call Sat., 11/21

Editor’s note: this guest entry was kindly written by Gavin Moodie, principal policy adviser of Griffith University in Australia.  Gavin (pictured to the right) is most interested in the relations between vocational and higher education. His book From Vocational to Higher Education: An International Perspective was published by McGraw-Hill last year. Gavin’s entry sheds light on a new ranking initiative that needs to be situated within the broad wave of contemporary rankings – and bibliometrics more generally – that are being used to analyze, legitimize, critique, promote, not to mention extract revenue from.  Our thanks to Gavin for the illuminating contribution below.

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It has been a busy time for world institutional rankings watchers recently. Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education published its academic ranking of world universities (ARWU) for 2009. The institute’s 2009 rankings include its by now familiar ranking of 500 institutions’ overall performance and the top 100 institutions in each of five broad fields: natural sciences and mathematics, engineering/technology and computer sciences, life and agriculture sciences, clinical medicine and pharmacy, and social sciences. This year Dr. Liu and his colleagues have added rankings of the top 100 institutions in each of five subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science and economics/business.

Times Higher Education announced that over the next few months it will develop a new method for its world university rankings which in future will be produced with Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters’ contribution will be guided by Jonathan Adams (Adams’ firm, Evidence Ltd, was recently acquired by Thomson Reuters).

And a new ranking has been published, SCImago institutions rankings: 2009 world report. This is a league table of research institutions by various factors derived from Scopus, the database of the huge multinational publisher Elsevier. SCImago’s institutional research rank is distinctive in including with higher education institutions government research organisations such as France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, health organisations such as hospitals, and private and other organisations. Only higher education institutions are considered here. The ranking was produced by the SCImago Research Group, a Spain-based research network “dedicated to information analysis, representation and retrieval by means of visualisation techniques”.

SCImago’s rank is very useful in not cutting off at the top 200 or 500 universities, but in including all organisations with more than 100 publications indexed in Scopus in 2007. It therefore includes 1,527 higher education institutions in 83 countries. But even so, it is highly selective, including only 16% of the world’s estimated 9,760 universities, 76% of US doctoral granting universities, 65% of UK universities and 45% of Canada’s universities. In contrast all of New Zealand’s universities and 92% of Australia’s universities are listed in SCImago’s rank. Some 38 countries have seven or more universities in the rank.

SCImago derives five measures from the Scopus database: total outputs, cites per document (which are heavily influenced by field of research as well as research quality), international collaboration, normalised Scimago journal rank and normalised citations per output. This discussion will concentrate on total outputs and normalised citations per output.

Together these measures show that countries have been following two broad paths to supporting their research universities. One group of countries in northern continental Europe around Germany have supported a reasonably even development of their research universities, while another group of countries influenced by the UK and the US have developed their research universities much more unevenly. Both seem to be successful in support research volume and quality, at least as measured by publications and citations.

Volume of publications

Because a reasonable number of countries have several higher education institutions listed in SCImago’s rank it is possible to consider countries’ performance rather than concentrate on individual institutions as the smaller ranks encourage. I do this by taking the average of the performance of each country’s universities. The first measure of interest is the number of publications each university has indexed in Scopus over the five years from 2003 to 2007, which is an indicator of the volume of research. The graph in figure 1 shows the mean number of outputs for each country’s higher education research institutions. It shows only countries which have more than six universities included in SCImago’s rank, which leaves out 44 countries and thus much of the tail in institutions’ performance.

Figure 1: mean of universities’ outputs for each country with > 6 universities ranked

These data are given in table 1. The first column gives the number of higher education institutions each country has ranked in SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report. The second column shows the mean number of outputs indexed in Scopus for each country’s higher education research institutions from 2003 to 2007. The next column shows the standard deviation of the number of outputs for each country’s research university.

The third column in table 1 shows the coefficient of variation, which is the standard deviation divided by the mean and multiplied by 100. This is a measure of the evenness of the distribution of outputs amongst each country’s universities. Thus, the five countries whose universities had the highest average number of outputs indexed in Scopus from 2003 to 2007 – the Netherlands, Israel, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden – also had a reasonably low coefficient of variation below 80. This indicates that research volume is spread reasonably evenly amongst those countries’ universities. In contrast, Canada which had the sixth highest average number of outputs also has a reasonably high coefficient of variation of 120, indicating an uneven distribution of outputs amongst Canada’s research universities.

The final column in table 1 shows the mean of SCImago’s international collaboration score, which is a score of the proportions of the institution’s outputs jointly authored with someone from another country. The US’ international collaboration is rather low because US authors collaborate more often with authors in other institutions within the country.

Table 1: countries with > 6 institutions ranked by institutions’ mean outputs, 2007

Source: SCImago Research Group (2009) SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report.

Citations per paper by field

We next examine citations per paper by field of research, which is an indicator of the quality of research. This is the ratio between the average citations per publication of an institution and the world number of citations per publication over the same time frame and subject area. SCImago says it computed this ratio using the method established by Sweden’s Karolinska Intitutet which it called the ‘Item oriented field normalized citation score average’. A score of 0.8 means the institution is cited 20% below average and 1.3 means the institution is cited 30% above average.

Figure 2 shows mean normalised citations per paper for each country’s higher education research institutions from 2003 to 2007, again showing only countries which have more than six universities included in SCImago’s rank. The graph for an indicator of research quality in figure 2 is similar in shape to the graph of research volume in figure 1.

Figure 2: mean of universities’ normalised citations per paper for each country with > 6 universities ranked

Table 2 shows countries with more than six higher education research institutions ranked by their institutions’ mean normalised citations. This measure distinguishes more sharply between institutions than volume of outputs – the coefficient of variations for countries’ mean institutions normalised citations are higher than for number of publications. Nonetheless, several countries with high mean normalised citations have an even performance amongst their universities on this measure – Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, Finland and New Zealand.

Finally, I wondered whether countries which had a reasonably even performance of their research universities by volume and quality of publications reflected a more equal society. To test this I obtained from the Central Intelligence Agency’s (2009) World Factbook the Gini index of the distribution of family income within a country. A country with a Gini index of 0 would have perfect equality in the distribution of family income whereas a country with perfect inequality in its distribution of family would have a Gini index of 100. There is a modest correlation of 0.37 between a country’s Gini index and its coefficient of variation for both publications and citations.

Table 2: countries with > 6 institutions ranked by institutions’ normalised citations per output

Sources: SCImago Research Group (2009) SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report; Central Intelligence Agency (2009) The world factbook.

Conclusion

SCImago’s institutions research rank is sufficiently comprehensive to support comparisons between countries’ research higher education institutions. It finds two patterns amongst countries whose research universities have a high average volume and quality of research publications. One group of countries has a fairly even performance of their research universities, presumably because they have had fairly even levels of government support. This group is in northern continental Europe and includes Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Finland. The other group of countries also has a high average volume and quality of research publications, but spread much more unevenly between universities. This group includes the US, the UK and Canada.

This finding is influenced by the measure I chose to examine countries’ performance, the average of their research universities’ performance. Other results may have been found using another measure of countries’ performance, such as the number of universities a country has in the top 100 or 500 of research universities normalised by gross domestic product. But such a measure would not reflect a country’s overall performance of their research universities, but only the performance of its champions. Whether one is interested in a country’s overall performance or just the performance of its champions depends on whether one believes more benefit is gained from a few outstanding performers or several excellent performers. That would usefully be the subject of another study.

Gavin Moodie

References

Central Intelligence Agency (2009) The world factbook (accessed 29 October 2009).

SCImago institutions rankings (SIR): 2009 world report (revised edition accessed 20 October 2009).

Well blow me down, but Thomson Reuters have gone shopping yet again! Announced yesterday, Sabrix has been purchased by Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting. See the press release here

This follows an emerging pattern of acquisitions primarily in the United Kingdom and Australia, and adds a heavyweight Sales Tax / VAT solution to their burgeoning stable. The question now is surely who’s next?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Inspired quote of the day: “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get” Forrest Gump

1. Sent out 2nd batch of the “Self-Identifier” survey
2. “Jeremy Gilley [Peace One Day] is now following your tweets on Twitter”
3. E-mailed NYC Business Solutions about funding solutions
4. E-mailed UNESCO’s US National Commission (dcunesco@state.gov) about sponsorship or partnership
5. E-mailed the AoC about sponsorship or partnership
6. E-mailed several Columbia SIPA student groups about possible collaboration
7. An ex-president of a SIPA student group has proposed a meeting
8. Asked Conway from Thomson Reuters about press coverage
9. Studied up on SEO
10. Monica, whom I met at the Renewable Energy event yesterday, has proposed an introduction to a possible Board Member
11. Discussed search capability development and IT personnel costs with Steve

EU antitrust regulators said Tuesday that they are investigating whether Thomson Reuters Corp. is breaking monopoly abuse rules by preventing customers from applying their own codes to financial market data feeds. Thomson Reuters said it would fully cooperate with the investigation. The probe centers on real-time market datafeeds on trading prices that news and information provider Thomson Reuters supplies to financial customers. EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said it involves the data piped to banks’ internal computer systems, not the company’s terminals. The European Commission says it wants to check if the company locks in customers because it may make it difficult for them to use their own or other software to translate the Reuters Instrument Codes that identify the securities and where they are traded. Mr. Todd said EU officials identified the potential antitrust abuse when they looked at Thomson’s takeover of Reuters last year which formed the company. He said they didn’t act then because it was not relevant to the merger review, which only examined how a newer larger firm would affect competition. He said the EU was making the case a priority. Thomson Reuters has three rivals in this area and “none of them have this restriction.” There is no deadline to end the investigation. If officials find evidence of antitrust abuse, they can demand that a company change its behavior under threat of fines of up to 10 percent of its global turnover for every year that the business broke the law.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20091110/FREE/911109998

Numbers, partnerships, linkages, and collaboration: some key terms that seem to be bubbling up all over the place right now.

On the numbers front, the ever active Cliff Adelman released, via the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), a new report titled The Spaces Between Numbers: Getting International Data on Higher Education Straight (November 2009). As the IHEP press release notes:

The research report, The Spaces Between Numbers: Getting International Data on Higher Education Straight, reveals that U.S. graduation rates remain comparable to those of other developed countries despite news stories about our nation losing its global competitiveness because of slipping college graduation rates. The only major difference—the data most commonly highlighted, but rarely understood—is the categorization of graduation rate data. The United States measures its attainment rates by “institution” while other developed nations measure their graduation rates by “system.”

The main target audience of this new report seems to be the OECD, though we (as users) of international higher ed data can all benefit from a good dig through the report. Adelman’s core objective is facilitating the creation of a new generation of indicators, indicators that are a lot more meaningful and policy-relevant than those that currently exist.

Second, Universities UK (UUK) released a data-laden report titled The impact of universities on the UK economy. As the press release notes:

Universities in the UK now generate £59 billion for the UK economy putting the higher education sector ahead of the agricultural, advertising, pharmaceutical and postal industries, according to new figures published today.

This is the key finding of Universities UK’s latest UK-wide study of the impact of the higher education sector on the UK economy. The report – produced for Universities UK by the University of Strathclyde – updates earlier studies published in 1997, 2002 and 2006 and confirms the growing economic importance of the sector.

The study found that, in 2007/08:

• The higher education sector spent some £19.5 billion on goods and services produced in the UK.
• Through both direct and secondary or multiplier effects this generated over £59 billion of output and over 668,500 full time equivalent jobs throughout the economy. The equivalent figure four years ago was nearly £45 billion (25% increase).
• The total revenue earned by universities amounted to £23.4 billion (compared with £16.87 billion in 2003/04).
• Gross export earnings for the higher education sector were estimated to be over £5.3 billion.
• The personal off-campus expenditure of international students and visitors amounted to £2.3 billion.

Professor Steve Smith, President of Universities UK, said: “These figures show that the higher education sector is one of the UK’s most valuable industries. Our universities are unquestionably an outstanding success story for the economy.

See pp 16-17 regarding a brief discussion of the impact of international student flows into the UK system.

These two reports are interesting examples of contributions to the debate about the meaning and significance of higher education vis a vis relative growth and decline at a global scale, and the value of a key (ostensibly under-recognized) sector of the national (in this case UK) economy.

And third, numbers, viewed from the perspectives of pattern and trend identification, were amply evident in a new Thomson Reuters’ report (CHINA: Research and Collaboration in the New Geography of Science) co-authored by the data base crunchers from Evidence Ltd., a Leeds-based firm and recent Thomson Reuters acquisition. One valuable aspect of this report is that it unpacks the broad trends, and flags key disciplinary and institutional geographies to China’s new geography of science. As someone who worked at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for four years, I can understand why NUS is now China’s No.1 institutional collaborator (see p. 9), though the why issues are not discussed in this type of broad mapping cum PR report for Evidence & Thomson Reuters.

Shifting tack, two new releases about international double and joint degrees — one (The Graduate International Collaborations Project: A North American Perspective on Joint and Dual Degree Programs) by the North American Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), and one (Joint and Double Degree Programs: An Emerging Model for Transatlantic Exchange) by the International Institute for Education (IIE) and the Freie Universität Berlin — remind us of the emerging desire to craft more focused, intense and ‘deep’ relations between universities versus the current approach which amounts to the promiscuous acquisition of hundreds if not thousands of memoranda of understanding (MoUs).

The IIE/Freie Universität Berlin book (link here for the table of contents) addresses various aspects of this development process:

The book seeks to provide practical recommendations on key challenges, such as communications, sustainability, curriculum design, and student recruitment. Articles are divided into six thematic sections that assess the development of collaborative degree programs from beginning to end. While the first two sections focus on the theories underpinning transatlantic degree programs and how to secure institutional support and buy-in, the third and fourth sections present perspectives on the beginning stages of a joint or double degree program and the issue of program sustainability. The last two sections focus on profiles of specific transatlantic degree programs and lessons learned from joint and double degree programs in the European context.

It is clear that international joint and double degrees are becoming a genuine phenomenon; so much so that key institutions including the IIE, the CGS, and the EU are all paying close attention to the degrees’ uses, abuses, and efficacy. Thus we should view this new book as an attempt to both promote, but in a manner that examines the many forces that shape the collaborative process across space and between institutions. International partnerships are not simple to create, yet they are being demanded by more and more stakeholders.  Why?  Dissatisfaction that the rhetoric of ‘internationalization’ does not match up to the reality, and there is a ‘deliverables’ problem.

Indeed, we hosted some senior Chinese university officials here in Madison several months ago and they used the term “ghost MoUs”, reflecting their dissatisfaction with filling filing cabinet after filing cabinet with signed MoUs that lead to absolutely nothing. In contrast, engagement via joint and double degrees, for example, or other forms of partnership (e.g., see International partnerships: a legal guide for universities), cannot help but deepen the level of connection between institutions of higher education on a number of levels. It is easy to ignore a MoU, but not so easy to ignore a bilateral scheme with clearly defined deliverables, a timetable for assessment, and a budget.

The value of tangible forms of international collaboration was certainly on view when I visited Brandeis University earlier this week.  Brandeis’ partnership with Al-Quds University (in Jerusalem) links “an Arab institution in Jerusalem and a Jewish-sponsored institution in the United States in an exchange designed to foster cultural understanding and provide educational opportunities for students, faculty and staff.”  Projects undertaken via the partnership have included administrative exchanges, academic exchanges, teaching and learning projects, and partnership documentation (an important but often forgotten about activity). The level of commitment to the partnership at Brandeis was genuinely impressive.

In the end, as debates about numbers, rankings, partnerships, MoUs — internationalization more generally — show us, it is only when we start grinding through the details and ‘working at the coal face’ (like Brandeis and Al-Quds seem to be doing), though in a strategic way, can we really shift from rhetoric to reality.

Kris Olds

[NOTE: Updated on 10 November 2010 to link to Professor Bruce's post entitled More West: What Legal Information Business Should The Government Be Out Of?. Updated on 8 November 2009 to link to Professor Bruce's post entitled The West Video and the Free Market. Updated on 4 November 2009 to link to Professor Berring's Nov. 3 reply, on sLaw.]

An interesting debate over free access to law is now occurring in the legal blogosphere.

Thomson Reuters, owners of West Publishing, a major U.S. legal publisher, and the Westlaw computer assisted legal research (CALR) service, recently published video comments about the free access to law movement by Professor Robert Berring of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, and a well respected expert on legal research. In the video Professor Berring praises the free access to law movement for increasing competition in the CALR market and compelling Westlaw and its main rival in the U.S. market, Lexis.com, to innovate. Yet Professor Berring also criticizes the free access to law movement as fleeting, and as providing insufficient metadata to enable high quality legal research.

This week Professor Daniel Poulin, Director of CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, responded to Professor Berring’s comments, on the sLaw blog, and yesterday Professor Tom Bruce, Director of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, published his response on his B-Screeds blog.

Ed Walters, Esq., CEO of Fastcase, Inc., has offered to convene a meeting of the participants of this debate.

On November 3, Professor Berring posted a reply, on sLaw.

On November 8, Professor Bruce responded with a post entitled The West Video and the Free Market.

On November 10, Professor Bruce responded again with a post entitled More West: What Legal Information Business Should The Government Be Out Of?.

Those interested in digital legal information or public access to legal information may find this debate particularly informative and timely.

HT @caminick for tweeting Prof. Poulin’s post.

3BL Media, the experts in corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability and cause marketing communications, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Thomson Reuters to provide CSR-related multimedia content for distribution on Thomson Reuters financial video platform.  Under the terms of the agreement, 3BL Media serves daily multimedia content from its base of client companies active in CSR, including 3BL’s own ‘theCSRminute,” a daily video digest focusing on corporate social responsibility initiatives, issues, trends, campaigns, awards, events, and breaking news.

Thomson Reuters financial video programming is an interactive web-based TV service allowing access to breaking news, analysis and research in a customized format, using a “narrowcasting” approach to provide access to short, segmented programming.  Created primarily for financial professionals, this interactive, multimedia video offering can be viewed here – http://etv.thomsonreuters.com/.

“We’re proud to have been selected by Thomson Reuters as the premiere CSR multimedia content provider for the launch of their revolutionary ‘Project Insider’ service,” said Greg Schneider, co-founder and CEO, 3BL Media.   “This agreement provides testimony to the value of  3BL’s video news content feeds, with particular emphasis on theCSRminute.”

Produced in-house by 3BL Media’s team of researchers and correspondents, theCSRminute recently covered news from such major companies as Nike, Gap, Phillips, Wal-Mart, Intel and Procter & Gamble as well as privately held companies, small businesses and start-ups, non-profit organizations and philanthropies.

For additional information on theCSRminute, please contact John Howell, Producer, jhowell@3blmedia.com, or at 866-508-0993, extension 121.

About 3BL Media
3BL Media is the leading CSR, Sustainability, and Cause Marketing Communications company. The company’s experienced team of professionals helps organizations — from nonprofits to multinational corporations — have a positive influence on society and the environment through information sharing that leverages the most cutting-edge technology and social media. 3BL Media defines, builds and refines the tools and methods necessary to help organizations communicate their commitment to the Triple Bottom Line in the way stakeholders want and need to know.  For additional information, please visit http://3blmedia.com.

Eric Raarup of Inetium & Taylor Pettis of MHTA are LIVE@ the Tekne Awards with SocialWendy

The Social Wendy Group was LIVE@ the 10th Annual Minnesota High Tech Association’s Tekne Awards interviewing in the VIP Reception before and after the evening’s impressive award program.  We also attended the program as Inetium’s guest, enjoyed the program and captured some FLIP footage of some event highlights.

We were privileged to interview a number of the Technology Innovators and industry leaders of the evening in addition to some of the MHTA team who do the work of the MHTA year-round and make the Tekne Awards possible with the support of their impressive Sponsor list.

In the coming weeks you will see interviews from the following Tekne Event participants in our Social Wendy Group Vimeo Collection. Feel free to embed them and share them as this is a key reason we use Vimeo as our primary social video tactic- the reliable and easy portability of video is great.

To contact the Social Wendy Group about your video directly, click here

MHTA Tekne Award LIVE@ Interview Video List (in order of interview)

Consulate General of Canada: Michael Willmott

Toronto Stock Exchange: Raymond King

CareerOneStop.org: Mike Ellsworth

Reside: Matt Johnson

MN Computers for Schools: Tamara Gillard

Nonin Medical: William Betten

Thomson Reuters: Todd Haushildt

Robins, Kaplan, Miller, Ciresi, LLP: Cy Morton

Comcast Business Class: Chuck Eller

IBM: Sam Prabhakar

ION Corporation: Wendell Maddox

Weaver Lake Elementary: Laurie Toll

MN Department of Education: Karen Klinzing

Padilla Speer Beardsley: Matt Kucharski

MN Thermal Science: Kevin Lawler

Asset Recovery Corporation: Ryan Laber

Vast Enterprises, LLC: Andy Vander Woude

Scales Advertising: Patty Schneider

Fabcon: Tom Kuckhahn

Access Genetics: Scott Kelley

BenchmarkQA: Larry Decklever

Inetium: Eric Raarup

Ron McGlennen & Steve Thorkelson

Brave New Workshop: John Sweeney

Robert Maeser

MHTA: Kate Rubin

MHTA: Taylor Pettis & Eric Raarup on GetSTEM

MHTA: Pete Lindstrom & Doug Carnival on how MHTA gets things done at the Capital and beyond

Stay tuned for individual links once our post production efforts are complete.  Thanks to everyone who participated!

More on the Minnesota High Tech Association at www.mhta.org

More on the Tekne Awards at www.tekneawards.org

More on the Social Wendy Group at www.socialwendygroup.com

Thomson Reuters acquires business commentary site Breakingviews that produces columns for newspapers; http://j.mp/482jsB

Recently, I wrote a story about the return of risk-taking to the U.S. technology sector. The story included M&A data that was current through Sep. 23. Well, I just got a hold of the numbers for the entire month, and they are impressive. All told, in Sep. 2009 there were 365 tech deals worldwide worth a total of $27.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. That is the most amount of tech deals since December 2007, when there were $27.3 billion worth of deals.

It may take a while longer to surpass the next biggest month in tech M&A, which was October 2007, when there were $37.7 billion worth of tech deals. But with big tech companies such as Cisco Systems on an acquisition rampage, we may get there sooner than you think. In the first two weeks of October, Cisco has already announced two deals worth $5.9 billion.

Here’s a spreadsheet with data from Thomson Reuters showing the last 20 months of tech M&A activity.

Sep 2009 Technology Mergers & Acquisitions

Thomson Reuters has struck a deal to buy Breakingviews.com, the business commentary site that produces columns for The New York Times and several other newspapers around the world, the two companies announced Wednesday. The deal, whose price was not disclosed, will be put to a vote of Breakingviews shareholders, and the transaction is expected to be completed in December. The company said its directors, who own about half the shares, support the sale unanimously. Two outside companies each own more than 5 percent of Breakingviews: the Dow Jones unit of the News Corporation and Limeport, which is controlled by Peter Munk, the Canadian gold mining magnate. The editorial staff of Breakingviews, which has about 15 people in several countries, will merge with the commentary team at Thomson Reuters, which has about 20 people, under the direction of Hugo Dixon, editor in chief and chairman of Breakingviews. Much of their work will be accessible only to the finance professionals who have Thomson Reuters terminals, but some will be available more broadly through Reuters.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/business/media/15break.html?_r=2&ref=media