Ingenta's technological innovation wins HP award

New Metastore wins Best Applications Paper at inaugural Jena User Conference

Ingenta, the technology provider which connects the publishing and information industries, recently announced its receipt of the Best Applications Paper award at the inaugural Jena User Conference, organised by technology systems provider HP. The award was conferred for Ingenta's presentation of the technology behind its new Metastore, an RDF triplestore which was implemented using Jena, the open source Java framework developed by HP Labs' Semantic Web Programme. The winning paper was presented by software engineers Katie Portwin and Priya Parvatikar who have led development of the Metastore over the last two years.

Speaking of the award, IngentaConnect Engineering Manager Leigh Dodds explains, "Metastore is one of the largest commercial deployments of an RDF triplestore and very much pushes the boundaries of what is achievable with this technology. Following rigorous evaluation and testing, we chose Jena because it delivered the necessary scalability and performance whilst also proving usable, which was crucial for such a pioneering project. We’re delighted that our innovations in this area have been recognised by a globally established technology provider."

Martin Merry, semantic web research manager at HP Laboratories Bristol, said: "HP Labs' function is to deliver breakthrough technologies for HP. Our semantic web research aims to bring the web to its full potential, for example by contributing key technology pieces such as Jena. It is gratifying to see the technologies we develop being put to effective commercial use, and we were impressed by Ingenta’s landmark achievements in utilising Jena."

The Metastore has been designed to accommodate the raw data delivered by the IngentaConnect research platform, which is currently home to over 20 million documents and supports over 30 million user sessions each month. It is a scalable data repository that allows for increased flexibility of content models, and thus empowers IngentaConnect to meet the broadening user expectations and publisher requirements of the semantic web era. For example, it will facilitate creation of "virtual journals" whereby publishers can define a diverse set of articles to license as a set. Metastore will also remove some of the barriers of content type, by handling all forms of data equally; this will support changing user needs by enabling publishers to upload supporting research materials, which can then be delivered either alongside or separately to the output of that research (the published article).

IngentaConnect (www.ingentaconnect.com) provides access to over 10,000 electronic journal, book and monograph titles and over 20,000 fax- and Ariel-delivered publications. The site receives over 30 million users a month, and enables users to view full text via subscription and through a variety of different payment models such as library payment accounts, individual subscription sales and article pay-per-view access.

ENDS

For more information, please contact:
Charlie Rapple
Ingenta plc
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 799060
Email: charlie.rapple@ingenta.com

About Ingenta
www.ingenta.com
Ingenta is the global market leader in the management and distribution of published scientific, professional and academic research via the Internet, and develops and maintains specialist websites and technology services for publishers, self-publishing societies and libraries. Ingenta has been included in the EContent 100, "a list of the 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry", every year since 2002.

For publishers of scientific, professional and academic periodicals, journals and reference works, Ingenta provides a suite of publisher services including data conversion, secure online hosting, access control and distribution services.  Our recently-launched Information Commerce System provides flexible infrastructure and tools to enable publishers to repackage, bundle or price content online at the click of a button. 

For libraries and information professionals, Ingenta offers collection management and comprehensive document delivery options.  Ingenta's collection of research content - 20 million articles from more than 10,000 online publications and 20,000 fax and Ariel delivered publications - is accessed by millions of researchers and librarians a month via ingentaconnect.com and other websites.

About HP
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2006, HP revenue totaled $88.9 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.