Elsevier and PANGAEA Take Next Step in Connecting Research Articles to Data

AMSTERDAM, July 29, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --

- Elsevier Articles now Graphically Enriched With Information From PANGAEA Data Sets

Elsevier, a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, and PANGAEA - Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental Data - today announced their next step in interconnecting the diverse elements of scientific research. Elsevier articles at ScienceDirect are now enriched with graphical information linking to associated research data sets that are deposited at PANGAEA. This enrichment functionality offers a blueprint of how Elsevier would like to work with data set repositories all over the world.

This next step follows the introduction, last February, of 'reciprocal linking' - automatically linking research data sets deposited at PANGAEA to corresponding articles in Elsevier journals on its electronic platform ScienceDirect and vice versa. The new feature adds a map to every ScienceDirect article that has associated research data at PANGAEA; it displays all geographical locations for which such data is available. A single click then brings the user from the ScienceDirect article to the research data set at PANGAEA.

"With an increasing interest in the preservation of research data, it is very important to make those data clearly visible in the context of the formal research publications," commented IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Vice President Content Innovation at Elsevier. "Elsevier is committed to advance science by investing in such collaborations with data set repositories. This new feature will allow readers to easily go beyond the content of an article, and drill down to the research data sets."

Dr. Michael Diepenbroek, Managing Director of PANGAEA at the MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, Bremen University, added: "This continuing collaboration with Elsevier is an excellent example of an overall system of deeply connected data archives and publishers which offers better prospects for the quality and reliability of scientific information. The availability of scientific data in context is one of the key factors for the further development in empirical sciences. The realization of large scale and/or complex science approaches requires consistent quality assured data compiled from various projects and science fields. Also, the verification and thus the credibility of scientific results relies on full transparency and explicit reference to underlying data and related methods."

The linking of data and content has the potential to streamline the research process, bringing relevant information to researchers with fewer clicks and through quicker searches. Judson Dunham, Senior Product Manager at ScienceDirect: "This highlights the value that ScienceDirect can deliver on its platform by giving researchers the papers they need and helping them to put those papers in context, delivering unique value to the user. ScienceDirect has built the capability to quickly plug in specialized applications like this as they are developed, so that external data or relevant analysis tools can be integrated directly in the online article as opportunities emerge. More such integrations are planned for the near future."

About PANGAEA

PANGAEA is a data library which links primary data related to articles in earth and environmental science journals and thus may serve some hundred journals of the Elsevier portfolio. In the first phase, more than 1,000 articles from various earth science journals were linked. The data are freely available from the publication's page in ScienceDirect, without a login or subscription. PANGAEA, as a library, is open to any field of earth system research, enabling a bibliographic citation of datasets with identification via DOI and a widespread distribution through portals, library catalogs and search engines, which is currently unique on the Internet. PANGAEA is operated by the research institutions AWI and MARUM.

About the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI):

The Alfred Wegener Institute conducts research in the Arctic, Antarctic and oceans of the temperate latitudes and covers all disciplines of earth system research. It coordinates polar research in Germany and provides major infrastructure to the international scientific community, such as the Polarstern research icebreaker and stations in the Arctic and Antarctic. AWI is one of the sixteen research centres of the Helmholtz Association, the largest scientific organisation in Germany.

About MARUM

MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at Bremen University aims at understanding the role of the oceans in the Earth's system by employing state-of-the-art methods. It examines the significance of the oceans within the framework of global change, quantifies interactions between the marine geosphere and biosphere, and provides information for sustainable use of the ocean.

About ScienceDirect

Over a quarter of the world's full text scientific, technical and medical (STM) peer-reviewed articles - managed by renowned editors, written by respected authors and read by researchers from around the globe - are available in one place: ScienceDirect.

Elsevier's extensive and unique full-text collection covers authoritative titles from the core scientific literature including high impact factor titles such as THE LANCET, Cell and Tetrahedron. Over nine million articles are available online, including Articles in Press which offer online access to recently accepted manuscripts. The critical mass of trusted information available on ScienceDirect is unsurpassed. Coverage includes over 2,500 journals published by Elsevier and dynamic linking to journals from approximately 2,000 STM publishers through CrossRef. An expanding program of online major reference works, handbooks, book series and over 4,400 eBooks in all fields of science seamlessly interlinks with primary research referenced in journal articles.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com) and Cell (http://www.cell.com), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), Scopus (http://www.scopus.com), Reaxys (http://www.reaxys.com), MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com) and Nursing Consult (http://www.nursingconsult.com), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (http://www.scival.com) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (http://www.medai.com), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (http://www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

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SOURCE Elsevier