Elsevier Announces Winners of "Apps for Science" Challenge

AMSTERDAM, November 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Winning Submissions Available in SciVerse Applications

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, today announced the winners of the "Apps for Science" challenge, an international competition challenging software developers to create customized applications that can enhance information search and discovery for researchers.

During the submission period (April 17 to July 31, 2011), participants developed 27 diverse applications that enhance the SciVerse search experience. The submitted apps include productivity and time-saving tools, visualizations of search results or author data and social add-ons enabling collaboration.  The winning applications include:

• Grand Prize ($15,000): Altmetric, developed by Euan Adie, measures the attention that scientific articles receive via social media and online news sites, then adds the data to ScienceDirect & SciVerse Hub article and search result pages.
• Second Prize ($10,000): Refinder, developed by Leo Sauermann, adds personal information management and social functions to SciVerse, including the ability to add comments to articles, place multiple papers in a collection and share comments with co-workers.
• Third Prize ($5,000)/Popular Choice Prize ($5,000): iHelp, developed by Mourougane Arumugam, enables researchers to search in their native language and retrieve articles using multi-lingual search.
• Two apps received honorable mentions: the Keyword Optimizer, developed by Scott Fortmann-Roe, helps to find the best set of keywords possible, and ChemDetect, developed by Keming Labs, an app for chemists to quickly scan an article for chemical names and draw full structures.

Winners of the top three prizes were determined by a panel of judges comprised of distinguished researchers, engineers, educators and venture capitalists in the field of science, media and technology.  

The winner of the Popular Choice Award was selected by a popular vote conducted by the public. The winning applications are now available in SciVerse Applications.

"We thank all the creative developers who answered our call for innovative applications. We are impressed with the ingenuity and innovation displayed in the development of applications for the Apps for Science challenge and are very pleased with the scientific community's engagement in building solutions that would help researchers globally," said Rafael Sidi, Vice President Product Management, Applications Marketplace and Developer Network, Elsevier.

SciVerse Applications and the Developer Network provide opportunities for researchers and librarians to collaborate with developers in creating and promoting new applications that improve research workflows. The Developer Network features a growing community of application developers who may gain recognition, prestige and revenue through their contributions to SciVerse Applications.

About the Elsevier SciVerse Suite

The SciVerse (http://www.sciverse.com) suite of search and discovery offerings provides the global research community access to a constantly expanding universe of content and solutions which can now be accessed in one platform. The suite currently includes SciVerse ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), the world's largest source of peer-reviewed content containing more than 10 million articles, and SciVerse Scopus (http://www.scopus.com), an abstract and citation database containing 41 million records, 70% with abstracts and nearly 18,000 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide. The platform also includes SciVerse Hub beta (http://www.hub.sciverse.com), which enables researchers to perform a single search across all of the SciVerse content as well as targeted web content with results ranked by relevancy and without duplication. SciVerse Applications (http://www.applications.sciverse.com) and Developer Network (http://www.developers.sciverse.com) allow the scientific community to build, find and use applications that enhance the SciVerse research experience.

About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider 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 and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus, Reaxys, MD Consult and Nursing Consult, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite and MEDai's Pinpoint Review, which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, 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