Elsevier Launches SciVerse Applications Beta...Enabling the Research Community to Deliver a New Era in Scientific Search and Discovery

AMSTERDAM, November 16, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --

- Release of Content APIs Empowers Developers to Create New Tools to Accelerate Science and Offers Platform for Sharing with the Global Scientific Community

- More than a Dozen New Search and Discovery Apps Built by Academic and Commercial Development Partners Made Available

- Application Framework Enables Researchers to Integrate Applications Directly Into Their Research Workflows

Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com) , a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the launch of SciVerse Applications beta, a new module within the SciVerse platform that will empower the scientific community to develop and share customized solutions that advance the search and discovery process through its marketplace and developer network. Created by academic and commercial development partners, more than a dozen applications for improving researcher workflow and enhancing the value of existing content are now available to be integrated directly into the core SciVerse user experience.

"Recognizing the value to bring user-generated apps to the scientific landscape and responding to researcher need, the SciVerse Applications beta is another major step in our commitment to help usher in a new era in scientific search and discovery," explained Jay Katzen, Managing Director, Academic & Government Products, Elsevier. "The current applications only begin to illustrate the possibilities. We have many more in the pipeline from the community and expect 2011 to be an exciting year. As the wider scientific community becomes involved, the potential to drive innovation and accelerate science will become exponentially greater."

The launch includes the release of content APIs from SciVerse ScienceDirect, SciVerse Scopus and SciVerse Hub beta, as well as framework APIs allowing applications to be integrated directly into SciVerse. Applications can access data from hundreds of millions of articles, abstracts and other scientific information within SciVerse, and integrate into key parts of the SciVerse user interface such as search results pages and article and record views across all SciVerse products. The APIs as well as access to the tools and documentation necessary for developing applications are available via a developer section within the module.

"I am particularly impressed that the SciVerse platform supports ontology driven apps such as Ontology Driven Semantic Search (ODiSSea), enabling users to efficiently locate biomedical data resources," said Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University and an investigator with the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) led by Dr. Mark Musen (http://bmir.stanford.edu/people/view.php/mark_a_musen/). "ODiSSea automatically detects biomedical concepts such as diseases, body parts, drug names, etc entered by a user on SciVerse Hub beta and retrieves corresponding clinical trials, drugbank records and experimental datasets from the NCBO Resource Index." The NCBO Resource Index ( http://www.bioontology.org/resources-index), one of the largest repositories of computationally generated annotations on records from public data sources in biomedicine, was the winning entry in the Semantic Web Challenge (http://challenge.semanticweb.org/) at the recently concluded International Semantic Web Conference 2010 in Shanghai.

SciVerse Applications beta features a gallery where apps developed can be displayed and shared. Users will be able to post feedback on individual applications offering valuable insight for enhancing apps as well as sparking ideas for new solutions. Developers will have an opportunity to reach the global scientific community, while also gaining recognition for their contribution to search and discovery.

The marketplace includes more than a dozen new search and discovery applications designed to offer a preliminary illustration of the capabilities of the new platform. Some of the applications available include:

    - eReader Formats: Converts articles for viewing on any eBook device
    - Table Download: Allows users to download data tables from an article
      into Excel, saving time and increasing efficiency
    - My Workflow Search: Enables users to find experimental workflows and
      connect with people doing similar experiments
    - ODiSSea: Semantically broaden a search utilizing medical and biology
      ontologies and retrieve relevant results from four commonly used data
      resources (e.g.,ClinicalTrials.gov, DrugBank, OMIM, Research
      Crossroads)
    - Quantifind: Allows users to discover a new way of searching, leveraging
      data rather than traditional keyword search to uncover emerging trends
      and correlations

As academic and commercial developers build and share new apps, SciVerse Applications beta will be populated with innovative and tailored solutions. To support the collaboration and ideation of the new applications, the new offering also includes a discussion forum for researchers and librarians who are registered SciVerse users to contribute application ideas as well as an opportunity for developers to connect with each other and commercial companies.

"Given the quality and scope of Elsevier content as well as its reach within the scientific community, we were excited to collaborate in creating a data analytics application for the SciVerse platform," said Ari Tuchman, CEO and co-founder of Quantifind Inc. "We developed an application that contextualizes and aggregates data from SciVerse to allow researchers to efficiently discover emerging trends and correlations and gain unexpected new insights."

For more information about SciVerse, please visit http://www.info.sciverse.com.

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 new 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 beta (http://www.applications.sciverse.com), a new module within the suite, is a marketplace and developer network that allows the scientific community to build, find and use applications that enhance the SciVerse research experience.

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 SciVerse ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/), SciVerse Scopus (http://www.scopus.nl/), Reaxys (https://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