ScienceDirect Reaches "10 in 10"; Celebrates Tenth Anniversary and Ten Millionth Milestone

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

- A Decade of Solving Search and Discovery Needs of the Global Scientific Research Community

Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com), a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information, today announced it is celebrating the tenth anniversary of ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), its online scientific research platform, as well as the 10 millionth addition to the database, which is comprised of full-text articles and book chapters. ScienceDirect became fully operational in 2000 when it surpassed one million articles and launched its backfiles initiative, adding literature published prior to 1994. It has since become the largest and most extensive resource of its kind.

Created to help scientists quickly find the most relevant content for their specific research objectives by offering search, reference and discovery tools, ScienceDirect has become vital to the daily activities of researchers across the globe. Institutions worldwide currently offer ScienceDirect to their faculty and students, with up to 20 articles downloaded per second from the platform. A springboard to knowledge discovery, ScienceDirect has more than 100 million outbound links to cited or related articles, as well as links to other scientific databases.

"Faculty members and graduate students love using ScienceDirect. It's a good resource to find information on various topics. I highly recommend it to users not familiar with the database," said Buenaventura Basco, Coordinator, InfoSource, University of Central Florida, USA.

Continuously seeking ways to accelerate research, ScienceDirect underwent a full platform redesign in 2006 focused on navigational improvements. As a result, researchers were able to cut the number of clicks required for some of the most common search activities by 40% to 50%, speeding the knowledge discovery process.

"Over the last ten years ScienceDirect has provided scientists and researchers authoritative and trusted peer-reviewed content helping them harness the specific knowledge needed within the rapidly growing pool of content," said Rafael Sidi, vice president of product management for Elsevier's ScienceDirect. "By continuously enriching content and our platform, ScienceDirect has evolved to meet the changing needs of researchers over time. Recent partnerships that enhance ScienceDirect with supplementary data and contextual content from other sources as well as a commitment to open up the platform for third party applications have set the stage for ScienceDirect to lead the way in further advancing search and discovery throughout the next decade."

    Highlights of major ScienceDirect milestones over the last decade include:

    - 2000 - Becomes fully operational with one million articles; Implements
      cross-publisher linking via CrossRef, offering linking to over 10,000
      journals.

    - 2003 - Achieves full compliance with the international COUNTER Code of
      Practice for Journals and Databases.[1]

    - 2006 - One-billionth article downloaded from platform.

    - 2007 - Launches first eBooks offering with 4,000 titles published from
      1995 going forward.

    - 2009 - Opens up to third-party developers such as NextBio to build
      applications for search and discovery on ScienceDirect.

    - 2010 - Links ScienceDirect articles to specialized database content
      such as PANGAEA for earth research.

The ten millionth full-text article added to database was: Use of Herbal Products and Potential Interactions in Patients With Cardiovascular Diseases, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, authored by A. Tachjian, V. Maria, A. Jahangir from the Division of Cardiovascular Disease, Mayo Clinic, Rochester and the Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, USA.

About ScienceDirect

More than 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 (http://www.sciencedirect.com).

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 ten 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 8,000 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).

[1] The COUNTER Code of Practice is supported by a global organization of librarians, publishers and their professional organizations. It promotes credible, consistent and compatible measurement of usage data from online information resources around the world.

    Jen Saunders / Deanna Decker
    Phone: +1 212-752-8338
    E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE Elsevier