Elsevier

Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher, plays an important role in advancing human welfare and economic progress through its science and health information which spurs knowledge and enables critical decision making. To ensure access to this information, Elsevier supports key programmes in places where resources are often scarce. Among them is Research4Life, in partnership with United Nations agencies and other publishers, which provides core and cutting-edge scientific information to researchers in more than 100 developing countries. In 2011, we made available all content on ScienceDirect, encompassing around 2,000 peer-reviewed journals and 15,000 books, and made another 950 health science books available. In the year, there were over three million Research4Life article downloads from ScienceDirect and, for the first time, relevant legal content was added from LexisNexis UK. Read case studies celebrating the tenth anniversary of Research4Life in 2011.

Since its inception in 2002, The Elsevier Foundation has contributed significant sums to non-profit organisations advancing science and health. In 2011, a total of $650,000 was awarded. In addition to support for ongoing projects, this included new grants through its Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries programme to further infrastructure-building and access to primary source material at libraries like Tanzania’s Sokoine National Agricultural Library and the National University of Laos.

Other Foundation grants focused on building nurse faculties and helping early-to-mid-career women scientists balance family responsibilities with their academic careers. In the year, the Foundation, with partners including the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD ), recognised 11 talented women scientists from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean for their research excellence, with each winner receiving $5,000. Winners were announced at the International Symposium on Women in Science and Engineering in Kuala Lumpur hosted by the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and the Institut Kimia Malaysia. Lubna Tahtamoouni, a winner from The Hashemite University in Jordan said, “Over the years I came to recognise that it is difficult for women to do science since they have to juggle their career, marriage, motherhood, and other social obligations. Winning such an award made me more confident about my decision of pursuing a career in science. Women need recognition, especially young women to give them that head start and confidence.”

The symposium was held in conjunction with the International Year of Chemistry 2011; Elsevier co-sponsored the opening ceremonies in Paris at the headquarters of UNESCO. During the year, at the request of the US Secretary of State, Elsevier chaired a State Department session on promoting women in science in the developing world and participated in meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

To broaden access to its archives, in 2011 Elsevier launched an online catalogue of the Elsevier Heritage Collection, comprising over 2,000 rare books with more than 1,000 distinct titles, published by the original Elzevir publishing house from 1580 to 1712. Based in the Netherlands and closely tied to the University of Leiden, the original company published groundbreaking work from contemporary scholars including Descartes, Huygens, and Galileo. Nearly 2,000 documentary photographs accompany the online catalogue.

Elsevier believes ‘cause-related marketing’ efforts are win-win opportunities – good for the company and for NGOs. Over a six-week period in 2011, 10% of revenue from new annual subscriptions to MD Consult, which combines in-depth medical content with succinct, evidence-based point-of-care information in one resource (physicians log 1.7 million searches each month), was donated to International Crisis Aid (ICA) toward constructing a new hospital in Ethiopia. As ICA President Pat Bradley noted, the campaign moved “us closer to the hospital’s completion and high quality medical care for the ethiopians who visit the hospital.” Another example was a campaign by Elsevier’s student Consult, an online library of medical textbooks for students and instructors, with interactive features like clinical case and images, to benefit International Medical Corps (IMC) which aims to save lives through healthcare training, relief, and development programmes. For a set period in 2011, IMC received $1 for each textbook activated, raising $25,000.

Elsevier, along with other parts of Reed Elsevier, has been expanding its portfolio of alternative energy offerings. In 2011, Elsevier Biofuel launched an online search and discovery tool that provides biofuel managers and research development professionals fast access to scientific, industrial, and commercial information to address their innovation requirements, including comparison of approved pathways and methodologies. it is complemented by the Elsevier Biofuel Tree Thesaurus, allowing efficient navigation through more than 900 journals and 800 books, 5.8 million patent documents, with 500,000 domain specific keywords.