Elsevier launches new module for scientific community

- 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.