Elsevier and Russia's Skolkovo Foundation Sign Access Agreement to SciVerse Scopus and SciVal Funding

MOSCOW, June 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Agreement will add to Russia's focus on R&D and its involvement in the international ecosystem of excellence in science and innovation

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today it has reached an agreement with Russia's Skolkovo Foundation, providing access to SciVerse Scopus and SciVal Funding. Skolkovo aims to strengthen the links between Russian and international science, technology, education, entrepreneurship and investment communities.

The Skolkovo Foundation manages direct investments in the Skolkovo Innovation Center, Russia's hub of intellectual capital, a city of high tech industries stimulating the development of break-through projects and technologies. The development of the Skolkovo Innovation Center was initiated in 2010 after President Medvedev announced his commitment to Russia's investments in R&D. It has since attracted leading global technology companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Boeing and Ericsson, integrating Russia's R&D program into the international innovation environment.

Skolkovo Innovation Center is also home to a major overarching innovation-technology university with direct involvement of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Russia's leading technology universities. Providing this university with secured access to SciVerse Scopus and SciVal Funding will further support Skolkovo's core mission: to foster Russia's technological innovations and bundle research activities to address critical issues at a national as well as global level.

Alexander Lupachev, Investment Director at the Skolkovo Foundation, said of the agreement, "At Skolkovo we aim to build a wired work environment, stimulating innovations in all fields of technology. For us it is important that both young university graduates as well as world-known scientists from any country will consider Skolkovo as an attractive place to pursue their scientific careers. Providing secured access to Elsevier's SciVerse Scopus and SciVal Funding enables us to give these researchers a unique opportunity to exploit the benefits of the digital economy and science in terms of expertise, collaboration, partnerships, virtualization, and resource sharing."

Igor Osipov, PhD, Elsevier Regional Director for Russia and Belarus added, "We are well aware that Russia has many talented scientists working on cutting-edge research. We believe that our research and funding tools will help the Skolkovo Foundation enhance the effectiveness of Russia's research and development cycle from research to commercialization by building an excellent platform for closer international collaboration. This agreement will serve the strategic purpose of Skolkovo to attract and retain the best talent by offering cutting-edge capabilities and information to pursue on-site innovative research with the fast developing knowledge economy."

About Skolkovo Foundation

The Skolkovo Foundation has the mandate from the Russian Government to help accelerate the transformation of Russia from a resource-intensive to an innovation-based economy through strategic partnerships with leading scientists and corporations (currently numbering over 330 companies and start-ups.)  The Foundation aims to strengthen the links between Russian and international science, technology, education, entrepreneurship and investment communities. To achieve this objective it is overseeing the creation of the  Skolkovo Innovation Centre composed of five R&D clusters, a Technopark, the Skolkovo Institute of Technology (a new graduate research University established in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Skolkovo city, located near Moscow. Together these entities will establish a vibrant eco-system of technology innovation and entrepreneurship.   The Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in May of 2010 by the Russian Government with a grant of USD 5 billion.

About SciVerse Scopus

Covering the world's research literature, SciVerse Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web sources with smart tools to track analyze and visualize research. SciVerse Scopus was designed and developed with over 500 users and librarians internationally. Its unique database contains abstracts and references from nearly19,500 peer-reviewed journals from more than 5,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage. In addition, SciVerse Scopus not only offers users citation information about the articles covered, but also directly integrates Web and patent searches. Direct links to full-text articles, library resources and other applications like reference management software, make SciVerse Scopus quicker, easier and more comprehensive to use than any other literature research tool.  

About the Elsevier SciVal Suite

Elsevier's SciVal® suite of services supports academic and government leadership in evaluating, establishing and executing research strategies that optimize the performance of existing assets and maximize investments to enhance near and long-term productivity. SciVal tools leverage Scopus® data, Elsevier's trusted source of bibliometric data, to offer innovative yet authoritative solutions. Current suite offerings include: SciVal Spotlight, a strategic tool that generates unique institutional and country maps of existing and emerging research strengths based on an interdisciplinary perspective of current performance; SciVal Funding, an online solution that provides targeted recommendations on grants to pursue based on pre-populated research profiles and historical awards; SciVal Strata, a web-based research performance tool that offers users the flexibility to construct relevant contextual data to evaluate research teams or individual researchers, using a range of indicators based on Scopus data; SciVal Experts, a semantic technology-based application that enables researchers to identify and locate sources of expertise at an individual or departmental level within and across institutions.

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 Mosby's Nursing Suite, 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).

Media contact
Galina Yakshonak
Elsevier, Russia
+7-985-72-779-67
g.yakshonak@elsevier.com