Elsevier's SciVal Experts Leads Participation in National Research Network

AMSTERDAM, August 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

DIRECT2Experts connects researchers across disciplines, institutions and platforms

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced that 14 institutions that use SciVal Experts, Elsevier's directory of research expertise, now participate in DIRECT2Experts. This online network allows users from academic institutions throughout the United States to find potential research collaborators, regardless of their local platforms and tools. DIRECT2Experts is a pilot project facilitated by the Research Networking Group of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), a consortium led by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources.

Users at institutions participating in the DIRECT2Experts network have the opportunity to connect with researchers at other organizations in a growing national research community, which could expand globally in the future. Individual researchers can search and view researcher profiles in SciVal Experts in addition to a variety of other databases such as Harvard Catalyst Profiles, Stanford's Community Academic Profiles (CAP), VIVO at Cornell University and University of Florida, and Loki at the University of Iowa. Currently, 14 of the 29 institutions in the DIRECT2Experts network utilize SciVal Experts, including: Johns Hopkins University; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; University of Michigan; and University of California Davis.

"Enabling interoperability among different profile systems creates a collective network of researchers better poised to connect with each other and pool their expertise," said Griffin Weber, Chief Technology Officer at Harvard Medical School and Co-Chair of the CTSA Research Networking Group. "By linking various institutions through DIRECT2Experts via their own individual platforms, we are able to create a much larger network that enables researchers to easily identify potential collaboration partners throughout the United States."

Niels Weertman, Vice President of SciVal at Elsevier, said, "Our participation in DIRECT2Experts provides customers with a unique opportunity to take advantage of the benefits of a SciVal Experts implementation - pre-populated, automatically updated profiles-  while still connecting with peers in other researcher networks. We look forward to seeing the network continue to grow."

For more information about DIRECT2Experts, please visit http://direct2experts.org. You will find more information on SciVal Experts on http://www.info.scival.com/experts.

About the Elsevier SciVal^® Suite
Elsevier's SciVal suite (http://www.info.scival.com) 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 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 Nursing Consult, 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).

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