Elsevier,
a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical
information products and services, this week announced the launch of
SciVerse, an innovative platform that integrates the company's key
products and encourages the scientific community to collaborate on the
development of customized search and discovery applications. Elsevier
has committed to releasing the APIs (application programming interfaces)
for all of the content on SciVerse and will offer application
development support tools on the site.
"SciVerse
is a start of a new journey for Elsevier where we plan to provide
customized search and discovery solutions and increase interoperability
within our products and third party services," said Jay Katzen, Managing
Director, Academic & Government Products, Elsevier. "We recognize
that it is critical to involve the researchers and librarians in the
creation of solutions as they are in the best position to identify and
address their search and discovery challenges. By providing our content
APIs later this year, we will empower researchers and developers to
build custom applications to enhance their workflow and share these
applications with the scientific community within SciVerse."
A
multi-phased initiative aimed at accelerating science through
applications targeted to specific researcher needs, at launch SciVerse
will include SciVerse Hub beta, a module that integrates ScienceDirect,
Scopus and targeted web content from Scirus, Elsevier's science-specific
Internet search engine. SciVerse Hub beta allows for a single search
across its integrated content with results ranked by relevancy and
without duplication, saving valuable researcher time.
Combining
familiar resources with new efficiencies, SciVerse also enables
interoperability among ScienceDirect, Scopus and the new SciVerse Hub
beta. For example, ScienceDirect users who also subscribe to Scopus will
now be able to access key author information without leaving the
article, and link directly into comprehensive lists of all an author's
documents and citations in Scopus.
SciVerse Hub beta will include three search and discovery applications at launch:
•
Methods section search application – allows researchers to search only
the methodology and protocol sections of full-text articles.
•
Matching Sentences application – returns search results with the query
words highlighted in the full sentence where they appear.
• Prolific Authors application – prominently displays the most prolific authors for each search result.
The
initial applications offer an example of the possible solutions that
can be built using content APIs and were developed by NextBio, a
provider of a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform for life sciences
researchers which includes ontology-based semantic tools. Elsevier began
collaborating with NextBio in 2009.
Elsevier
will begin rolling out its APIs on SciVerse in Q4 of this year
including content APIs for ScienceDirect, Scopus, and SciVerse Hub beta.
In opening up this trusted content to development by the worldwide
scientific and developer communities, SciVerse will allow for
collaboration on applications that meet specific researcher challenges
and enable the creation of customized solutions for efficiently finding,
using and re-using SciVerse content.
"As
a physician scientist, there is vast amount of information that is
available for potential discoveries which has limited my ability to find
and consume the right information in the time I have available for
research," said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, Palmetto Health/ University of
South Carolina School of Medicine. "Applications that provide more
intelligent results will significantly improve my workflow. I am very
excited about the first SciVerse applications and eager to see new
additions as the larger community begins development."
SciVerse
