Elsevier contributes its content to researchers in developing countries bringing them closer to their peers and their individual research communities through various international initiatives.

Due to the overwhelming success of two of the initiatives - HINARI and AGORA, Elsevier has recently stretched the content fields and increased the number of journals made available for free to developing countries through both these programmes and also the new OARE research programme. All Elsevier physics and astronomy journals are now part of these three initiatives.

Elsevier is proud to be involved with the initiatives listed below. More information on all these initiatives can be found on our corporate website.

Elsevier is one of the founding health publishers of HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative). A UN-based initiative, HINARI provides access to major journals to public institutions in developing countries.

As of May 2007, 2,500 institutions in 109 countries have registered to receive free or low cost access to over 1,200 Elsevier journals via HINARI and these institutes have downloaded over 100,000 full-text downloads a month in the past 2 years.

In 2006, Elsevier journals were responsible for a third of all downloads via the entire HINARI collection, demonstrating the importance and quality of Elsevier titles throughout the world. All Elsevier physics and astronomy journals are included in the HINARI programme.

Inspired by the success of HINARI, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization established AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture), a programme that provides access to high quality relevant information in agriculture and related fields to developing countries.

Elsevier offers 230 of the 747 journals included free or at a low cost via AGORA, generating over 10,000 downloads a month in the last 2 years. All Elsevier physics and astronomy journals are included in the AGORA programme.

A group of about 200 scientific publishers and associations, including Elsevier, have banded together to provide developing nations with free or reduced cost access to scientific literature about the environment in a project called OARE - Online Access to Research in the Environment. The project was developed by the UN Environment Program, Yale University, and publishers.

Under the initiative, about 1,200 public and nonprofit environmental institutions in 100 developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe will have access to peer-reviewed environmental journal literature and A&I services through a secure portal on the Web that will be offered in English, Spanish and French. A large number of societies from all parts of the world are also participating. All of Elsevier physics and astronomy journals are included in OARE.

In collaboration with the ICTP (the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretic Physics) and their pioneering E-Journals Delivery Service, Elsevier has provided scientists in developing countries with free access to Elsevier journals in physics, mathematics and computer science.

In 2007, an Elsevier grant of $80,000 enabled the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) new Librarians Without Borders program to sponsor Lenny Rhine, University of Florida Librarian Emeritus, to stage onsite workshops and distance learning courses in 2007. The pilot distance learning course, called the E-Library Training Initiative was launched inMarch 2007. Follow up training materials are being developed in local languages, which has proven to be the surest way of increasing usage of the scholarly publications available via HOA.

These collaborative efforts involve Librarians Without Borders, Elsevier, HINARI, the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), the WHO and FAO.

In 2004 we opened an office in Beijing with the aim of increasing our activity in China and of building relationships and working with Chinese scientists, researchers and publishers. Our Beijing office focuses on local partnerships, author education and support for our Chinese journals.

Partnering with Chinese journals
Elsevier now partners with 56 Chinese journals, putting their content on ScienceDirect, and sharing international networks, enabling these journals to reach a totally new audience. Our Beijing office communicates daily with these titles, in their own language, and each journal has an in-house subject specialist who advises on strategic issues and brings each journal into our international networks.

Appointing Asian researchers
Elsevier works to bring the best new researchers into editorial roles and reaches out to new standard-setters in India, China and elsewhere. For China alone we currently have 30 Chief or Regional Editors and 700 plus board members.

Hosting author workshop
Our Beijing office hosts around 30 author workshops a year in major universities and research institutes with the aim of explaining publishing procedures and pitfalls to an exponentially growing group of new scientists. These workshops are always held by international editors and attract on average an audience of around 200 scientists each time.

Building relationships
In the 3 years we have had a presence in China we have built very strong government relations with key institutions, such as the Ministry of Science & Technology, Ministry of Education, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Association of S&T, Government Administration of Printing and Publishing and all the top Chinese Universities.

Launch of Information China published in collaboration with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1989	Qinghai University

Created in 2002, the Elsevier Foundation has awarded over 40 grants worth over half a million dollars to non-profit organizations with knowledge-centred missions, values and programs.

	The Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries (ILDC) Program awards grants to library programs in the developing world for innovative systems and services that improve access to STM information. In 2006, grants were awarded to non-profit organizations in China, India or Southeast Asia.
	The Elsevier Scholars Program awards grants to support the efforts of the academic and research community to address the fundamental challenge of balancing childcare and family responsibilities with the demanding careers of science and technology. The program is focused on doctoral candidates and scientists in the first five years of their post-doctoral careers.
	The Elsevier Employee Matching Gift Program matches employee donations on a one-for-one basis to the charity of their choice. Since it re-launched in 2006, the program has matched more than 500 gifts to more than 300 organisations.
	“A book in your name”  Elsevier has donated a book on behalf of each of the company's 6,700 employees, providing a core collection of 670 books to 10 university libraries in developing countries. In 2006, an additional 350 newly published books were donated by the authors to 4 of the universities as part of Elsevier's author incentive programme.

Elsevier believes in being part of the community in which we publish and recognizes outstanding scientists within the field and provides support to societies and young scientists. In 2006 and 2007 Elsevier were involved in the following prizes, awards and medals and sponsorships in physics and astronomy.

Prizes:
			2006 Frank Izakson Prize sponsored by the journal Solid State Communications, presented at the 2007 American Physical Society (APS) Annual March Meeting, Baltimore, USA (13-17 March 2006)
			Kamerlingh Onnes Prize - For superconductivity experiments Awarded every 3 years the Kamerlingh Onnes Prize is presented during the M2S-HTSC conference for outstanding experiments which illuminate the nature of Superconductivity other than materials. The prize is sponsored by Elsevier, Publisher of Physica C-Superconductivity and its Applications.
			2007 Schieber Prize sponsored by the journal Crystal Growth, presented at the 5th International Conference on Crystal Growth (ICCG), Salt Lake City, USA (12-17th August 2007)
Awards:
			JARI Enterprise Award 2006, sponsored by the journal Applied Radiation and Isotopes, presented at the ISRP-10 meeting, Coimbra, Portugal (17-22 September 2006)
			2007 Young Scientist Award, sponsored by the journal Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A, presented at the 11th Vienna Conference on Instrumentation (VCI 2007), Vienna, Austria (19-24 February 2007)
			2006 Nicholas Metropolis Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Work in Computational Physics sponsored by the Journal of Computational Physics and presented at the 2007 American Physical Society (APS) Annual March Meeting, Denver, USA (5-9 March 2007)
			2007 Young Scientist Award, sponsored by the journal Photonics and Nanostructures, presented at Photonic and Electromagnetic Crystal Structures (PECS) VII, Monterey, USA (8-11 April 2007)
			2007 Young Scientist Award, sponsored by the journal Nuclear Physics A, presented at International Nuclear Physics Conference (INPC), Tokyo, Japan (3-8 June 2007)
			2007 Young Scientist Award in Radiative Transfer, sponsored by the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, presented at the 5th International Symposium on Radiative Transfer and the 10th Electromagnetic and Light Scattering Conference (ELS-X), Bodrum, Turkey (17-22 June 2007)
			2007 Young Scientist Award in Electromagnetic and Light Scattering, sponsored by the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, presented at the 10th Conference on Electromagnetic & Light Scattering in Bodrum, Turkey (17-22 June 2007)
			2007 Young Scientist Award in Spectroscopy, sponsored by the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer presented at the 20th Colloquium on High-Resolution Molecular Spectroscopy (HRMS 2007), Dijon, France (3-7 September 2007)
			2007 Young Scientist Award, sponsored by the journal Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A, presented at the 6th InternationalWorkshop on Ring Imaging Cherenkov Counters (RICH 2007), Trieste, Italy (15-20 October 2007)
Medals:
			2006 JARI Medal Award, awarded in the name of the journal, Applied Radiation and Isotopes “for outstanding contributions to radiation & isotope applications & instrumentation” presented at the ISRP-10 meeting, Coimbra, Portugal (17-22 September 2006)
			John H. Dillon Medal “To recognize outstanding research accomplishments by young polymer physicists who have demonstrated exceptional research promise early in their careers.” Sponsored by the journal, Polymer, the award was established in 1983 by The American Physical Society and the Division of Polymer Physics (DPOLY) and is presented annually at the meeting of the Society at which the award is being presented.
Sponsorship: Elsevier is also proud to be official sponsors at physics and astronomy conferences. Examples of some of our 2007 sponsorships are listed below.
			Sponsorship of the Colloids and Surface Chemistry Division (COLL) social hour and poster session to honour the winners of the 2007 ACS Awards in the name of the journal Surface Science at the American Chemical Society March Meeting, Chicago, USA (25-29 March 2007)
			Sponsorship of the conference Cybercafé from two Elsevier journals, Thin Solid Films and Surface and Coatings Technology at the International Conference on Metallurgical Coatings and Thin Films, San Diego, USA (23-27 April 2007)
			2007 IUVSTA Elsevier Student Travel Grant, sponsored by Elsevier, 15 delegates were presented with travel grants at the 17th International Vacuum Conference in Stockholm, Sweden (2-7 June 2007)
			Sponsorship of the morning coffee break by the Journal of Crystal Growth, at ICCG-15 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah (12-17 September 2007)
			Sponsorship of the conference Cybercafe by our journal Cryogenics at the Cryogenic Engineering Conference and International Cryogenic Materials Conference Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA (16-20 September 2007)
			Official sponsors of Metamaterials 2007 - the first International Congress on Advanced Electromagnetic Materials in Microwaves and Optics, Rome, Italy (22 - 26 October 2007) by our new journal Metamaterials

More information on all these prizes, medals and sponsorships can be found online on the Elsevier Physics homepage: