There have been dramatic improvements in electronic dissemination and availability of STM information in the last decade. Elsevier led the transition to online in STM publishing with our journal platform ScienceDirect. Launched in 1997, ScienceDirect is now available to 10 million users worldwide, and as of November 2006 has had over 1 billion full-text articles downloaded. 

This electronic distribution and the development of new online tools has spurred significant increases in researchers' usage and productivity and today's scientists read around 50% more articles per year than 25 years ago, and read from almost twice as many journals. 

New technologies have been shaping the publishing industry since the advent of desktop publishing in the 1980's, transforming the way knowledge is discovered, written, processed, validated, disseminated and stored for future generations. Elsevier has been a world leader in both developing and deploying these many innovations towards improving the quality of scientific publishing within academia, and reducing costs of disseminating knowledge around the globe.

One of these many "revolutions" is the relative swift adoption of electronic tools for dissemination, gradually replacing traditional printed formats by libraries worldwide.

Elsevier continues to be the leader in this transition from print to online
dissemination by ensuring we are offering the best-in-class electronic products.

Elsevier has a dedicated Usability department which continuously re-evaluates and
benchmarks our electronic products against industry competitors to ensure they are
and remain best-in-class.

Reaching over 1 million researchers and students worldwide
Search is still the original tool driving the www today. Scirus is one of the most comprehensive science-focused search engines available on the Internet and provides free support to all researchers, clinicians, and students worldwide. It offers users a unique combination of free Web information and journal content, clearly branding search results from proprietary sources, assuring users the validity of content. It reaches over 1 million researchers and students worldwide executing 4 million searches per month. In 2006 Scirus received the "Best Specialty Search Engine WebAward" for the third consecutive year from the Web Marketing Association (WMA).
http://www.scirus.com

Covering 15,000 titles from 4,000 different publishers
Scopus covers the world's research literature. It was designed and developed with over 300 users and librarians internationally. This breakthrough new product saves time and increases productivity for users, and helps librarians maximize their investments in full-text resources. Its unique database contains abstracts and references from over 15,000 titles from 4,000 different publishers. Scopus won the International Information Industry Award for best Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Information Product in December 2005.
http://www.scopus.com

Access to over 8 million articles
ScienceDirect is a journals database which provides access to over 8 million articles, 60 million abstracts, more than 2,000 Elsevier and third party journals and free linking to non-Elsevier content from hundreds of other STM publishers via CrossRef™.

ScienceDirect offers researchers remote, desktop access, fast search, interlinked articles and eFunctions such as e-mail alerts. For librarians it offers easier collection management, usage data per journal, reduced storage space and staff efficiencies

Continuously focusing on the future ScienceDirect is now looking at developing novel ways to use technology to best meet the information needs of global as well as individual research communities. For example, integration of chemical structures, video clips, and the possibility of including data sets are currently being introduced.
http://www.sciencedirect.com

Elsevier's high value knowledge discovery tools are purpose built for academia. In the internet age of ubiquitous (free) information, these best-in-class products have enabled the science & engineering communities to be the only fields where knowledge workers spend less time searching for and more time analyzing information – enabling increased researcher productivity.

Science is the only sector where increased time is spent on analysing more information     Elsevier continuously works on innovating its productivity tools - Scopus is now used at 1,000+ institutes and is serving as a building block for futher increasing productivity

In 1999 Elsevier committed itself to not exceeding a single digit percentage price rise for our core journal collection in our invoicing currencies. This has been honoured in every subsequent year to the present time when growth in the number of articles delivered has been running at 3-4% each and every year.

Today Elsevier offers moderate price increases for increasing content.  For the sixth consecutive year, our average price increase for our journal collection remains within the lowest quartile of average price increases across all STM publishers and has contributed to a year-on-year decline in the overall average price rises in the industry. 

Elsevier works with libraries to develop flexible purchasing options and institutional subscription options and collection prices are designed to offer choice and flexibility to institutes of varying sizes and needs. Substantial collection discounts are offered to institutes to extend access to more titles. Electronic package prices are usually individually negotiated and offer significant discounts over list prices.

Electronic distribution and new online tools have spurred historic increases in researchers’ usage and productivity. During this timeframe, cost per article downloaded has declined fivefold at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24% year over year from 1999 to 2005. That is to say, libraries and the research community are deriving greater value from their collections than ever before.

In 2006, usage of e-content on ScienceDirect surpassed 1 billion article downloads, and the cost-per-article download fell by over 6% from the previous year, to US$2.75 (down from US$2.93). Elsevier continues to publish content that is valued and accessed at an increasing rate by researchers, clinicians, and institutions throughout the world.