Winners Announced in the Elsevier Grand Challenge

First and Second Prize Winners Design Life Science Tools of the Future

The competition, launched in June 2008, invited researchers to prototype tools dealing with the ever-increasing amount of online life sciences information. The winners have been chosen by a distinguished   panel of judges to represent the tools thought to be the most innovative and implementable: First place, a cash prize of $35,000, second place, $15,000.

The first and second prize winners were announced at the   Experimental Biology conference in New Orleans and chosen from four finalist teams. Each of the four Grand Challenge finalists gave a demonstration of their tool and responded to questions from the panel of judges and an audience of life science researchers. They then answered questions from a live online audience of researchers attending virtually via the Elsevier Grand Challenge Q&A webinar. The judges announced the winning entries live on the webinar.

First prize winner: Sean I. O’Donoghue, Lars Jensen, Heiki Horn, Evangelos Pafilis, Michael Kuhn, Nigel P. Brown and Reinhard Schneider, EMBL Germany, for their project “Reflect: Automated Annotation of Scientific Terms”

Second prize winner: Vit Novacek, Tudor Groza and Siegfried Handschuh, DERI, Ireland, for their project CORAAL—Dive into Publications, Bathe in the Knowledge

“We are delighted to award the first and second prizes to Sean and Vit.“ remarked Dr. Eduard Hovy, Chair Panel of Judges and Director of the Natural Language Group, Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, “Their tools demonstrate thoughtful design, provide genuine and immediate improvements in scientific communication and point the way toward interesting new possibilities for the future. Given so many excellent submissions, it was very difficult to choose between the four finalists. All of the tools were developed with a strong sense of the community’s needs.”

Young Hungarian Researchers Receive Prestigious Scopus Award
International honor for ten winners

Budapest, Hungary, 18 November 2008 – Elsevier, the world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services announced today that the Scopus Young Scientist Awards were awarded to the best young researchers under 30 years old, in ten scientific disciplinary areas.

The ten winners were selected from over 100 nominees, based on a rigorous review by a panel of three judges delegated by the Board of Presidents of HRC, with the approval of President Imre Rudas using quantitative and qualitative criteria. The main prize, a scientific conference trip worth €2000 sponsored by Elsevier, was awarded to Dr. Imre Szilágyi.

The 2008 Scopus Award Winners in Hungary are:

The purpose of the Scopus Young Scientist Awards is to put the younger generation of researchers in the spotlight, and to reward the efforts of young talent. The awards are also a means for promoting the fight against brain drain. Additionally, Dr. Molnár commented: “As part of this fight, and our aim to increase the global visibility and recognition of Hungarian scientific it is imperative to a maximum the number of scientific journals from our country in Scopus.”

The Hungarian Rectors’ Conference, together with Elsevier, aim to contribute to the development of the information society by promoting scientific thinking in higher education, and improving international visibility of Hungarian scientific achievements.

For more information about Scopus please visit   http://www.info.scopus.com.

ScienceDirect is honoring the people who are shaping science!

Several weeks ago, we asked our 11 million ScienceDirect users to tell us who they think should be recognized For Great Thinking! Nominations poured in from around the world. On September 1 voting began and in the six week voting period thousands of people voted for their three favorite scientists in the categories of: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Natural Sciences; Engineering & Information Technology. Voting has now closed.

The four scientists who received the most votes will have original, exclusively commissioned portraits painted of them by Italian artist Marco Ventura and their stories will be shared with the international scientific community. The recipients of the portraits will be announced via email and on   www.forgreatthinking.com in December 2008.

Favorite scientist's achievements will be honored in the following categories: Life Sciences and Biomedicine, Natural Sciences, Engineering and Information Technology and Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

The winners in each category will receive a portrait of themselves painted by Marco Ventura. Marco Ventura is a renowned artist living in Milan.

Visit   www.forgreatthinking.com.

What if you were the publisher?

Article 2.0 Contest gives participants the opportunity to personalize the presentation of an online journal article.

The migration of print to electronic content is presenting new opportunities for creativity. Using Web functionalities, users can create formats that allow them to read articles in different ways and collaborate with one another. With this in mind, Elsevier Labs is featuring a contest incorporating the participatory and interactive themes of today’s Internet, often referred to as Web 2.0.

The Article 2.0 Contest gives participants control over the rendering of online scientific and medical research articles, allowing them to present them in ways that meet their specific needs. “Normally, our products assemble an article and deliver it to our customers as a finished product,” said Darin McBeath, Director of Disruptive Technology, based in Cincinnati. “With this contest, we are giving users the parts, or building blocks, of the article and telling them to put it together however they like.”

The initiative ties into Elsevier’s strategy of getting closer to customers and delivering innovative online tools that help them become more productive. “The contest should give us insight into the outcomes customers are trying to achieve,” said Stacy Studzinski, Elsevier Labs Program Management, based in Dayton. “By looking at how users render this material, we can learn how to tailor our products to more directly meet customer needs.” The contest is open to anyone 18 years or older, except Reed Elsevier employees and their immediate family members.

The website provides 3 sample applications to help stimulate interest among possible entrants. For example:

• The Reference 2.0 sample application allows users to swiftly determine the publication years, authors, and journals of an article’s references. The user can view the references from these different vantage points and present the references within the context of the article.

• With the Image 2.0 sample application, users can view all images from an article displayed as thumbnails at the top of the page. When an image is selected, the full size version is displayed, along with each paragraph containing a reference to the.image.

•Tag Cloud 2.0 allows users to view an article’s top 100 adjacent terms (bigrams) in a tag cloud on the right side of the page. When a bigram is clicked on, all paragraphs containing the relevant bigram are displayed.

More than 7,500 articles from 30 journals will be made available to contestants. Participants will be evaluated by a panel of judges selected by Elsevier. Judges will base their decisions on the entries’ creativity, ease-of-use, value-add and quality. The contest opened September 1 and will run until December 31. Around the end of January, a first-, second- and third-place winner will be selected. Winners will receive $4,000, $2,000 and $1,000 (USD).

For more on the contest, visit   http://article20.elsevier.com.

ProSPER.Net/Scopus Young Scientist Award to be Presented March 2009: Encouraging Sustainable Development in Asia/Pacific Region

Scopus will launch an award with ProSPER.Net to encourage young researchers and academics in the Asia/Pacific region. The ProSPER.Net/Scopus Young Scientist Award will be given annually to recognize an outstanding young scientist who has made a significant contribution to the area of Sustainable Development.

  Press Release