The last time Editors Update focused on ScienceDirect was in 2002. “Four years is a long time, especially in electronic publishing, and an awful lot has happened to ScienceDirect in that time,” says Joep Verheggen, Director of ScienceDirect. “To give you an impression, in 2002, 80 million articles were downloaded from ScienceDirect, while during 2006, there were more than 300 million downloads. The number of visitors to the website has also doubled between 2004 and 2006.”

Easy access
Access to reliable sources of information has traditionally been cited as a key issue within the scientific community. “Before the advent of the Web, the publishing industry had been stable for a very long time,” Verheggen continues. “Researchers had to visit libraries and wade through mountains of information to find what they were looking for. One of the biggest advances in recent years was our US$ 40 million project to digitize Elsevier’s entire back catalogue of journals - right back to the first ever issue of The Lancet, from 1823 - and offer this as the Backfiles Collection on ScienceDirect.”

The transition from publishing in print to a combination of print and electronic publishing, or electronic publishing alone, has been relatively quick and successful, making access to scientific information easier than ever. Elsevier took the lead in this respect, although other publishers are now following the same course. In November 2006, for example, the one-billionth article was downloaded from ScienceDirect, which now has almost eight million articles available online. One the advantages of ScienceDirect for editors and reviewers is that it provides an overview of papers published in specific fields, which helps them in their crucial role as the gatekeepers of scientific review material.

Latest upgrades
Each year, at least two new software releases are introduced on the ScienceDirect website, but 2006 was a special year. “We took a more fundamental approach in 2006 and focused on the navigational path and overall design of ScienceDirect,” Verheggen explains. “We took a step back and asked ‘what do people really want from ScienceDirect?’. We talked to end users and came up with various concepts and prototypes. The result of all this is a dramatically simplified navigational scheme that makes it far easier to go directly to the desired article and to personalize settings and alerts. We changed the whole layout of the home page to make it more intuitive, dynamic and simple, and we made similar upgrades to the journal home pages. Overall, we looked at the number of clicks needed to perform key tasks, which we have reduced by up to 80% in some cases. This improves the productivity and efficiency of the website, and we’ve also added some extra personalization features, such as Favorites, bookmarks and a memory of recent actions.”

Perhaps the most useful new feature from an Elsevier editor’s perspective is the enhancement of the ‘quick search’ function. “This allows editors and users, for whom ScienceDirect is primarily designed, to find all sources for a particular author or article quickly and easily,” Verheggen adds.

Added value
More than any other, the scientific community has embraced the concept of accessing information online. “ScienceDirect’s aim is to get information to users quicker, so they can spend more time analyzing it, rather than searching for it,” says Verheggen.

So far, customer feedback on the improvements has been very positive. “We showed the new design and features to the press at a fairly early stage and they were very impressed,” Verheggen continues. “They agreed that we’d achieved what we set out to do and the latest reports from the market place have also been very positive. The message we’re getting is that we’ve made some great improvements to the site.”

Investing in the future
The World Wide Web is increasingly becoming an arena for social groups and networking, which are being accommodated in an extension to the Web, known as the Web 2.0. “At ScienceDirect, we’re also interested in these developments,” says Verheggen. “We have set up our own program, called ScienceDirect 2.0, which is a cooperation between Elsevier’s product development and marketing teams and the publishing organization. We’re also looking at further opportunities in relation to the so-called ‘semantic Web’. So far, we have come up with eight concepts, which we are discussing with development partners, customers and users. We’re asking them which concepts are the most important to them and identifying a priority list for a ScienceDirect 2.0 innovation program. We’re currently building prototypes and developing a business case, and we aim to develop a number of concepts as part of this program during 2007 and 2008.”

While work is being conducted on the website redesign and ScienceDirect 2.0, Verheggen and his team have also been looking at the underlying infrastructure that supports ScienceDirect. “In January 2007, we will replace the current search engine with a new one, which brings ScienceDirect’s search capabilities in line with the most modern search engines,” says Verheggen. “FAST ESPTM is a product name, but it is really fast and is already used on the Scirus and Scopus websites. It provides more flexibility and greater speed, as well as new types of functionality.”

The redesign of ScienceDirect, the switch to the FAST search engine and the beginning of ScienceDirect 2.0 development are all additional activities to the standard annual software releases. “This means that we’re continuing to invest significantly in ScienceDirect, to the tune of multi-million dollars, in fact,” says Verheggen. “In addition, we’re working on an Access & Entitlement project, which should be completed by the end of 2007 or the beginning of 2008. This will provide customers with greater options and control over the content they wish to access, along with a better customer service experience for our users.”

Intercompatibility
Elsevier’s three main web-based scientific resources are ScienceDirect, Scirus and Scopus. “ScienceDirect is a full-text journal-based platform; Scopus is a web-based abstract and citation database with sophisticated search, retrieval and analysis features; while Scirus is Elsevier’s free scientific Web search engine,” Verheggen explains. “Scirus and Scopus index the full-text articles included on ScienceDirect’s database (and many other e-journal platforms), and make the abstracts of these articles available to users. With the appropriate entitlement, however, users can easily make the link to ScienceDirect to gain access to the full article.”

In the pipeline
Maintaining ScienceDirect’s reputation as a cutting-edge resource requires upgrading its architecture and technology at regular intervals. “In addition to all of the above improvements, we’re also working on improving the quality of images included in electronic versions of papers,” Verheggen explains. “In print, you can produce excellent images and we’re trying to bring ScienceDirect’s electronic images up to the same standard.”

“We’re also trying to increase the speed of publication to make titles accessible as quickly as possible. To this end, we’re making early versions of papers from a selected group of titles available after they’ve been peer reviewed, but before they’ve been through the technical editing process – the so-called Author Manuscript. During 2007 we will also launch the e-books program, which is a large extension of the current books program on ScienceDirect. From May onwards we will load an additional 3500-4000 book titles on to the ScienceDirect backlist and frontlist. Finally, we’ve also introduced an Ambassador Program, which enables Elsevier editors to gain access to article and book titles that they might not otherwise be able to access.”