Elsevier

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Elsevier's logo. "Non solus" is Latin for "not alone."
Elsevier's logo. "Non solus" is Latin for "not alone."

Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, forms part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has substantial operations in the UK, USA and elsewhere.

Contents

[edit] Origins

Elsevier took its name (in modernised form) from the historic Dutch publishing house of the same name (see House of Elzevir). The Elzevir family had operated as booksellers and publishers in the Netherlands. Its founder, Lodewijk Elzevir, (1542–1617) lived in Leiden and established the business in 1580.

As publishers of new work by Descartes, Galileo, and Grotius, they account for part of the reason for Bertrand Russell's comment that it "is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Holland in the seventeenth century, as the one country where there was freedom of speculation".

[edit] Modern company

The modern company was founded in 1880. Leading products include journals such as The Lancet, Cell and Tetrahedron Letters, books such Gray's Anatomy and the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals. Others include the Trends series, and the Current Opinion series.

[edit] Elsevier at a glance

As the world’s largest provider of science and health information, Elsevier serves more than 30 million scientists, students, and health and information professionals worldwide.

Revenues: In 2005, Elsevier revenues totalled €2,097 million. For more information, visit Reed Elsevier's Investor Center or download the 2005 Annual Report.

Partners: with a global scholarly community of 7,000 journal editors, 70,000 editorial board members, 200,000 reviewers.

Publishes: the original work of more than 500,000 authors each year in 2,000 journals, 17,000 books, 20 new journals and 1,900 new books.

History: recently celebrated the 125th anniversary and the 425th anniversary of the publishing house of Elzevier from which the modern company takes its name.

CEO: Erik Engstrom

Headquarters: Amsterdam, Elsevier employs more than 7,000 people in over 70 offices across 24 countries

Elsevier has two distinct operating divisions: Science & Technology and Health Sciences. Products and services include electronic and print versions of journals, textbooks and reference works and cover the health, life, physical and social sciences.

[edit] Science & Technology

Mission: Contribute to the progress and application of science, by delivering superior information products and tools that build insights and enable advancement in research.

CEO : Herman van Campenhout, Elsevier, Science & Technology

Operations: Serving over 10 million researchers, across 4,500 institutions and 180 countries.

Communities served: Academic and government research institutions, corporate research labs, booksellers, librarians, scientific researchers, authors, and editors.

Flagship products & services: ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scirus, Embase, Engineering Village, Compendex, MDL Isentris, Cell, and The Lancet.

Science and Technology imprints under Elsevier: Academic Press, Architectural Press, Butterworth-Heinemann, CMP, Digital Press, Elsevier, Focal Press, Gulf Professional Publishing, Morgan Kaufmann, Newnes, Pergamon, Pergamon Flexible Learning

[edit] Health Sciences

Mission: Advancing medicine, by delivering superior education, reference information and decision support tools to doctors, nurses, health practitioners and students.

CEO: Brian Nairn, Elsevier, Health Sciences

Operations: Serving 20 million doctors, nurses, health professionals and students. Publishing in 12 languages including English, German, French Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese and Chinese.

Communities served: Doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, medical and nursing students and schools, medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and research establishments.

Flagship products & services: The 'Consult' series (FirstCONSULT, PathCONSULT, NursingCONSULT, MDConsult, StudentCONSULT), Virtual Clinical Excursions, and major reference works such as Gray's Anatomy, Nelson' Pediatrics, Dorland's IIlustrated Medical Dictionary, Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy.

Health-care imprints under Elsevier: Saunders, Mosby, Churchill Livingstone, Butterworth-Heinemann, Hanley & Belfus

[edit] Criticism

In recent years the subscription rates charged by the company for its journals have been criticised; some very large journals (those with more than 5000 articles) charge subscription prices as high as $14,000, far above average. The company has been criticised not just by advocates of a switch to the so-called open-access publication model, but also by universities whose library budgets make it difficult for them to afford current journal prices.

In November 1999 the complete Editorial Board of the Journal of Logic Programming (50 editors in total) collectively resigned after 16 months of unsuccessful negotiations with Elsevier Press about the price of library subscriptions. This editorial board created a new journal (Theory and Practice of Logic Programming) with a lower priced publisher, and on its side Elsevier continued the publication of the journal with a completely different editorial board and a slightly different name (The Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming).

At the end of 2003, the entire editorial board of the prestigious Journal of Algorithms resigned to start Transactions on Algorithms with a different, lower priced publisher.[1][2]

The same happened in 2005 to the International Journal of Solids and Structures whose editors resigned to start the Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures. However, a new editorial board was quickly established and the journal continues in unaltered form.

On August 10, 2006, the entire editorial board of the distinguished mathematical journal Topology handed in their resignation, again because of stalled negotiations with Elsevier to lower the subscription price.[3] This board has now launched the new Journal of Topology at a far lower price, under the auspices of the London Mathematical Society.[4]

In the March 2007 issue of the medical journal The Lancet, leading medical centers including the UK Royal College of Physicians urged Reed Elsevier to sever weapons ties. Doctors spoke out against Elsevier's role in the involvement of the organizing of exhibitions for the arms trade. [5]

[edit] Imprints

[edit] External links

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