AMSTERDAM, November 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- - Announcement Marks Groundbreaking New Standard and SCOPUS as the Authoritative Source for Research Elsevier announced today that Scopus(R), its flagship product and world's largest abstract and citation (A&C) database, was selected as the sole citation provider by the Australian Research Council (ARC) for its Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The ERA initiative has been designed to assess the research quality of Australia's higher education providers using a combination of indicators and expert review by committees comprised of experienced, internationally recognized experts. "The development and growth of a world class system to evaluate research quality has always been our primary objective and Scopus was selected from a competitive tender process," said Professor Margaret Sheil, Chief Executive Officer, ARC. "The ARC welcomes this partnership with Elsevier and I thank them for the strong commitment they have shown to ERA throughout the 2009 trial, and through their tender for the position of citation provider." The ARC has negotiated terms with Elsevier to assist Australian Universities with improving their institutional data quality using Scopus Custom Data. This collaboration also highlights the use of Scopus Custom Data for the entire process of measuring research quality. "By harnessing the broad and rich content available in Scopus, we believe this will set the stage for a next era in research quality measurement and place ARC as one of the premier thought leaders in evaluating research quality," commented Herman Van Campenhout, CEO Science & Technology for Elsevier. "We're extremely proud to have Scopus chosen for this initiative and we're looking forward to continue and grow our relationship with the Australian Research Council." The ARC is one of many agencies around the world that are now using Scopus data as the authoritative data source for research performance measurement including: the OECD, and more recently the Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance (iFQ) in Germany. Notes for Editors: For more information on the ERA initiative, please visit: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/default.htm For a general overview of Scopus, please visit: http://www.info.scopus.com/overview/ About the Australian Research Council (ARC) The Australian Research Council (ARC) is a statutory authority within the Australian Government's Innovation, Industry, Science and Research portfolio. The ARC advises the Australian Government on research matters and manages the National Competitive Grants Program, a significant component of Australia's investment in research and development. Through the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative the ARC will assess research quality within Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review by committees comprising experienced, internationally-recognised experts. About Scopus Covering the world's research literature, Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web sources with smart tools to track analyze and visualize research. Scopus was designed and developed with over 500 users and librarians internationally. Its unique database contains abstracts and references from nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage. In addition, Scopus not only offers users citation information about the articles covered, but also directly integrates Web and patent searches. Direct links to full-text articles, library resources and other applications like reference management software, make Scopus quicker, easier and more comprehensive to use than any other literature research tool. For more information about Scopus please visit http://www.info.scopus.com/. In October 2008, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) announced it would use Scopus Custom Data for its research, analysis and benchmarking work due to its broad international coverage, clean flexible data and advanced features. Australian Research Council (ARC) selected Scopus to provide citation information for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative Cluster One evaluation. And of the top fifty universities, as ranked by Time Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, 50% of them depend on Scopus and the percentage increases each year. About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/) and Cell (http://www.cell.com/), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/), Scopus (http://www.scopus.com/), Reaxys (http://www.reaxys.com/), MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com/) and Nursing Consult (http://www.nursingconsult.com/), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (http://www.scival.com/) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (http://www.medai.com/), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively. A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier ( http://www.elsevier.com/) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (http://www.reedelsevier.com/), a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange). Contact: Anne Harvey Direct: +61-294-228-564 E-mail: DATASOURCE: Elsevier CONTACT: Contact: Anne Harvey, Direct: +61-294-228-564, E-mail:

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