Scirus Expands its Repository Search Service with the First European Partner, DiVA - Academic Archive On-line

AMSTERDAM, DECEMBER 12, 2005 – Elsevier announced today that its free science-specific search engine, Scirus, is expanding its repository search service to Europe by partnering with DiVA – Academic Archive On-line – to index its repositories, and to power the search on the portal site. DiVA is a joint program of Scandinavian universities to publish, preserve and collect all of their academic content in the DiVA repository solution.

DiVA, one of the leading cross-institutional repositories, was developed by the Uppsala University Library in late 2001 to support workflow for both electronic publishing and printing. Since its development, DiVA has garnered the attention and cooperation of leading universities in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In addition to Uppsala University, the largest contributors to DiVA today include Linköping University, The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Umeå University, Stockholm University and NTNU. DiVA is currently used by 15 universities in Scandinavia. The repository consists of over 6,600 documents, including full-text doctoral theses, dissertations, monographs and undergraduate theses.

Repositories worldwide are beginning to respond to the growing need to increase the visibility of their content and implement improved search functionality. Building on the momentum since the summer launch of its Repository Search Service, Scirus is offering its search expertise and capabilities to DiVA, making their content easier to find by including it in its index and powering the search on the repository’s website. By indexing full-text and metadata, Scirus allows users to search by important bibliographical information such as author, title and keyword.

As part of the partnership, Scirus will also participate in a joint communications program designed to demonstrate the value and increase awareness of the repository on the campuses of member institutes.

“We are thrilled to partner with DiVA, the pioneer in European institutional repository initiatives,” said Sharon Mombrú, senior product manager at Scirus. “Scirus continues to serve the scientific and academic communities by offering high quality content from leading Northern European institutes.”

"Our partnership with Scirus is one way of increasing the visibility of locally produced and internationally relevant research,” said Eva Müller, director of Electronic Publishing Centre at Uppsala University Library and DiVA project director. “Through Scirus, we expect that the accessibility of the important documents available in DiVA will encourage students and researchers to use this content to produce quality research and articles. In parallel, with Scirus’ technology powering the search on DiVA’s platform, this content will now also be easier to find on the DiVA site. In working with Scirus this academic content is guaranteed unique branding and global visibility.”


About DiVA
DiVA , the Academic Archive Online (Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet in Swedish) is a collaborative effort of a number of universities in Scandinavia, which offers both publishing services and technical solutions for local repositories. The DiVA system, originally developed at Uppsala University, Sweden, supports workflows for both electronic publishing and printing. An archive of fulltext documents published at the participating universities has been created and metadata records are disseminated to other information services. In cooperation with the Royal Library in Stockholm – the National Library of Sweden, long-term preservation is guaranteed as well as access in the long-term. Today it is mainly doctoral theses, undergraduate theses and research reports that are published through DiVA, but it is also possible to publish articles and monographs.

About Scirus
Scirus is the most comprehensive science-focused search engine available on the Internet, supporting over one million researchers, scientists and students worldwide. Scirus offers users a unique combination of free Web information and journal content, clearly branding search results from proprietary sources, assuring users the validity of the content. Web sources searched by Scirus include research institutes, governments, scientific organizations, conferences, scientists’ homepages and company homepages worldwide. Optimized for science-related queries, Scirus uses a dictionary with over 1.6 million scientific terms, unique pattern recognition tools and linguistic analysis, to classify the content type and recognize the relevance of each document. Searching both the full-text and metadata of over 200 million scientifically relevant pages, Scirus offers users unique search functionalities such as the ability to search on bibliographical information and specific content types. Scirus is the recipient of numerous International awards, including the Search Engine Watch award for Best Specialty Search Engine and the WebAward for Best Search Engine or Directory.


About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier’s 7,000 employees in 74 offices worldwide publish more than 1,800 journals and 2,200 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as ScienceDirect, MD Consult, Scopus , bibliographic databases, and online reference works.

Elsevier is a global business headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier’s ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

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Natasha Molamusa

Fusion PR

Elsevier

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