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.
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".
[1]
Modern company
The modern company was founded in 1880. Leading products include journals such as
The Lancet,
Cell and
Tetrahedron Letters, books such as
Gray's Anatomy, and the
ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals. Others include the
Trends series, and the
Current Opinion series.
Elsevier company
Elsevier may be the world’s largest provider of science and health information. It publishes about 250'000 articles per year in 2000 journals
[2]. Its archives contain 7 million past publication. Total yearly downloads amount to 240 millions.
[3]
Economic indicators
Elsevier is part of the
Reed Elsevier group. In terms of
revenue, it accounts for 28% of the total (₤1.5b of 5.4 billions in 2006). In terms of
operating profits, it represents a much bigger fraction of 44% (₤395 of 880 millions)
[4]. Adjusted operating profits have risen by 10% between 2005 and 2006
[5]
| Reed Elsevier Annual Report 2006
|
| Turnover | € 7'935 million (+5% from '05) |
| Pre-tax profit | € 1'060 million (+3% from '05) |
| Elsevier Annual Report 2006
|
| Turnover | € 2'236 million (+6.6% from '05) |
| Pre-tax profit | € 581 million (+0.5% from '05) |
| see Elsevier reports[6]; turnover = revenue; profits not adjusted |
Company figures
7,000 journal editors, 70,000 editorial board members and 200,000 reviewers are working for Elsevier.
[2] Each year, the company publishes the original work of more than 500,000 authors in 2,000 journals, 17,000 books, 18 new journals and 1,900 new books.
[2]
In 2005, Elsevier celebrated the 125th anniversary (and the 425th anniversary of the unrelated publishing house of Elzevier from which the modern company takes its name).
It is headed by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Erik Engstrom.
[7]
With its headquarters based in
Amsterdam, Nerherlanss, Elsevier employs more than 7,000 people in over 70 offices across 24 countries.
[2]
Elsevier's operating divisions
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.
Science & Technology
CEO: Herman van Campenhout
Customers: Over 10 million researchers, across 4,500 institutions and 180 countries.
Target market: 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, Syngress Publishing
Health Sciences
CEO: Brian Nairn
Customers: 20 million doctors, nurses, health professionals and students. Publishing in 12 languages including English, German, French Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese and Chinese.
Target market: 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, and online versions of many journals
[1] including
The Lancet, FEBS Letters, etc.
Health-care imprints under Elsevier:
Saunders,
Mosby,
Churchill Livingstone,
Butterworth-Heinemann, Hanley & Belfus
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. For example, a resolution by
Stanford University's senate singled out Elsevier as an example of a publisher of journals which might be "disproportionately expensive compared to their educational and research value" and which librarians should consider dropping, and encouraged its faculty "not to contribute articles or editorial or review efforts to publishers and journals that engage in exploitive or exorbitant pricing".
[8] Similar guidelines and criticism of Elsevier's pricing policies have been passed by the
University of California,
Harvard University and
Duke University.
[9]
Several entire editorial boards leave Elsevier in protest
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.
[10][11]
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.
[12] This board has now launched the new Journal of Topology at a far lower price, under the auspices of the
London Mathematical Society.
[13]
The French
École Normale Supérieure has stopped having Elsevier publish the prestigious journal
Annales Scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure[14] (as of 2008
[15]).
Petition against Reed Elsevier's involvement in weapon shows
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.
[16] Reed Elsevier’s chief executive responded in June 2007 with a written statement which was welcomed by authors of the petition
[17]. Reed Elsevier announced that it will stop participating in arms exhibitions
[18][19].
Imprints
Imprints are brand names in publishing. Elsevier uses its imprints to market to different consumer segments. Many of them have previously been the company names of publishers that were purchased by Reed Elsevier.
See also
References
External links
web sites pertaining to the company
non-Elsevier web sites
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.
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Medicine is the science and "" of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of patients. The term is derived from the Latin ars medicina meaning the art of healing.
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Scientific literature comprises scientific publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences, and within a scientific field is often abbreviated as the literature.
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Reed Elsevier Plc
Public (LSE: REL ,Euronext: REN ,NYSE: ENL , NYSE: RUK )
Founded Merger of Elsevier and Reed International PLC in 1993
Headquarters London and Amsterdam
Key people CEO: Sir Crispin Davis
Chairman: Jan Hommen
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Amsterdam
Canal houses alongside the Prinsengracht
Flag
Coat of arms
Nickname: Mokum
Motto: Heldhaftig, Vastberaden, Barmhartig
(Valiant, Determined, Compassionate)
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Elzevir is the name of a celebrated family of Dutch booksellers, publishers, and printers of the 17th and early 18th centuries. Although it appears the family was involved with the book trade as early as the 16th century, it is only known for its work in some detail beginning with
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Motto
"Je maintiendrai" (French)
"Ik zal handhaven" (Dutch)
"I shall stand fast"1
Anthem
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Lodewijk Elzevir (c. 1546 - 1617), sometimes Louis Elzevir or Elsevier was a significant Dutch printer. He was the founder of the House of Elzevir, which printed, for example, the work of Galileo, at a time when his work was suppressed for religious reasons.
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Leiden
Flag
Coat of arms
Coordinates:
Country Netherlands
Province South Holland
Area (2006)
- Municipality 23.
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15th century - 16th century - 17th century
1550s 1560s 1570s - 1580s - 1590s 1600s 1610s
1577 1578 1579 - 1580 - 1581 1582 1583
:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
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René Descartes (French IPA: [ʁə'ne de'kaʁt]) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius
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Galileo Galilei
Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Giusto Sustermans
Born January 15 1564(1564--)[1]
Pisa, Tuscany - Italy
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Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot, or Hugo de Groot; Delft, 10 April 1583 – Rostock, 28 August 1645) worked as a jurist in the Dutch Republic and laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law.
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Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist, and prominent rationalist.
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The Lancet is one of the oldest peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, published weekly by Elsevier, part of Reed Elsevier. It was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet, as well as an arched window ("to let in
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Cell is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal which publishes novel research in any area of experimental biology that is significant outside its field. Cell is a well-regarded journal and it had a 2005 Impact Factor of 29.
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Tetrahedron Letters is a weekly international journal for rapid publication of full original research papers in the field of organic chemistry. The impact factor of this journal is 2.48 (2005).
[1] References
1.
..... Click the link for more information. Henry Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body (or Gray's Anatomy as it has commonly been shortened) is an English-language human anatomy textbook widely regarded as a classic work on the subject.
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ScienceDirect is one of the largest online collections of published scientific research in the world. Produced by Elsevier it contains over 8.5 million articles from over 2000 journals, including titles such as The Lancet, Cell and Tetrahedron
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Trends is a series of scientific journals owned by Elsevier that publish review articles in a range of areas of biology.
The Trends series was founded in 1976 with Trends in Biochemical Sciences (TIBS), rapidly followed by
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Current Opinion is a series of review journals published by Elsevier on various subjects of biology. Each issue, published every two months, contains one or more themed ‘sections’ edited by scientists who specialise in the field and invite authors to contribute
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Reed Elsevier Plc
Public (LSE: REL ,Euronext: REN ,NYSE: ENL , NYSE: RUK )
Founded Merger of Elsevier and Reed International PLC in 1993
Headquarters London and Amsterdam
Key people CEO: Sir Crispin Davis
Chairman: Jan Hommen
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Revenue is a business term for the amount of money that a company receives from its activities in a given period, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers.
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In financial and business accounting, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) is a measure of a firm's profitability that excludes interest and income tax expenses.[1]
EBIT = Operating Revenue – Operating Expenses + Non-operating Income
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Turnover may refer to:
Business
- A European term for revenue
- Turnover, the length of time the average item spends on a store shelf before being sold
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Canal houses alongside the Prinsengracht
Flag
Coat of arms
Nickname: Mokum
Motto: Heldhaftig, Vastberaden, Barmhartig
(Valiant, Determined, Compassionate)
..... Click the link for more information.
ScienceDirect is one of the largest online collections of published scientific research in the world. Produced by Elsevier it contains over 8.5 million articles from over 2000 journals, including titles such as The Lancet, Cell and Tetrahedron
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- Scopus is part of the scientific name of the Hammerkop bird, after which the ornithological journal Scopus is also named. Mount Scopus is a mountain in Israel.
Scopus..... Click the link for more information. Scirus is a comprehensive science-specific search engine. Like Citeseer and Google Scholar, it is focused on scientific information. Unlike Citeseer, Scirus is not only for computer sciences and IT and not all of the results are free (as an example, some results could be in the
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EMBASE [1] is a biomedical and pharmacological database containing over 11 million records from 1974 to present. Each record is fully indexed and it covers over 5,000 biomedical journals from 70 countries.
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