ScienceDirect is a unit of Elsevier Science and part of the Reed Elsevier plc group. It provides researchers and librarians in academia and corporations with electronic access to the archives of over 1,100 scientific, technical, and medical journals. Full-text, full-image content is sold under license and subscription pricing structures, primarily. At its core, ScienceDirect content includes journals from Elsevier Science as well as other STM publishers, and an expanding suite of secondary databases including Elsevier BIOBASE, EMBASE, FLUIDEX, Geobase, OceanBase, World Textiles, Ei's Compendex, Beilstein Abstracts, and BIOTECHNOBASE.

The arrangement between ScienceDirect and SilverPlatter Information (http://www.silverplatter.com) enables links from abstracts in over 90 SilverPlatter databases in the SilverLinker group from a variety of database producers to pull full-text articles within ScienceDirect at the article level. ScienceDirect OnSite customers will also have the ability to link from SilverPlatter databases to their local electronic journal collections. This local linking feature is currently in the development and testing phase.

"ScienceDirect is committed to providing access to our full-text journal collection through various navigational interfaces," said Pat Sabosik, vice president and general manager of ScienceDirect. "Access to full-text articles in ScienceDirect from the SilverPlatter collection of databases is a link our customers requested and we are pleased to provide. The access illustrates the importance of the full-text article in the research process, and the links will help drive article usage, which is an important metric for our authors and editors."

"We are thrilled that this agreement will bring access to important journals from Elsevier Science and from key independent publishers represented on the ScienceDirect site via SilverLinker," said Carol Meyer, SilverLinker product manager. "This represents the addition of more than a thousand journals spanning 14 fields of science. Our customers have repeatedly requested access to this critical collection. Customers will be able to link to the ScienceDirect Web service. This will bring the total journals linked to via SilverLinker to over 4,000."

The SilverLinker feature provides article-specific URL links within the bibliographic database that enable linking directly to the article the user wants, not just to the top level of the electronic journal.

BIOSIS

The deal with BIOSIS (http://www.biosis.org), a leading abstracting-and-indexing service for life sciences, will involve joint production of a Web-based version of BIOSIS Previews for the ScienceDirect platform. The new product will enable users to link from abstracts in the BIOSIS Previews database to the related full-text articles within ScienceDirect, but only when the users access the BIOSIS database via ScienceDirect. Unlike many other abstracting-and-indexing services, BIOSIS has no direct Web delivery of its file off its own Web site. It relies on outside delivery services such as Dialog and STN and, now, ScienceDirect.

The BIOSIS Previews database contains references and abstracts to journal and non-journal literature on biological research, medical research findings, meeting reports, and conference proceedings. This agreement gives ScienceDirect and BIOSIS customers seamless linking from abstracts to the full-text articles in ScienceDirect and from cited references in articles to the BIOSIS abstracts.

According to Sabosik, "The Relational Indexing feature of BIOSIS products adds a rich navigation layer that provides researchers in the life sciences with ready access to a wealth of full-text journal articles and reference linking, available through the ScienceDirect platform. BIOSIS Previews, coupled with EMBASE and other secondary databases on ScienceDirect, provides our customers with different entry points into the scientific literature to enrich their search experience and search results." In turn, Linda Sacks, senior vice president of marketing and sales for BIOSIS, said: "The availability of BIOSIS on the ScienceDirect platform provides our customers with an elegant solution to full-text access to the broad life sciences journal collection on ScienceDirect. We hope to attract new users in both the academic research and corporate markets."

BIOSIS is a not-for-profit organization that has served the life sciences community since 1926, providing a megabase life sciences abstracting-and-indexing service. It also jointly publishes the Zoological Record with the Zoological Society of London.

PhysicsDirect and INSPEC

ScienceDirect has also signed an agreement with the Institution of Electrical Engineers (http://www.iee.org.uk), producers of the INSPEC database covering physics, electronics, computers, and information technology. The INSPEC database indexes and abstracts over 6 million articles and represents a strong enhancement to the physics publications already available on ScienceDirect, according to the announcement. The print version of the INSPEC database comprises the four parts of Science Abstracts.

In March, ScienceDirect will launch PhysicsDirect, a specialized section of the ScienceDirect platform completely customized for the physics researcher. The INSPEC database, i.e. Part A, Physics Abstracts, will form an abstracting-and-indexing layer that interfaces with full-text links to and from major physics society publications—specifically those from the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society, as well as ScienceDirect's commercially published physics titles.

Sabosik said, "By integrating this premier physics abstracts database with the full text of Elsevier Science and other participating publishers on the ScienceDirect platform and linking to other publishers such as the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society, we will be able to provide a powerful research tool for the physics community."

The full INSPEC database will be available to all users of ScienceDirect, as well as those just using PhysicsDirect.