Elsevier facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Elsevier

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Publishing
Founded	1880; 145 years ago (1880)
Headquarters	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Key people	Kumsal Bayazit, Chief Executive Officer
Revenue	£2.909 billion (2022)
Operating income	£1.078 billion (2022)
Net income	£2.021 billion (2022)
Number of employees	8,700
Parent	RELX

Elsevier is a big Dutch company that publishes scientific, technical, and medical information. They create journals, books, and online tools for scientists, doctors, and researchers. Some of their well-known journals are The Lancet and Cell. They also have a huge online library called ScienceDirect and a research database called Scopus.

Elsevier is part of a larger company called the RELX Group. In 2022, Elsevier published over 600,000 articles in more than 2,800 journals. They have a massive collection of over 17 million documents and 40,000 e-books. People download their content over a billion times each year!

Sometimes, researchers have concerns about Elsevier. They point out that much of the research Elsevier publishes is paid for by public money. Some people think the prices for accessing these articles are too high. This has led to discussions and sometimes even boycotts, encouraging people to find other ways to share research, like free online archives.

History of Elsevier

The original seal of the Elsevier family is used by Elsevier company as its logo.

Elsevier was started in 1880. It took its name and logo from an older Dutch publishing family called Elzevir, who were active hundreds of years ago. The modern Elsevier company is not directly connected to that old family, but they were inspired by them.

The Elzevir family were booksellers and publishers in the Netherlands. Their founder, Lodewijk Elzevir, started his business in 1580. Elsevier uses the Elzevir family's old logo: a tree with a vine and the words Non Solus. This Latin phrase means "not alone." Elsevier says this logo shows how publishers and scholars work together.

After World War II, Elsevier grew a lot in the science field. This growth was helped by the success of their news magazine, Elsevier, which started in 1945.

In 1939, Elsevier opened offices in London and New York to share their academic books around the world. In 1947, they started publishing their first journal in English, called Biochimica et Biophysica Acta.

A big step for Elsevier was in 1971 when they bought Excerpta Medica. This company used computers to create journals, which was new at the time. This helped Elsevier start using computer technology.

In 1991, Elsevier began a project called TULIP with nine American universities. This was one of the first times published materials were made available over the internet. This project later led to ScienceDirect, which launched in 1997. ScienceDirect became one of the first online places for scientific books and articles.

In 2004, Elsevier launched Scopus, a huge database of scholarly publications. It helps researchers find articles and measure how well their work is doing.

In 2013, Elsevier bought Mendeley, a company that made software for managing research papers. Mendeley used to be an open platform for sharing research. Some users were upset by this sale because they felt it went against the idea of free access to research.

Elsevier Today

Elsevier is a very large company. In 2018, researchers sent over 1.8 million research papers to Elsevier. More than 20,000 editors helped review and choose these papers. This led to over 470,000 articles being published in more than 2,500 journals. Most of these editors are volunteers who also have other jobs in universities.

Elsevier is one of the biggest academic publishers in the world. In 2020, they published about 16% of all academic papers. Most of their income comes from electronic subscriptions (about 84%), with a smaller part from printed materials.

The company has about 8,100 employees. Kumsal Bayazit became the CEO in 2019. In the UK, Elsevier reported a difference in pay between men and women, which they said was because more men were in senior and technical roles.

Elsevier makes a lot of money. In 2018, it made £942 million in profit. This profit grew even more in 2019, reaching £982 million.

In 2019, over two million research papers were sent to Elsevier. About 22,000 editors helped review these papers, leading to around 500,000 articles being published in over 2,500 journals.

What Elsevier Offers

Elsevier provides many products and services. These include online and printed versions of journals, textbooks, and reference books. They cover subjects like health, life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences.

Their customers are mainly universities, government research groups, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. They publish in many languages, including English, German, French, and Japanese.

Some of their main products are:

• ScienceDirect: This is Elsevier's online platform where you can find their journals and over 40,000 e-books. You can usually read summaries of articles for free. To read the full article, you often need a subscription or have to pay for it.
• Scopus: A database that helps researchers find and track scientific publications.
• Well-known books like Gray's Anatomy and Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary.

In 2019, Elsevier published 49,000 free articles that anyone could read (called open access articles). They also have 370 journals that are fully open access. Many of their other journals offer a "hybrid" option, where authors can pay extra to make their article open access.

Costs and Concerns

Elsevier has faced criticism for the prices they charge for journal subscriptions. Some very large journals can cost thousands of pounds a year. Many universities pay over a million pounds to Elsevier every year.

Universities like Stanford University, the University of California, and Harvard University have spoken out about these high prices. They have encouraged their faculty not to contribute to journals that charge too much.

In 2015, universities in the Netherlands threatened to boycott Elsevier. After a year of talks, Elsevier agreed to make 30% of research by Dutch authors in their journals open access by 2018.

In 2018, a complaint was filed against Elsevier in Europe, saying their practices might not be fair. However, the European Commission decided not to investigate.

Other Activities

Elsevier also organizes many conferences, exhibitions, and workshops around the world. They hold over 50 events each year, covering various science and health topics.

Sometimes, Elsevier has faced other issues. In 2009, they offered gift vouchers to academics if they would write five-star reviews for a textbook. Elsevier later said this was a mistake by a marketing employee.

They have also been known to make it difficult for researchers to use automated tools to analyze large amounts of text from their papers, even if the universities already pay for access.

Elsevier also works with companies that produce fossil fuels. They publish books and offer data services to help these companies find and extract oil and gas.

Elsevier and Universities Around the World

Many countries and universities have had discussions and disagreements with Elsevier about the cost of subscriptions and the idea of open access. Open access means that research articles are available for free to everyone, usually online.

• Colombia: The Colombian government and universities have worked with Elsevier to get better prices for subscriptions.
• Finland: In 2015, Finnish research groups paid a lot for subscriptions, with a big part going to Elsevier. This led to a petition asking for fairer prices and open access. A deal was reached in 2018.
• France: Some French institutions have stopped publishing journals with Elsevier or have signed new contracts despite criticism.
• Germany: Since 2018, many German universities have stopped subscribing to Elsevier journals. They want more transparent pricing and open access.
• Hungary: In 2018, Hungary decided not to renew its subscription with Elsevier because they couldn't agree on an open access deal.
• Netherlands: In 2015, Dutch universities threatened a boycott, leading to Elsevier agreeing to make some Dutch papers open access.
• Norway: In 2019, Norway stopped talks with Elsevier over open access and high costs.
• South Korea: In 2017, many South Korean university libraries joined a boycott against Elsevier, but an agreement was later reached.
• Sweden: In 2018, Swedish universities decided not to renew their contract with Elsevier, pushing for a move to open access. A new agreement was made in 2019.
• Taiwan: In 2016, over 75% of universities in Taiwan joined a boycott against Elsevier.
• United States: Several universities, like Florida State University and the University of California, have cancelled or changed their subscriptions to Elsevier. They want to make publicly funded research more openly available.
• Ukraine: In 2020, the Ukrainian government cancelled subscriptions for all universities after talks failed.

Sharing Research and Open Access

Elsevier has been involved in discussions and efforts related to open access. Open access is a movement that wants research articles to be freely available online for everyone to read, without needing to pay for subscriptions.

• Lobbying Efforts: Elsevier has taken part in discussions about laws and policies related to open access.
• Selling Open-Access Articles: Sometimes, Elsevier has been found selling articles that should have been available for free.
• Action Against Self-Archiving: In the past, Elsevier has asked universities to remove articles that professors had put on their own university websites, even if it was for sharing research. This practice has mostly stopped after many academics complained.
• Lawsuits: Elsevier has filed lawsuits against websites like Sci-Hub and LibGen, which provide free access to articles that are usually behind a paywall.

Awards and Partnerships

Elsevier works with different organizations to give out awards.

• Since 1987, Elsevier has partnered with the journal Spectrochimica Acta Part B to give an award for the best paper of the year in atomic spectroscopy.
• The IBMS Elsevier Award was given for outstanding research in bone and mineral metabolism.
• From 2013, the CAPES Elsevier Award in Brazil focused on encouraging women in science.
• Since 2011, the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World have recognized women scientists in developing countries.
• The Elsevier Foundation also gives awards for projects that help fight climate change.

Elsevier's Publishing Names

Elsevier uses different brand names, called imprints, to publish different types of content. Many of these imprints used to be separate publishing companies that Elsevier bought.

See also

• List of Elsevier periodicals
• Sci-Hub, a website providing free access to otherwise paywalled academic papers that is involved in a legal case with Elsevier