Elsevier Announces Winners of the Executable Paper Grand Challenge

AMSTERDAM, June 7, 2011 -

- Contest Created to Improve the Way Scientific Information is
Communicated and Used

Elsevier, a leading publisher of scientific, technical and
medical information products and services, has announced the winners of the
Executable Paper Grand Challenge (www.executablepapers.com/), a
program Elsevier created to address the difficulties associated with
reproducing computer science research results. The awards presentation
ceremony took place at the 2011 International Conference on Computational
Science (ICCS [www.iccs-meeting.org/]) on June 2 in Singapore.

The winners, selected from a pool of 70 submissions by a
distinguished nine-member jury, are as follows:

First Prize

Top honors went to The Collage Authoring Environment
(www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050911001220), whose
team members include: Piotr Nowakowski, Eryk Ciepiela, Daniel Harężlak,
Joanna Kocot, Marek Kasztelnik, Tomasz Bartyński, Jan Meizner, and Grzegorz
Dyk, ACC CYFRONET AGH, Krakow, Poland, and Maciej Malawski of the Institute
of Computer Science AGH, Krakow, Poland, and the Center for Research
Computing, University of Notre Dame, USA. The Collage Authoring Environment
is a scalable architecture designed to support authors, reviewers, and end
users as well as publishers. The system allows researchers to create papers
by combining narrative discussion with snippets of executable code.

"The Collage system addressed, in the most comprehensive way, the
concept of an executable paper," said Dr. Peter Sloot of the University of
Amsterdam, External Chair of the Grand Challenge and ICCS Conference Chair.
"It presents this vision in a robust architecture, from the standpoint of
multiple workflows and end-user perspectives, and allows the easy integration
of other components."

Second Prize

Pieter Van Gorp of Eindhoven University of Technology, The
Netherlands, and Steffen Mazanek, Munich, Germany, won second prize for
SHARE: A Web Portal for Creating and Sharing Executable Research Papers
(www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050911001207). SHARE
(Sharing Hosted Autonomous Research Environments) is a Web portal to a
catalog of virtual machines. By deploying a copy of the required operating
system in SHARE as well as relevant software and data, authors can make a
conventional paper fully reproducible and interactive.

Third Prize

Matan Gavish and David Donoho, Stanford University, received
third prize for A Universal Identifier (
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050911001256) for
Computational Results. The Universal Identifier is a specific implementation
of one aspect the executable paper-an ID resolution system for results. The
proposed solution is simple and elegant, and confers ease of use by adding
one or two lines of code.

About the Executable Paper Grand Challenge

Elsevier formed the Executable Paper Grand Challenge to address
the problem that computer science research results can be difficult to
reproduce. Vital blocks of information needed to replicate such results-for
example, software, code, large data sets-are typically unavailable within the
context of a scholarly publication. The Executable Paper Grand Challenge
creates an opportunity for scientists to design solutions that capture this
information and provide a platform whereby this data can be verified and
manipulated.

"The Executable Paper Grand Challenge was created with a view to
the future of scholarly communication, which increasingly integrates the
experiment and its presentation," Dr. Sloot noted. "The vision is a future
where research is executable on all levels, including data, results, and
methodology."

Rebecca Capone, Publisher, Theoretical Computer Science,
Elsevier, and co-organizer of the Grand Challenge, added: "As publishers, it
is our responsibility to not only meet the needs of contemporary researchers
but to also anticipate the needs of future scientists. Executable data both
enriches the content and documents the essential building blocks of the
experiment for the next generation."

Anita de Waard, Director, Disruptive Technologies, Elsevier, sees
the continued collaboration between the very different sets of tools and
solutions presented during the Executable Paper sessions as a very dynamic
way forward. "Collectively we hope to develop new infrastructures and
knowledge environments that will allow for a richer and deeper representation
of our science," she said.

About ICCS 2011

Since 2001, ICCS (www.iccs-meeting.org/) has brought together
researchers and scientists from various disciplines, along with software
developers and vendors, to discuss problems and solutions, identify new
issues, and shape future directions for research, as well as help industrial
users apply various advanced computational techniques. These include
researchers from mathematics and computer science and basic computing
disciplines, as well as researchers from various application areas who are
pioneering advanced application of computational methods to sciences such as
physics, chemistry, life sciences, and engineering, and arts and humanitarian
fields.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider 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 (www.thelancet.com/) and Cell (
www.cell.com/), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major
reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include
SciVerse ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com/), SciVerse Scopus
(www.scopus.com/), Reaxys (www.reaxys.com/), MD Consult
(www.mdconsult.com/) and Nursing Consult (
www.nursingconsult.com/), which enhance the productivity of science
and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (www.scival.com/) and
MEDai's Pinpoint Review (www.medai.com/), which help research and
health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (
www.elsevier.com/) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part
of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (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).

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