Scopus Favoured as the Sole Citation Provider by the Australian Research Council

Announcement Marks Groundbreaking New Standard and SCOPUS as the Authoritative Source for Research

AMSTERDAM, November 24 - Elsevier announced today that Scopus(R), its flagship product and
world's largest abstract and citation (A&C) database, was selected as the
sole citation provider by the Australian Research Council (ARC) for its
Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative.

The ERA initiative has been designed to assess the research
quality of Australia's higher education providers using a combination of
indicators and expert review by committees comprised of experienced,
internationally recognized experts.

"The development and growth of a world class system to evaluate
research quality has always been our primary objective and Scopus was
selected from a competitive tender process," said Professor Margaret Sheil,
Chief Executive Officer, ARC. "The ARC welcomes this partnership with
Elsevier and I thank them for the strong commitment they have shown to ERA
throughout the 2009 trial, and through their tender for the position of
citation provider."

The ARC has negotiated terms with Elsevier to assist Australian
Universities with improving their institutional data quality using Scopus
Custom Data. This collaboration also highlights the use of Scopus Custom Data
for the entire process of measuring research quality.

"By harnessing the broad and rich content available in Scopus, we
believe this will set the stage for a next era in research quality
measurement and place ARC as one of the premier thought leaders in evaluating
research quality," commented Herman Van Campenhout, CEO Science & Technology
for Elsevier. "We're extremely proud to have Scopus chosen for this
initiative and we're looking forward to continue and grow our relationship
with the Australian Research Council."

The ARC is one of many agencies around the world that are now
using Scopus data as the authoritative data source for research performance
measurement including: the OECD, and more recently the Institute for Research
Information and Quality Assurance (iFQ) in Germany.

Notes for Editors:

For more information on the ERA initiative, please visit:

www.arc.gov.au/era/default.htm

For a general overview of Scopus, please visit:

www.info.scopus.com/overview/

About the Australian Research Council (ARC)

The Australian Research Council (ARC) is a statutory authority within the
Australian Government's Innovation, Industry, Science and Research portfolio.
The ARC advises the Australian Government on research matters and manages the
National Competitive Grants Program, a significant component of Australia's
investment in research and development. Through the Excellence in Research
for Australia (ERA) initiative the ARC will assess research quality within
Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators
and expert review by committees comprising experienced,
internationally-recognised experts.

About Scopus

Covering the world's research literature, Scopus is the largest abstract
and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality Web sources
with smart tools to track analyze and visualize research. Scopus was designed
and developed with over 500 users and librarians internationally. Its unique
database contains abstracts and references from nearly 18,000 titles from
more than 5,000 international publishers, ensuring broad interdisciplinary
coverage. In addition, Scopus not only offers users citation information
about the articles covered, but also directly integrates Web and patent
searches. Direct links to full-text articles, library resources and other
applications like reference management software, make Scopus quicker, easier
and more comprehensive to use than any other literature research tool. For
more information about Scopus please visit www.info.scopus.com.

In October 2008, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and
Development (OECD) announced it would use Scopus Custom Data for its
research, analysis and benchmarking work due to its broad international
coverage, clean flexible data and advanced features. Australian Research
Council (ARC) selected Scopus to provide citation information for the
Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative Cluster One evaluation.
And of the top fifty universities, as ranked by Time Higher Education (THE)
World University Rankings, 50% of them depend on Scopus and the percentage
increases each year.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher 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
ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com), 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).

    Contact: Anne Harvey
    Direct: +61-294-228-564
    E-mail: a.harvey@elsevier.com

Contact: Anne Harvey, Direct: +61-294-228-564, E-mail: a.harvey at elsevier.com