News Release

Max Planck Society partners with Elsevier

Agreement secures wide access to academic information

Business Announcement

Elsevier

Munich, December 21, 2006 - Following a new agreement between the Max Planck Society and Elsevier, a world-leading scientific publisher, all scientists of the 80 Max Planck Institutes will be granted access to the entire Elsevier full-text portfolio for three years.

In total around 7.5 million articles and abstracts, including titles from Cell Press, are available through ScienceDirect – Elsevier's unsurpassed online content platform. To maximize efficiency, the Max Planck Society decided to use only electronic versions of Elsevier-published articles.

An additional gain for Elsevier is the Society's agreement to join ScienceDirect's Development Partner program, which has been established to help model ScienceDirect's continuing development according to customer needs.

"The Max Planck Society has been following the path of electronic information provision for several years and knows that excellent research is not possible without a wide information base and permanent developments in infrastructure," said Kurt Mehlhorn, Vice President of the Max Planck Society. "Therefore it makes sense that the existing collaboration is not only extended, but that further enhancements to ScienceDirect will also be directly influenced. This way we can bring in our experience in the development phase [of ScienceDirect] and supply our scientists with new possibilities quickly and ideally configured."

Frank Vrancken Peeters, Elsevier's Managing Director, Academic & Government, said: "We are happy to gain the Max Planck Society as a customer and development partner for another three years. Both sides can now concentrate on further possibilities in cooperation. We would like to thank the negotiating parties of the Max Planck Society for the good collaboration."

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About the Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society (http://www.mpg.de) for the Advancement of Science is an independent, non-profit research organization in Germany. The 80 Max Planck Institutes perform basic research in the interest of the general public in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. In particular, the Max Planck Society takes up new and innovative research areas that are not yet established at the German universities.

About ScienceDirect

Over a quarter of the world's full text scientific, technical and medical (STM) articles – managed by renowned editors, written by respected authors and read by researchers from around the globe – are available in one place: ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com).

Elsevier's extensive and unique full-text collection covers authoritative titles from the core scientific literature including high impact factor titles such as THE LANCET, Cell and Tetrahedron. Over seven-and-a-half million articles are available online, including Articles in Press which offer rapid access to recently accepted manuscripts. The critical mass of information available on ScienceDirect is unsurpassed. Coverage includes over 2000 journals published by Elsevier and dynamic linking to journals from approximately 350 STM publishers through CrossRef. An expanding program of online major reference works, handbooks and book series in all fields of science seamlessly interlinks with primary research referenced in journal articles.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier's 7,000 employees in over 70 offices worldwide publish more than 2,000 journals and 1,900 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/), MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com/), Scopus (http://www.info.scopus.com/), bibliographic databases, and online reference works.

Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com/) is a global business headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc (http://www.reedelsevier.com/), a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).


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