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Elsevier strategically invests in Web 2.0 technologies
By David Marques, Vice President, Architecture and New Technology, Elsevier, Seattle, WA, USA

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, no promise has gone less fulfilled than the promise of easy and widespread collaboration. Remember the hype six to eight years ago about “communities” on the Web? Collaboration is just one of the promises of the recent “Web 2.0” hype, but we at Elsevier think there is something different this time around. Why? The main reasons are maturity of the technology (making it more user-friendly and removing barriers so more people can participate) and maturity and expectations of users.

Why Elsevier cares about Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 is widely used to encompass a lot of different things, as is often the case with heavily hyped new directions in the Internet. What distinguishes the Web 2.0 direction for us is that it facilitates users creating new value from existing content and that complements existing content. Powerful new services reflecting the 2.0 movement integrate disparate data to make it more focused for user needs, integrate data within specific user tasks, facilitate collaboration and team use of information, and allow creation of new information and value by users.

The core of all Web 2.0 services consists of open, published, structured interfaces of data, on the back of which value is created.

Exposing data for use by “Rich Internet Applications” (RIA), in collaborative environments (the extreme perhaps is Second Life, but more traditional environments exist as well) and combined with user-generated content, enables the next major step forward in the ever-important quest to enrich the context, the task relevance, the task-focused quality of information. That major step forward in value to users is what Elsevier sees as the promise of Web 2.0 technologies.

Elsevier has identified Web 2.0 as a key part of our technology strategy. The elements of user contributions and collaboration are cornerstones in Elsevier’s technology strategy for the next three to five years, and almost all upcoming innovation projects in Elsevier Labs will be based on Web 2.0 technologies and concepts. As you may know, Elsevier Labs is our group of senior technologists dedicated to exploring and exploiting new technology to help drive and implement innovation in our products and services.

Current Web 2.0 services provided by Elsevier

Elsevier now offers a number of services falling within the scope of Web 2.0. RSS is seen by many as the beginning of the Web 2.0 movement: RSS offered the first structured exposure of data for incorporation into contextualized, personalized knowledge networks. That’s a lot of buzzwords together, but the core of all Web 2.0 services consists of open, published, structured interfaces of data, on the back of which value is created.

Elsevier invested early in RSS, and today users can benefit from RSS on Engineering Village, Scopus and ScienceDirect — as well as RSS offered by other Elsevier products and services including this newsletter.

Web service architecture is one of the enabling steps forward in Web 2.0.

Data services such as RSS are enabled and almost always implemented in a “Web service” architecture. “Web service” in the simple case is the service (data and operations you can request to be performed on those data) that is defined by an XML structure and exposed in an XML interface, such as SOAP or REST. The simplicity of the architecture and its independence of any specific programming language make creating new applications on top of the architecture easier than when it was built with older APIs (e.g., Java, C++ and even .ASP interfaces).

Elsevier was among the first major publishers to commit to a Web service product architecture and now has five core structured, published Web services exposing three of our large databases: Scopus, ScienceDirect and Scirus. These services are article retrieval (with style sheets) across all the databases, search (within each database), federated search (across all the databases), Scopus API and Scopus metadata feeds. Redesigning our products on a Web service architecture allowed decoupling of the data and services (data plus functionality) from the full products, thus increasing the flexibility of use of the data to create new value.

With these services, a customer, partnering organization or potentially in the future a user can take the Scopus metadata, for example, and build a completely new product that shows author collaboration networks independent of Scopus itself. That is the key difference between a product-focused architecture and a Web service architecture: The latter allows creation of new services that are tied to product databases, but that are services rather than products because they are essentially pipelines for data on top of which can be built new functionality.

Web service architecture is one of the enabling steps forward in Web 2.0 — the exposure of data through XML interfaces on top of which others can create new value. Web 2.0 means value for the user, with contribution and customization by the user, and exposing our content through Web services is the means to enable such creation. As we go forward, we’ll build more user interfaces allowing greater user control and enhancement (for example, users will be able to put their own analytics on top of our data services), enabled by our switch to Web service architecture.

Elsevier has developed or contributed to several applications that use the Web services already listed to create new user value: Patient Research, RefWorks, Quosa, 2collab and two others still in alpha testing. These new data services are or will be available to our customers and partners (other organizations wishing to collaborate with us to produce new products) to help them build the next generation of Rich Internet Applications.

The future for Web 2.0 at Elsevier

Across our technology and product groups, Elsevier is increasing investment in Web 2.0 initiatives. Our 2.0 initiatives slated for development include:

• Creating new databases to be the basis of new services on top of which customers, partners and Elsevier can create new value in a Web 2.0 world
• Competitions for users to contribute new ways of looking at or extracting value from our content on small and large scales
• Forays into virtual worlds to assess their best use for collaborative learning and problem solving
• Collaborative authoring of textbooks
• Facilitating author commentary to enhance more formal, published works
• Facilitating collaborative, user-created reviews of content

These initiatives are investigations, explorations of possible new product ideas, not all of which are likely to emerge into the market in their currently defined forms, but all of which hold promise for delivering greater value to users, which is the goal. Watch for these initiatives to unfold in some form over the coming one to two years. If you would like to participate in helping us assess the value these initiatives offer users, please contact me at d.marques@elsevier.com.

2collab, new collaboration tool, debuts in November on ScienceDirect and Scopus

Researchers and librarians can soon benefit from a new way of working together, thanks to the new collaboration tool 2collab. Based on several aspects of social bookmarking and networking applications, the tool provides a free and accessible platform for collaboration at www.2collab.com.

Designed for the research and librarian community, this tool allows users to bookmark, tag and share Internet resources ranging from articles to video clips. Unlike when favorites are stored in a browser, 2collab allows users to store bookmarks on a platform that’s open to everyone. Making them easy to find, bookmarks stored in 2collab can be tagged with searchable keywords. Uniquely, these bookmarks can then be shared in groups, enabling members to start discussions by commenting and rating the linked resources.

Further, as Elsevier Senior Product Manager Michiel van der Heyden noted, “The groups can be set up as private invitation only or public groups so you can ensure your research is shared only with those you want, but obviously we see more benefit in open discussions.” And, as Elsevier Product Manager Thijs Willems pointed out, “Researchers writing papers with co-authors around the globe will especially find 2collab useful.”

2collab — shown here in beta — allows researchers worldwide to bookmark, tag,
share and discuss information resources. Find the beta of 2collab at www.2collab.com

2collab is the result of a joint effort between the ScienceDirect and Scopus teams and applies Agile methodology, which revolves around biweekly “sprints” of development releases and ensures fast integration of user feedback. Initial development of 2collab involved user and customer consultation, with focus groups of researchers and librarians leading to prototype user tests moderated by Elsevier’s User Centered Design group. 2collab was launched in beta in June, in cooperation with Scopus and ScienceDirect Development Partners.

2collab is launching fully in November. Look for it on ScienceDirect and Scopus, where the service will be available via links in article pages and throughout the sites — or try the beta version for yourself at www.2collab.com.

www.2collab.com