Who can request access to Elsevier data?
Individuals with an appointment at Harvard University (including but not limited to faculty, staff, and students) who are engaged in a research or academic endeavor may submit a proposal for access to Elsevier data. Requestors will be asked to use a Harvard email address in their application and may be asked to provide confirmation of Harvard affiliation from a department chair or supervisor.
Contact the Harvard Data Science Initiative if you have questions about eligibility.
What data is available?
The data covered in the Elsevier-Harvard Data Use Agreement comes from the following sources. Note that the Data Use Agreement does not provide access to these Elsevier products users, but to the data underlying these products for research purposes only.
- Scopus
- ScienceDirect
- Pure
- SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
- ICSR Lab
- Plum X Metrics
- SciVal
- Elsevier Biology Knowledge Graph
- Reaxys Reaction Data
- Engineer Village
- Knovel
- Geofacets
Are there restrictions/conditions on data use?
For more details on the full license see the Data Use Agreement. A few key points:
- Research results coming from the data are your own/Harvard’s. Results are yours to publish as you wish. The data we are providing, however, is owned by Elsevier.
- Data we provide can only be used for internal, non-commercial research purposes (no 3rd party vendors unless expressly authorized); if you have external academic collaborators who will access the data, the application must disclose that.
- You are responsible for keeping the data secure and ensuring that copies of the data are not available outside of Harvard. Visit Harvard’s resources for Research Data Management.
- All Elsevier data must be removed upon completion of the project and cannot be reused for other projects without our permission.
How do I share my results?
- Harvard Dataverse and what can be shared by other mechanisms. More information on the kinds of data that can be deposited to Harvard Dataverse.
- If you’re combining Elsevier data with other data and want to make analysis of the combined data public, we’ll need to know the details and provide permission.
- If you combine Elsevier data with other data and the Elsevier data elements cannot be deleted at the end of the project because of the combination, please let us know during the project proposal discussion and we can discuss next steps.
How Can I Apply?
Your application consists of two stages: first, the project feasibility is assessed and, if approved, the most suitable data set is agreed on; secondly, the data request proposal is filed and reviewed.
Review: Understanding your project proposal
- Complete the Project Proposal Template and send to ResCollabOffice@elsevier.com (See Appendix A for a template);
- The Elsevier Research Collaboration Unit will schedule a proposal review meeting.
- Following this meeting, Elsevier will conduct an internal review to assess whether the data request’ complies with the DUA, is feasible and can be resourced by our data teams.
- If approved, you will be informed of the type of data we can make available for your project.
- Once feasibility of the data request has been determined, the data request will be entered into the Elsevier system for official approval.
- At the same time, the requestor will submit a Data Use Agreement (DUA) request through Harvard’s research management system. Applicants should reference the “Elsevier Master Agreement DUA19-0629”.
- Details of a submission will depend on the data being requested; you will be guided through the process. Note: Please allow at least 45 days from the date of proposal submission to data request approval.
Contact the Harvard Data Science Initiative if you have questions about the application process. It can also be helpful to alert your local librarian and/or grants administrator to your request.
Appendix A
Project Proposal Template:
About you
(Enter details about the requestor: If you are a student, please include your advisor, professor or mentor on your application)
- Name
- Work email address
- Role/ Job title
- Department/Affiliation
About the Project
- Proposal title:
- Proposal abstract: Please include:
- Significance: Describe how the project addresses an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in the field.
- Approach: Please describe:
- An explicit research question or hypothesis you plan to test, and specific aims/objective related to that question.
- The project’s overall strategy and planned methodology.
- How the proposed project will make use of one or more of the available Elsevier datasets.
- Any especially innovative or novel aspect of the proposed project.
- Expected project duration: How long do you foresee needing access to Elsevier data?
- Expected start date:
About the data you are requesting
- What Elsevier content/data do you need? (What sources are you requesting data from?)
- Is it in a specific scientific subject area?
- Can you estimate how many records you will need? Is it in a specific date range?
- What type of data or content are you requesting?
- full text article content in XML/PDF
- metadata heads: title and basic info only
- metadata heads+ abstract + keywords + references
- augmented metadata (e.g. citations, de-duplication, metrics, identified chemicals, reactions, categorized content)
- other: i.e. images only, chemical reactions
- What format is best (e.g. PDF, XML, MOL, JSON)?
- What is your preferred delivery mechanism (S3 bucket, FTP, API)?
- Are you going to use the data to train a model? If so, how will this model be used?
Data Security
The Master Data Use Agreement signed between Harvard and Elsevier details the data security requirements of the data we are sharing with you.
We encourage you to review these carefully and discuss with us any questions you may have.