Elsevier ensures that published research is preserved in perpetuity for scientists and clinicians and invests in the digitization of its publications for future generations of scholars.

Elsevier protects library holdings by granting our librarian customers the right to archive their electronic holdings in the same manner as physical holdings (books and journals), ensuring libraries and their users have permanent access to any subscribed electronic Elsevier publications.

In addition, Elsevier works with others to preserve the posterity of published journal articles. In 2002, Elsevier and the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) reached a groundbreaking agreement in electronic archiving when the KB agreed to be the first, official, independent, digital archive of all Elsevier journals. Elsevier continues to explore archiving initiatives with other institutions around the world to ensure maximum protection for the archive.

Elsevier has also invested over $40 million dollars to scan and digitize backfiles of our 1,800 STM journals which comprise over 3,250,000 articles. Some articles date back over 100 years.

Elsevier guarantees the authenticity of published journal articles and works with others (e.g. national libraries) to preserve their posterity. Published journal articles include the journal name, publisher’s name and are guaranteed to be maintained in their original form in one publicly accessible place where an article cannot be altered.


Along with other industry partners, Elsevier invests capital and resources in the development of publishing standards that improve scientific communication. Projects include.

Elsevier co-founded CrossRef™, which enables researchers and health professionals to link to content across publishers.

Elsevier is a founding member of the International DOI Foundation, incubating and supporting the use of Digital Object Identifiers.

Elsevier was a founding member of the Copyright Clearance Center and has been on its board for over 20 years.

Elsevier is a board member of NISO and an active participant in the ongoing development of Open URL standards, addressing bi-directional interaction between linking systems. Elsevier’s ScienceDirect supports Open URL standards through a partnership with Endeavor’s LinkFinderPlus and SFX.

The STIX Font Creation project is a collaborative effort led by Elsevier with five other scientific publishers to develop a set of computer-displayable fonts for mathematics and other special characters used in STM publishing.

As a founding member of COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) Elsevier has signed a declaration of compliance for ScienceDirect’s usage reports. COUNTER is an international initiative leading to asingle, accepted, extendible Code of Practice to measure the usage of online information products and services.