Elsevier Foundation Awards 2012 Grants to Champion Libraries in Developing Countries and Women in Science

AMSTERDAM, December 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ –

$650,000 awarded to Innovative Libraries, New Scholars and Nurse Faculty Programs

The Elsevier Foundation [http://www.elsevierfoundation.org ] announced today the 2012
grant recipients for the Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries and New Scholars
award programs. In total, $650,000 has been committed to eight institutions around the
world in addition to five ongoing multiyear grants and the Nurse Faculty program. The
Elsevier Foundation is funded by Elsevier [http://www.elsevier.com ], a global provider of
scientific, technical and medical information products and services.

“The Elsevier Foundation supports projects for their potential to serve as a model
with lasting impact on our health and science communities,” said David Ruth, Executive
Director of the Elsevier Foundation and Senior Vice President Global Communications,
Elsevier. “This year, we’ve chosen compelling proposals which address information
literacy, research capacity building, women scientists’ professional development and
stemming postdoc attrition.”

Innovative Libraries

The Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries program awards grants to libraries
for innovation in improving access and use of scientific, technical and medical
information. The 2012 library grant recipients address real developing world issues
through the use of STM information resources and include:

        - E-Library Training Initiative in Latin America & Asia, MLA/Librarians
          Without Borders [http://www.mlanet.org/resources/global ]
        - Enhancing Access to Research in Central and West Africa, Information Training
          & Outreach Centre for Africa, ITOCA [http://itoca.org ]
        - Strengthening evidenced based healthcare in Tanzania, Muhimbili University of
          Health and Allied Sciences [http://www.muhas.ac.tz ], Tanzania
        - Nepal Knowledge Nexus, Dhulikhel Hospital [http://dhulikhelhospital.org ]

“The Elsevier Foundation grant will enable us to address the critical need for
capacity building and information literacy to boost Africa’s participation in the global
research community,” said Gracian Chimwaza, Executive Director, Information Training &
Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), “Making research available is one step-another vital
step is ensuring that we help build researchers’ information literacy skills. This will
ensure that this critical knowledge-sharing process is ultimately sustainable. Our project
will empower the research community from this region to also contribute and share their
innovations and research with the rest of the world.”

New Scholars

The New Scholars Program supports projects to help early- to mid-career women
scientists balance family responsibilities with demanding academic careers and addresses
the attrition rate of talented women scientists. The 2012 grants include:

        - The National Postdoc-Societies Collaboration to Boost Retention of Women
          Postdocs National Postdoctoral Association [http://www.nationalpostdoc.org ]
        - National Assessments in Gender and Science, Technology and Innovation, Women
          in Global Science and Technology (WISAT [http://www.wigsat.org ])
        - The Appalachian Women Scientists program, Appalachian State University
          [http://www.appstate.edu ]
        - The Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists in the
          Developing World, TWAS [http://twas.ictp.it ] and OWSD [http://owsdw.ictp.it ]

“The postdoctoral position is a critical transition point when the numbers of women
researchers decline significantly,” noted Cathee Johnson Phillips, Executive Director of
the National Postdoctoral Association. “The National Postdoctoral Association has been
working to provide resources that foster the academic career advancement of women
postdocs, and with the generous support of the Elsevier Foundation, we will be able to
build on that effort with professional societies and associations.”

In 2012, the Elsevier Foundation’s Nurse Faculty Program
[http://www.nursingsociety.org/LeadershipInstitute/nursefaculty/Pages/default.aspx ]
continued to support a multiyear grant to Sigma Theta Tau International Foundation for
Nursing to develop an 18 month leadership academy and alleviate the nursing faculty
shortage through retaining and transitioning new nurse educators to the faculty role.

About The Elsevier Foundation

The Elsevier Foundation is a corporate charity funded by Elsevier, a global provider
of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The Elsevier
Foundation provides grants to knowledge centered institutions around the world, with a
focus on developing world libraries, nurse faculty and scholars in the early stages of
their careers. Since its inception, the Foundation has awarded more than 60 grants worth
millions of dollars to non-profit organizations working in these fields. Through
gift-matching, the Foundation also supports the efforts of Elsevier employees to play a
positive role in their local and global communities. http://www.elsevierfoundation.org

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider 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
[http://www.thelancet.com ] and Cell [http://www.cell.com ], and close to 20,000 book
titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier’s online
solutions include ScienceDirect [http://www.sciencedirect.com ], Scopus
[http://www.scopus.com ], Reaxys [http://www.reaxys.com ], ClinicalKey
[http://www.clinicalkey.com ] and Mosby’s Nursing Suite [http://www.confidenceconnected.com
], which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal
suite [http://www.scival.com ] and MEDai’s Pinpoint Review [http://www.medai.com ], which
help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier [http://www.elsevier.com ]
employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC
[http://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).

The Elsevier Foundation

2012 Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries

Grant Awards

Enhancing access to research for academic and research institutions in Central and
West Africa, Information Training & Outreach Centre for Africa,ITOCA [http://itoca.org ],
South Africa

This Elsevier Foundation grant addresses a very real problem – how to encourage more
institutions in West and Central Africa to register for and make use of the 18,000
international journals, books and databases that are now freely available through
Research4Life [http://www.research4life.org ]. Out of 7,000 institutions registered for
Research4Life, 3,000 are from Sub-Saharan Africa, but less than 300 have registered from
Angola, Chad, DR Congo, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Liberia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone
and South Sudan. ITOCA, an African NGO will deliver experienced and focused outreach,
community-building and information literacy training which will ensure that researchers
and higher education students can fully benefit from these free resources.

E-Library Training Initiative in Asia and Latin America, MLA/Librarians Without
Borders [http://www.mlanet.org/resources/global ]

Through a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the MLA/Librarians Without Borders(R)
(MLA/LWB) program will provide critical information literacy training supporting the usage
high quality STM information in low use Asian and Latin American areas. Since 2008,
MLA/LWB has created multi-language, online distance learning courses, cross program and
discipline training and train-the-trainer sessions across the developing world. This
project will have strong multiplier effects as the training and instructional material
developed will be shared by users at all Research4Life eligible institutions.

Nepal Knowledge Nexus, Dhulikhel Hospital [http://dhulikhelhospital.org ] /
KathmanduUniversitySchool of Medical Sciences

In Nepal, 57% of the population lives on less than $3 a day. Despite Research4Life
eligibility, access to and usage of medical literature is inadequate due to a lack of
infrastructure and expertise. Dhulikhel Hospital (DH) and Kathmandu University School of
Medical Sciences (KUSMS) have a unique reach across Nepal, providing health care degrees
and extended care to 12 affiliated health centers and 20 community outreach centers in
rural areas. The proposed multi-purpose learning facility will not only allow students and
staff from DH/KUSMS to access Research4Life, but also staff at the rural centers across
Nepal. Basic telemedicine capabilities with specialists at DH/KUSMS will further improve
the quality of health services at these rural centers. This project has the potential to
go far beyond a small infrastructure building grant to provide serious research on the
effect of enabling access to major scientific, technical and medical information resources
and how this affects health outcomes and the shift from print textbooks to online
journals.

Strengthening professional’s skills in evidence based health care in Tanzania,
Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences [http://www.muhas.ac.tz ], Tanzania

Over the past ten years, access to critical health research has vastly improved across
Africa, but this has yet translated into improved patient outcomes on a comprehensive
scale. Today most patients in Tanzania benefit from medical treatment, but would benefit
far more if health professionals provided care based on the latest scientific knowledge
now available to them. With a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, Muhimibili University
aims to build the skills and awareness necessary to create an evidence-based medical
treatment culture across Tanzania. The training process will be matched with a national
study measuring the results of providing information access and EBHC training, and to
correlate these to changes in health care practices and eventually to health care
outcomes.

The Elsevier Foundation

2011 New Scholars Grant Awards

The National Postdoc-Societies Collaboration to Boost Retention of Women Scientists,
National Postdoctoral Association [http://www.nationalpostdoc.org ]

The postdoctoral training period represents a critical transition point in the
academic pipeline where the numbers of women scientists and engineers decline
significantly. While the relative number of women decreases at every step along a research
career path, the heaviest attrition occurs before tenure track and in the fields with the
largest numbers of postdocs. Through a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the National
Postdoctoral Association (NPA) will tackle this loss of talent through a targeted
collaboration with scientific societies to produce a postdoc guidebook for navigating the
academic pipeline. The NPA is a non-profit with an excellent track record of enhancing the
quality of the postdoc experience and thereby maximizing the effectiveness of the research
community.

National Assessments in Gender and Science, Technology and Innovation in Latin
America, WISAT [http://www.wigsat.org ]

The Gender Equality Knowledge Society (GEKS) indicator framework was developed after
studies showed that women, particularly in the developing world, continue to be on the
wrong side of the digital and innovation divides. Women generally experience lower levels
of access to information and technology, and are poorly represented in education,
entrepreneurship and employment in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI). Gaps in
women’s access to resources, opportunities, rights, education, financing, as well as S&T,
greatly diminish the potential of a country to achieve progress, reduce poverty, and
improve the overall quality of life. This Elsevier Foundation grant follows a 2010
gender-benchmarking grant supporting the assessment of five countries with highly
accelerated growth in the research arena: South Korea, India, Brazil, Indonesia and South
Africa. The new gender benchmarking studies will provide a Latin American regional focus
covering: Argentina, Chile and Mexico.

The Appalachian Women Scientists program, Appalachian State University
[http://www.appstate.edu ]

Women scientists often choose to work at smaller institutions because they consider
these institutions more family-friendly. However, while they may enjoy better work-life
balance, they also have heavier teaching loads, smaller salaries, less internal funding
for professional travel and early-career research; weaker on-campus research laboratories,
computing and administrative infrastructure. Institutions with fewer faculty members also
offer fewer mentors and role models for women scientists, fewer potential collaborators
for scientists in highly-specialized fields, and less peer support for early-career
scientists who may be the only women (and/or mothers) within their departments. By
providing low cost financial, mentoring, and social support for these women scientists and
documenting the return on investment in terms of promotion, tenure attainment, retention,
and research productivity. Through a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the Appalachian
Women Scientists program will help ensure that women scientists can choose to work at a
smaller institution for work-life balance reasons without stunting their research careers.

The Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing
World, TWAS [http://twas.ictp.it ] and OWSD [http://owsdw.ictp.it ]

A grant from the Elsevier Foundation has ensured that an awards program for the
recognition of women scientists in the developing world is feasible through 2015. In
partnership with TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, (TWAS) and the
Organization for Women for Science in the Developing World (OWSD), the awards provide a
deep focus on discipline and professional visibility. The five region-specific annual
prizes will rotate between life sciences (2013), chemistry and physics/math and provide
professional exposure at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) conference in February. Nominations are accepted from early career scientists
(within ten years of graduating with a PhD degree) from the 81 countries with low
scientific output as defined by TWAS [http://twas.ictp.it/common/STLC ]. They will be
reviewed by a committee of distinguished life scientists chaired by OWSD president, Prof.
Fang Xin. The 2013 award winners will receive their awards at the annual AAAS, Gender and
Minorities Networking Event in Boston in February 2013.

        Media contact
        Ylann Schemm
        Senior Corporate Responsibility Manager, Elsevier
        +31(0)20-485-2025
        newsroom@elsevier.com

SOURCE Elsevier