Elsevier and NWO collaborate to enhance research excellence in the Netherlands

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information solutions and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), today announce their collaboration with a 5 year access agreement to Elsevier'sReviewer Finder and Scopus, which will further improve NWO's assessment process of research grant applications.

As a leading research funding council in the Netherlands, NWO's mission is to actively contribute to the growth of Dutch science by structurally and continuously investing in world-class scientists and research excellence. Using Reviewer Finder, a component of Elsevier's SciVal® suite, NWO will more efficiently identify the best matching peer reviewers to assess its grant applications. Furthermore, Reviewer Finder will help NWO identify conflicts of interest between potential reviewers and applicants, ensuring the applications are reviewed by the most appropriate experts. With Scopus, NWO will have access to the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed scholarly literature (nearly 20,500 journals from more than 5,000 publishers worldwide) providing an extended view on the world's peer-reviewed published research.

"For certain research fields Reviewer Finder is an effective way to find the most suitable experts for the assessment of grant applications and will help us shorten the assessment time and enhance our capabilities to focus on research excellence," said Mr. Cas Maessen, Senior Policy Officer at NWO. "Through our research programs we fund thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes across the Netherlands, steering the course of Dutch science. Selecting the best research projects is critical in this process and therefore requires having the best tools at hand."

"We are very pleased that a major research funding organization like NWO has chosen to use our analytical tools," said Nick Fowler, Managing Director A&G Institutional Markets at Elsevier. "We aim to deliver insights and tools that help major funding organizations and research institutions allocate their resources and achieve their desired research outcomes as efficiently as possible."