Elsevier energy info, now extra intell
Jinfo Blog

By Joanna Ptolomey

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Publishers are always looking for ways to enhance and add to their libraries of research papers.  A review in VIP last year saw a new spin on bibliographic information in BiomedExperts.com to release the intelligence of streams of researchers and workflows.  It adds that extra energy to information that can sometimes be seen as being of quite limited value.

As someone who reviews products regularly, and very recently ProQuest Dialog, it is a feature I very much like to see.  As an information professional and analyst it adds an extra layer of intelligence into a product.  Also, it is a canny move by publishers to keep products fresh and valuable.

Research in the energy and metals sector can be time consuming with information from a wide range of sources – the collection, analysing and synthesising is highly specialised.  The Elsevier product Geofacets presents the possibility of taking some of that strain.

Geofacets is a web-based discovery tool for the early stages of geologic exploration especially in the energy field.  Maps from Elsevier's earth science journals collection provide ready to use content that can be exported directly into your organisation’s workflow documents.  It looks neat and straightforward with ease of search by geographical location, keyword, and geographical features.

So far so good, but what about something more?  How about some commentary layered on top?  Elsevier have teamed up with Wood McKenzie to provide further intelligence to complement the product.  They are providing commercial information to add to the already scientific data available.

Wood McKenzie are regarded as a comprehensive source of knowledge about the world’s energy and metals industries, and provide clients with commercial insights.  The commercial information overlays from Wood McKenzie are available from April 2011 – what this actually looks likes is hard to see as there is no information from the vendor as yet.

As customers we are continually demanding and pushing information vendors to add intelligence and technology to their products.  And quite rightly so as that will make it easier for us to keep up with the never-ending storms of information finding, using, managing and sharing.  As an analyst I appreciate these extra overlays – they do help and are valuable.  As a product reviewer – I am getting ever more picky about how good products have to be in today’s markets.  

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