ALL IN A DAY'S WORK

Around 9,000 technologists, half of whom are software engineers, work at RELX. Annually, the company spends $1.4bn on technology. The combination of our rich data assets, technology infrastructure and knowledge of how to use next generation technologies, such as machine learning and natural language processing, allows us to create effective solutions for our customers.

Chronic pancreatitis, which affects about one million people globally, is a painful disease with no current cure. Because of the high cost and low return for finding treatments for such relatively rare diseases, drug makers devote little time and effort to finding cures.

Elsevier, with its vast stores of drug data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including Entellect, its newest AI-powered life sciences platform, felt this was the perfect opportunity to make a difference in the community. Elsevier teamed with non-profit organisations, industry and academic partners, as well as researchers across the globe to find drugs already in existence that could be repurposed to treat the rare disease.

The company hosted a datathon collaboration ‘Repurposing Drugs for Rare Diseases’ with non-profit organisations Cures Within Reach, Mission: Cure, and the Pistoia Alliance (which represents 14 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies), life sciences and technology companies including Ariel Precision Medicine, and academia including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Northern Iowa.

The datathon leveraged Elsevier’s expertise, with Entellect as the underpinning AI platform. They combined data from Elsevier’s Life Sciences products (including Reaxys) and third party external data from Open Targets, including data scientists and researchers from the participating organisations.

After 60 days of intense work, the datathon revealed four drugs that could potentially be repurposed to treat chronic pancreatitis. These drugs were validated by independent experts and will now be taken for clinical testing.

"We are enthusiastic about the discoveries made in the Elsevier-Pistoia Alliance datathon. The problem solving and teamwork focused on chronic pancreatitis were inspiring. We look forward to taking the promising candidates to the next step where we hope they will help us find effective treatments for this difficult, rare disease. The datathon exceeded our expectations, producing four repurposing candidates to address multiple chronic pancreatitis targets."

Megan Golden co-founder and co-director, Mission: Cure

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is a publicly funded university in Hong Kong.

CityU produces world-class research and is a leading provider of professional education. CityU is ranked No. 126 globally by Times Higher Education and No. 52 by Quacquarelli Symonds (2020 rankings).

CityU is a young university. In 2015, CityU’s management realised a need for data on its research productivity and accomplishments to build reputation, deliver impact data for government reporting, and provide insights during faculty career advancement reviews.

However, CityU’s management realised its records for academic faculty and department productivity, including field weighted citation counts, h-indices and awarded grants were out of sync with actual performance. Were CityU faculty under-reporting their accomplishments? Was performance data ‘lost’ somewhere in the reporting chain? How could they see the rate of impact between their research inputs, for example funding and time of staff, and their academic outputs such as research impact measures?

CityU embarked on an effort to implement CityU Scholars, a performance system for academic achievement based on Elsevier’s Pure, a research information system that can import data from over 20 sources of publications, awarded research grants and research data sets. The 18 month effort, which began in 2016, consisted of configuring the Pure system towards CityU’s specific reporting interests, refining performance records during a complete review of CityU researcher identities and their outputs.

Every researcher received an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), and CityU worked with Elsevier to consolidate multiple researcher profiles. In addition, all CityU researchers and their publications were reviewed to ensure they were properly attributed to CityU within Elsevier’s Scopus database and not to other universities in Hong Kong. This was also important to the university’s reputation development, since Scopus data is the underlying source of bibliometric data feeding into major global university rankings, such as the Times Higher Education University Rankings and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world university rankings.

Ongoing cleaning and capturing of publication data in CityU Scholars, powered by Elsevier Pure, ensured the accuracy of CityU’s academic performance data. With this increased accuracy, the launch of CityU Scholars in mid-2017 raised average faculty publication counts by 21, citation counts by 580, and h-indices by 3.5.

"Working with Elsevier, we were able to create a solution that shows CityU’s research outputs most comprehensively, showcasing its true academic performance. The success of CityU Scholars, powered by Elsevier’s Pure, stems from its data accuracy, ease of use, and the benefits it creates for all CityU stakeholders."

Christian Wagner, CIO and Associate Provost of Quality Assurance, City University of Hong Kong

David Sigler is the sole practitioner at Curlington Legal, a boutique law firm in the Sydney Central Business District, specialising in technology law.

While David has over 30 years’ experience in technology law, he is often asked by clients for advice on other aspects of their business. To offer a full service for his clients, and scale his firm, David relies on LexisNexis Practical Guidance to increase his capability and provide expertise in less familiar areas of law.

The highly practical workflow tools in Practical Guidance provide David with a clear research road map and access to relevant points of law to guide him in areas where he has less extensive experience.

Over the last year, David has used resources from Practical Guidance to act on several matters which he would normally hand over to a specialist practitioner. He estimates that Practical Guidance has helped him generate additional fees of AU$50,000 in the last 12 months alone.

To conduct deeper research, David takes advantage of Practical Guidance as a gateway to the extensive world class research available on Lexis Advance. Premium Australian legal publications including CaseBase Case Citator, LawNow Plus, Halsbury’s Laws of Australia and the Australian Encyclopaedia of Forms & Precedents form part of David’s powerful Lexis Advance library.

This has transformed the way David conducts legal research, allowing him to provide confident advice in broader areas of law, helping Curlington Law to diversify and scale.

"Practical Guidance is essential for my business. It streamlines research and information gathering and helps me understand the process; what’s meant to happen and when. I’m able to practise in areas I don’t traditionally delve into."

David Sigler, Principal Lawyer, Curlington Legal