Our unique contributions

Adam Walsh was six years old, when he was abducted from a Florida department store in July 1981. Adam’s parents, John and Revé Walsh, appealed on national news for help. None came. Adam’s remains were later found in a canal off the Florida turnpike. Adam’s story changed how Americans dealt with missing children and led his parents to co-found the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 1984. According to the FBI, there were over 421,000 National Crime Information Center (NCIC) entries for missing children in 2019.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions, part of RELX, partners with NCMEC, donating technology to assist with the recovery of missing children. At RELX, this is possible because making a positive impact on society is at the core of its business.   

RELX’s businesses – encompassing analytical tools, data, information and events that evaluate risk, help customer decision-making, and improve the effectiveness of markets -- inherently have the capacity to deliver benefits to society. RELX calls them its “unique contributions”. They include...

Protection of society
LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ products and services help protect society by detecting and preventing fraud, helping citizens securely access vital government benefits, and assisting law enforcement to keep communities safe.

Advance of science and health
Elsevier plays an important role in advancing scientific knowledge and human welfare through its science and health information, which spurs innovation and enables critical decision-making.

Promotion of the rule of law and access to justice
Through its content, data and analytics, LexisNexis Legal & Professional supports the four components of the Rule of Law: transparency of law, equality under the law, independent judiciaries and accessible legal remedy. Its global legal and news database contains 161bn documents and records providing transparency of the law in around 180 countries and territories, with some 1.6m new legal documents added daily.

Fostering communities
RX helps to foster communities by connecting customers face to face and digitally, allowing them to learn about markets, source products and complete transactions. In 2024 performance exceeded pre-pandemic levels, highlighting the importance participants place on connecting and doing business in person, allowing them to see many customers and suppliers at one time. Increasing numbers of customers took advantage of new RX digital and data analysis tools to source business solutions and suppliers, capture and qualify more leads, and analyse and improve their event performance.

Universal, sustainable access to information and the advance of science and health
Recognising that across RELX we have products, services, tools and events that advance the UN’s 17 SDGs, we created the free RELX SDG Resource Centre in 2017 to advance awareness, knowledge and implementation of the SDGs. Since 2017, we have made over 2,300 journal articles and book chapters free to access via the RELX SDG Resource Centre which would have otherwise cost more than £5m to make open access.

Through its unique contributions, RELX is working to increase its positive impact on society, helping address issues that really matter.

It’s an unfortunate reality that children go missing every day, which is why LexisNexis Risk Solutions partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US 20 years ago to design, donate, and manage the ADAM (Automated Delivery of Alerts on Missing Children) Program.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ innovative technology combined with NCMEC’s data help to locate missing children across the US quickly and efficiently via targeted alerts.

When a child is reported missing, the ADAM system allows NCMEC users to send alerts including a poster of the child’s picture and detailed information to registered recipients.  These recipients include law enforcement, news media, schools, businesses, medical centers and individuals. ADAM alerts are geo-targeted and sent within minutes to recipients in the specific area where the child was last seen and/or where the child is suspected to be located.

In 2016, a team of LexisNexis Risk Solutions colleagues volunteered their time and expertise to redesign the platform to provide new capabilities, including an improved user interface and new mapping technologies for better targeting of alerts. The system was enhanced in 2017 to allow registered individual consumers to receive an email alert when a child is reported missing in their area based on the individual’s data. The team also added a rectangular search capability to ADAM that allows NCMEC to focus on a highway where a missing child and abductor may be traveling in order to distribute posters to recipients along the relevant corridor. The LexisNexis Risk Solutions team is continually thinking of new ways to advance the platform to increase the productivity and efficiency of the NCMEC team, helping to bring home even more missing children.

“The ADAM Program enhances our photo distribution efforts by rapidly distributing images and information about missing children to targeted areas. The program is a key component of our recovery efforts,” said Callahan Walsh, child advocate for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and sibling of Adam Walsh, for whom the program is named.

There are over 1.2m recipients registered in the ADAM Program database and new organisations, as well as individuals, can sign-up easily at adamprogram.com. In 2024, ADAM distributed nearly 1.4m alerts featuring over 1,950 missing children which helped NCMEC resolve over 1,380 missing child cases.

 “It is amazing to see how much the ADAM Program has grown since its inception with the help and support of the RELX family,” said Trish McCall, director of program management, HPCC Systems & the ADAM Program for LexisNexis Risk Solutions. “The ADAM Program is truly a success story on many levels: innovation, teamwork, working without boundaries, and making a positive impact in the community.”

For more information and to sign-up for alerts in your area, visit adamprogram.com.

Elsevier plays an important role in advancing scientific knowledge and human welfare through its science and health information, which spurs innovation and enables critical decision-making.

In serving the global scientific research community, Elsevier published over 720,000 articles in 2024. To broaden access to its content, Elsevier supports programmes in places where resources are often scarce. Among them is Research4Life, a partnership with UN agencies and over 200 publishers through which we provide core and cutting-edge scientific information to researchers in 125 low- and middle-income countries. As a founding partner and leading contributor, Elsevier provides around 16% of the material available in Research4Life, encompassing approximately 5,500 journals and 35,500 e-books. In 2024, there were over 1.3m Research4Life downloads from Elsevier’s research platform, ScienceDirect.

Elsevier works to build capacity and equity in research and health for an inclusive and sustainable future. The Chemistry for Climate Action Challenge is one of the Elsevier Foundation’s flagship partnerships with Elsevier’s chemistry journals, aimed at discovering chemistry-based solutions to advance climate action. In 2024, two projects were selected from over 90 entries and received 25,000 euros in funding. Dr Altantuya Ochirkhuyag, a researcher in environmental chemistry at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, won for their work using volcanic rocks for wastewater treatment, while BIOPOLIMER Research Group at Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia won for using mycelium biomaterials for waste management.

LexisNexis Legal & Professional partners with the International Bar Association (IBA) on the eyeWitness to Atrocities App, which allows human rights defenders to document and report human rights abuses in a secure and verifiable way so information can be used as admissible evidence in relevant forums. LexisNexis Legal & Professional utilises its data hosting capabilities to provide a secure repository for the information collected. Over 70,000 photos and videos have been captured with the app since 2015.

How the eyeWitness to Atrocities app works

First, the eyeWitness to Atrocities mobile camera app allows documenters on the ground to capture photos and video that are embedded with metadata at the moment the footage was captured. This information helps to verify where and when the footage was taken and whether or not it was altered.

Second, when an app user sends footage to the eyeWitness server, eyeWitness creates a record of who has had access to the information captured, or a trusted chain of custody. LexisNexis utilizes its world-class data hosting capabilities to provide the secure repository for the information collected with the app, with the same technology used to safeguard sensitive and confidential material for its clients every day. Ensuring the security of information stored in the eyeWitness servers is key to allowing photos and video to be used as evidence in court.

Third, eyeWitness ensures this information is processed for justice. All information received by eyeWitness is reviewed by lawyers who tag, catalog and process this visual evidence to meet the requirements of investigators. eyeWitness then identifies the international, regional and/or national bodies best placed to act on the information.

Over 60,000 photos, videos, and audio files have been captured with the eyeWitness app since 2015. In September 2018, a military tribunal in Bukavu (Democratic Republic of the Congo) condemned two high-ranking commanders for murder and torture constituting crimes against humanity. These convictions represent the first time eyeWitness app video footage was submitted to proceedings as incriminating evidence, and an all-time first in the DRC.

In December 2016, eyeWitness won the Geneva Centre for Security Policy Prize for Innovation in Global Security. The Prize for Innovation in Global Security recognizes individuals or organizations that have created innovative solutions that address international security challenges.

Among RX's hundreds of activities and shows there were some remarkable milestones achieved in 2024.

RX’s All-Energy and Dcarbonise exhibition broke all previous attendance records in 2024 with more than 7,000 attendees across 57 sessions looking at policy, ambitions, challenges, opportunities and innovative solutions in renewable power, low carbon heat and low carbon transport.

In February 2024, RX published its Roadmap to Net Zero in 2040, which outlines key milestones in the journey to decarbonisation. Shared during a Net Zero Carbon Events (NZCE) webinar for the exhibition industry, it builds on RX’s 2023 Sustainability Playbook to guide event and operations teams in making more sustainable choices.

The 16th edition of RX’s World Future Energy Summit achieved significant participation, highlighting its importance within the climate change and sustainability ecosystem, with three new forums: Green Finance, eMobility and Pathway to 1.5C. In the year, RX published a Guide to Creating Inclusive Events designed to help event organisers add value by ensuring all attendees and event participant

Recognising that across RELX we have products, services, tools and events that advance the UN’s 17 SDGs, we created the free RELX SDG Resource Centre in 2017 to advance awareness, knowledge and implementation of the SDGs. Since 2017, we have made over 2,300 journal articles and book chapters free to access via the RELX SDG Resource Centre which would have otherwise cost more than £5m to make open access.

In 2024, we added 973 new content items to the RELX SDG Resource Centre bringing the total to 5,794, an increase of 20% over the previous year. We published 14 special issues in 2024 featuring curated articles, book chapters and other content on critical topics.

RELX's annual SDG Inspiration Day brings together thought leaders, corporate representatives, investors, governments, and NGOs a platform to discuss challenges and opportunities for collaboration on the SDGs. Previous year's events have highlighted Biodiversity, Artificial Intelligence and the SDGs and Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.

Keynote speakers have included 8th Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon; musician and political activist Sir Bob Geldof; former Austrian President Heinz Fischer; conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall and co-founder of Global Citizen, Michael Sheldrick amongst others.