Elsevier Cancellation Effective Jan. 31

Six years ago Western Michigan University joined with the six major public universities and nine affiliate universities to participate in the online portal created by the Michigan Corporate Relations Network (MCRN) and Elsevier. The portal was proposed to connect Michigan corporations to university assets as a means to promote research and grow the Michigan economy. Analysis of usage indicates that this product is not serving that purpose, and has few users,  

WMU, along with some of our peer institutions, will no longer remain in the portal or have access to SciVal. The decision was made by the Office of the Vice President for Research along with the Provost Office to discontinue our subscription to Elsevier, effective Jan. 31, 2018. However, the data in the WMU Discovery Experts database has been migrated over into the University’s newly implemented Faculty Activity Reporting System. FARS allows faculty to document in the electronic system their achievements in teaching, research, creative activities and service.  We are looking into alternatives to the functions provided by this commercial system and the potential to capture the research and creative activities data from the FARS.