Definition: the client application is a search tool that takes the user's query, passes it on to different search indexes through APIs, gets the results from those APIs and combines them into a single result list for the user to see. This practice is common in digital library portals at universities, and the search indexes of Elsevier platforms are common targets for this.
We allow this use case under the following conditions:
- The products for which federated search through the Elsevier APIs is supported, are:
- ScienceDirect
- Scopus
- Engineering Village
- The developer of the federated search application must be affiliated with an organization that has a subscription for the product, or with a third-party vendor that markets the federated search application to organizations that have subscriptions.
- The organization using the application must have a subscription to each supported Elsevier products for which search results are shown in the application.
- If the application is provided to Elsevier customers by a third-party vendor, this vendor should have a direct license with Elsevier.
- The users of the application must be limited to authorized users at the organization holding the subscription.
- For Scopus and Engineering Village, the application can only show the core bibliographic data for each search result; abstracts and references are off-limits. For results from ScienceDirect, the display of abstracts is allowed.
- Results must be marked as coming from the corresponding Elsevier product, and each result must link back to the corresponding article or record page on the product's website.
- The application must use the RESTful APIs; it must not use the search functionality of any of the product's user interfaces.
- Data retrieved through the APIs cannot be indexed or stored in a data repository, other than temporarily for performance reasons (e.g. non-permanent caching).
Policy updated: 06-Sep-2017
