Policies
Statement on Web Crawling and Deep Indexing
Elsevier's Electronic Publishing Division's policy is that of not allowing robots or other mechanized devices to crawl and index Elsevier Internet databases. This policy has been implemented according to standard web practice using a "robot.txt" file on our Electronic Publishing sites.
Furthermore, customers or commercial entities are not allowed to "deep index" Elsevier Internet files except on a contractual basis where indexing rights have been defined. Elsevier is defining deep indexing as the process of building indexes to the full text and bibliographic data on ScienceDirect, or other Elsevier Internet database, through mechanical, software, or other means, for the purpose of recreating navigational schemes to Elsevier content on a customer's or company's local servers.
Additionally, Elsevier views requests to index Elsevier content and develop local indexes as a hybrid system whereby a customer maintains an index, on the customer's local servers, to Elsevier databases hosted remotely. Elsevier has commercial solutions for hybrid systems and will license the necessary meta data to a customer who wishes to build a local index to remote databases. The meta data is separate from, and in addition to, other licensed products. Alerts to new Elsevier material can also be provided from Elsevier web-based products directly or the meta data can be licensed as a separate product to be integrated into a customer's local system