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About ScienceDirect Topics
Topic pages are designed to help you get up to speed with new topics in your field of research or area of study. The extracts provided on ScienceDirect Topics are written by subject matter experts and are drawn from foundational and reference materials. ScienceDirect makes use of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify relevant topic-based information from Elsevier’s reference materials to help provide bite-sized and easily digestible introductions to a new subject. The source materials used for Topic pages include major reference works such as encyclopedias, journal review articles, monographs, book series and handbooks. Topic pages make use of specialist taxonomies covering various areas of scientific study; these taxonomies are used to classify Elsevier’s content on ScienceDirect. ML and NLP algorithms, in combination with heuristics, are then used to extract the most relevant excerpts, definitions and related content recommendations.