On April 29, a delegation from Elsevier, led by Yang Lu, Managing Director of Solutions at Elsevier Greater China, visited Henan University (HENU). President Zhang Suojiang, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, met with the guests at the Longzihu Campus in Zhengzhou. Heads of relevant departments, including the Development Planning Office, Academic Discipline Construction Office, Human Resources Department, and International Affairs Office, attended the meeting. The meeting was chaired by Vice President Bai Ying.

Zhang Suojiang expressed a warm welcome to the Elsevier delegation. He noted that in recent years, HENU has closely aligned itself with national strategic priorities and regional development needs and adhered to its mission of becoming a research-oriented, comprehensive, and internationalized world-class university. Grounded in a pragmatic development philosophy, the university is steadily advancing toward its goal of joining the world's top-tier universities. As the global landscape of science and technology is undergoing profound transformations, a single paper evaluation system can no longer meet current development requirements. Academic evaluation must return to its essence—genuine scholarly contribution and social impact. HENU will further break away from the paper-only orientation, optimize its talent assessment mechanisms, and build a multi-dimensional, tiered evaluation system centered on tangible contributions in talent cultivation, scientific research, and social service. This will encourage faculty to dedicate themselves to rigorous scholarship and practical research, ensuring that scientific outcomes truly serve national strategies and social development. Elsevier is a world-leading provider of academic resources and research services with profound heritages and prominent advantages. He hoped that both sides could deepen practical cooperation in talent evaluation, research assessment, and project management, thereby enhancing the quality and efficiency of HENU's discipline development and injecting new momentum into the university's "Double First-Class" and "Henan's Top Two Universities" initiatives.

Yang Lu spoke highly of HENU's achievements and its open, collaborative approach. She noted that China's research evaluation system is undergoing significant transformation, with academic evaluation increasingly shifting toward a value-oriented framework centered on contributions to national strategies and society. Scholar evaluation is also moving from traditional quantitative metrics to qualitative, contribution-based, and diversified criteria. Elsevier is transforming itself from a traditional full-text search platform into a database of research management and strategic decision-making, helping more outstanding scholars' achievements gain global visibility. Leveraging its global resources, data capabilities, and local service experience, Elsevier hopes to deliver efficient, precise, and feasible digital solutions to HENU, supporting the university in sharpening its distinctive strengths, reinforcing its advantages, and enhancing its international influence.

At the meeting, both sides thoroughly discussed Elsevier's proposed plans for discipline development and global impact enhancement, and exchanged views on HENU's efforts for the "Double First-Class" initiative and long-term development, laying the groundwork for further strategic cooperation.

Elsevier, founded in 1880 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is a global leader in scientific, technical, and medical information analysis. It has over 2,900 journals—such as The Lancet and Cell—and more than 43,000 e-books, and operates ScienceDirect, Scopus, and other core academic databases. In recent years, Elsevier has been transitioning from traditional publishing to research management and data analysis and using digital tools to support global research evaluation, discipline development, and scholarly communication across more than 180 countries and regions.