I’ve been trying to overhaul my reprint collection* and bibliography, using the Mendeley Research Networks system.  Access to many journals comes via Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, which has been down for most of yesterday “for scheduled maintenance”.  At the moment it’s throwing a “500 Server error”.

Anyway, a wee bit of internet searching reveals this is rather more than scheduled maintenance, and rather more of a major systems overhaul:

ScienceDirect, Scopus, Journals Consult and the Admin Tool will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance for approximately 9 hours on Saturday, August 28, from 6:30am to 3:30pm Central Standard Time.  During this time, upgrades will be implemented to these systems as part of the launch of the new SciVerse platform. For more information about SciVerse, please visit www.acceleratescience.com.

I bet the ScienceDirect engineers had their hearts in their mouths at switchover time.  And I bet coffee consumption is hitting rather extreme levels…

*Yes, the term “reprint” does reflect my age.  Actually I use pdfs.