RELX targets faster STM growth at $4 bn Elsevier unit

RELX said its Elsevier STM unit is seeking stronger long-term growth, with revenue running at about $4 billion annually, Defense World reported in a Nov. 4 trade-press article on an investor seminar.

The Nov. 4 article said STM, or Scientific, Technical & Medical, accounted for 28% of RELX revenue and 30% of adjusted operating profit in the first half of 2026, while growth has reached 6% from 2% to 4% at the prior seminar.

Elsevier Chief Executive Officer Kumsal Bayazit said the division generated about £3 billion of annualized revenue and more than £1 billion of adjusted operating profit. Nearly 80% of STM revenue comes from subscriptions, mainly multiyear contracts, according to the company.

The business is split between Primary Research, which includes article publishing and research analytics, and Decision Support Tools, which help healthcare and research customers make workflow decisions. Primary Research contributes a little more than half of revenue, while Decision Support Tools account for about 40%, the company said.

Bayazit said Elsevier operates in markets supported by rising research and health spending. She said global research and development spending has grown at an annualized real rate of about 5% over decades, while global health spending has grown about 3% a year plus inflation.

Elsevier serves more than 10,000 academic and government institutions, more than 2,000 R&D-intensive corporations and healthcare customers. RELX said no single customer contributes more than about 1% of revenue, reducing dependence on any one buyer.

The company also pointed to publishing volume as a driver. Gemma Hersh, Elsevier’s senior vice president of Primary Research, said Elsevier receives 4.2 million article submissions a year, compared with 1.3 million in 2015, and published more than 800,000 articles in 2025, compared with 400,000 in 2015.

Hersh said fewer than 20% of submitted articles are ultimately published. Elsevier works with more than 37,000 editors and 1.9 million reviewers annually, and says it publishes 18% of all articles while receiving about 30% of citations.

Artificial intelligence is central to the growth pitch, but the company also acknowledged risks. Hersh said AI can lift researcher productivity while increasing threats from fraudulent manuscripts and low-quality AI-generated content, including authorship manipulation, citation abuse and data fabrication.

Max Khan, senior vice president of Research Solutions, demonstrated LeapSpace, an AI-enabled research workspace launched in January 2026. He said nearly 1,000 institutional customers have subscribed and more than 1 million users have tried one or more features, though the product remains small relative to Elsevier’s revenue.

Paul Crockett, senior vice president of Healthcare Education, said Sherpath AI reached 100,000 students in 2026, equal to 20% of U.S. nursing students. He said students scoring above Elsevier’s testing benchmarks on predictive exams pass nursing licensure examinations on their first attempt 98% of the time.

RELX Chief Technology Officer Jill Luber said the company spends $2 billion annually on technology and employs more than 12,000 technologists globally. She said Elsevier uses more than 120 approved AI models from providers including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Mistral, and does not use customer data to train models.

Elsevier said a redesigned submission process has reduced median author submission time by 60% and has been introduced at nearly two-thirds of its journals. The company also aims to cut the time from acceptance to publication by another 75% over the next three years.