Also, as one commentator has mentioned, Elsevier has an expensive paywall around them and true innovation would be allowing the articles to be published for free (as in speech and beer), especially if the data which the article uses has been paid for from public financing and grants.

Mike Cane, over on the eBookTest blog, has a good article on the use and need for metadata in eBooks and how it could be re-used. I doubt that Elsevier will release this data as a queriable interface which would be highly useful inconstructing links and a library of useful posts/articles.