Elsevier eBooks on VitalSource Reviews

Updated to add… Use bookshelf app instead! At least it will let you log in.

The whole concept of Elsevier is basically robbing students. How can they charge so much for a book that we can only access for a few years for starters? Why do they make it so complicated to copy and paste things? Why is the read aloud feature so horrible? For the amount of money that is spent, we should be able to copy and paste easily. We should be able to select an option where we do not have page numbers read to us or whatever else. The way the words are pronounced is so far off sometimes that it is hard to follow. Why is it that when you are reading a chapter, some pages you can scroll for a long time and it will advance you a few pages, and then you have to hit the “next” arrow where you will read 1 and a half pages, hit “next,” and then get several pages that you can scroll and then hit “next.” I think it would be much easier to just scroll and entire chapter and hit “next” to go to the next chapter. It would be nice if you could also click on a vocabulary word, be routed to the glossary to see the definition and then hit a button that takes you back to the same place you were before you tried to define the vocabulary word. It is frustrating to go look at the definition and then spend forever trying to find where you were reading from beforehand.

Firstly, the books take forever to download onto ElseviereBooksonVitalSource . Secondly, when you try to give feedback it doesn’t allow you to write anything- just toggles back and forth between the options to give feedback about loading times and books. Thirdly, these books are only available when there is wifi. Books are already expensive, and when you pay $400+ to be able to access for YOUR EDUCATION, it shouldn’t be such a difficult process to manage something as vital as textbooks. If you Elsevier wants to better serve the students who are going into debt to be able to read these books, THEY NEED TO DO THE BARE MINIMUM AND MAKE ElseviereBooksonVitalSource FUNCTIONAL.

I cannot log into ElseviereBooksonVitalSource to save my life. Resetting my password does not work. I can log in on my laptop so I know my password and login but I cannot get on ElseviereBooksonVitalSource. Unfortunately I need it for nursing school and you’d think with how expensive textbooks are you’d think ElseviereBooksonVitalSource would work properly. Don’t even waste the space on your phone downloading it.

Can’t use Apple Pencil for notes, switching between chapters and pages is a pain. Worst set up ever and makes studying so much harder than it needs to be. Can’t download pdf even though you’ve paid for the book, so I can’t download to write notes on it since ElseviereBooksonVitalSource won’t let you. Can only access they ElseviereBooksonVitalSource and with WiFi. Didn’t make clear any of this before I purchased. Also didn’t put in description that it’s only accessible for 180 days. What a rip off, but what else can you except from elsevier!

Part of my learning style is auditory but listening to monotone Karen read every comma, website, and citations isn’t great. There’s better tech out there. Tools need more work to accommodate various learning styles. Secondly, the highlights in the mobile application used to transfer across devices but now they’re gone. I spent the last two hours highlighting text and it’s gone. This product is a joke!

I’m extremely disappointed in ElseviereBooksonVitalSource! Used to use inkling on my phone and online…they converted to Elsevier and I’ve been miserable since! And to there’s nobody to complain to. I’ve emailed and emailed and no responses… leaving me in the darkness. I have 6 books that I have on my account from inkling and now cannot access them on my phone. Affecting my learning and my clinical experience… so disappointing… please help!

The reader will re-read the same sentence over and over, or sometimes the same paragraphs. You can get out of ElseviereBooksonVitalSource and back in ElseviereBooksonVitalSource or go to a different section of the book and come back to it and it will still repeat it like a broken record. There seems to be no rhyme or reason and this happens constantly. Unfortunately it’s unreliable and unusable.

So I though it was my setting or something I was doing to not be able to turn the pages - only lets you scroll up and down! Spent like 2 days trying to figure it out only to come to the comments section to find that everyone else is having the same issue! Please fix this! Never seen anything like it and have many different reading apps I have used and this one is the most bizarre!

Again, please fix this. School is about to start soon and this would greatly improve user experience across the board.

Text to speech is terrible 1) the reading speed is either super slow or slightly too fast 2)you can only start having it reading from the beginning of a chapter 3) her pronunciation is bad even on normal words sometimes I don’t even know what she was reading. For the search function I’d like to only search a selected chapter. They should have ay evolve app where you can seamlessly access your book resources and don’t even get me started on trying to get access to the resource to the books you paid $800 for.

For the price we’re paying for the books and the access codes, I expected the software to be smooth and clean. There should be a way to click on tables and photos in order to expand them. Also the text-to-speech component should be changed so we can highlight which portions of the text we want read to us or repeated.

Edit: requires an interface revamp to make it easier to navigate and also smoother to use. Please also update for iPhone X support.

ElseviereBooksonVitalSource is ok. But some of the editing and writing on content review questions could really be improved (at least in the pre-nursing and. nursing disciplines).

A key problem is a lack of crowdsourcing for solutions. What I mean is there is also no easy way for a user or instructor to easily flag errors in content, or writing (especially in questions and rationales). It take multiple emails, go through multiple levels of customer service representatives, where they want screenshots of their incorrect data and screen shots or references the correct data.

And then, after all of that, they will eventually send a note to the content team where it can be flagged so it might possibly be corrected for a later revision.

They could simply have a button or an email to send content questions and concerns to and faculty and students would likely report errors. The could be quickly assessed to see if they are applicable and the information flagged for editions by a revision author.

Considering the cost of Elsevier’s resources is roughly a thousand dollars a semester, these resources should be AMAZING, but honestly it feels like their approach to education is antiquated and clumsy. It feels like bloated bureaucracy.

The customer service is pretty good but beyond the people who answer the phones and emails, I am completely underwhelmed.

I prefer to listen and read along when I study and the read aloud feature is honestly awful. The voices are distracting and they struggle to read certain medical terms. Please consider upgrading the voices or partnering with a company that has an advanced read aloud feature.

In response to the more recent poor reviews about how they can’t log on: hope this helps.

I wasn’t able to access my textbooks on my phone for the longest time and it was very frustrating. I finally contacted tech support and they told me that my “evolve Elsevier”account user info is DIFFERENT from my “VitalSource Bookshelf.” We were able to reset the password and now I can get to what I need.

ElseviereBooksonVitalSource itself takes forever to download textbooks and could definitely be improved.

Tech support alone gets 5 stars from me.

While mostly easy to understand and use with helpful tools, the tools could just be better. The fact that they exist is good but they only work through touching with the finger- I prefer to use my apple pencil since it gives me a better visual when highlighting but the feature doesn’t work with it. The scrolling options are not that great to me too, seamless scrolling would be nice so that I can view any part of the page in the center of my screen for ideal viewing.

I really like ElseviereBooksonVitalSource and the functionality, as long as I never lose access to it.

Also, the only reason it’s not 5 star is because every time I tap the screen the menu comes up then goes away. I don’t like that, I’d prefer an option to show the screen or make it go away unless needed.

The readability is good. What would be nicer: the ability to scribble notes in the margins rather than on electronic sticky notes, and a smoother highlighting feel(the current one is twitchy and ultimately distracting: the pen/finger slips fractionally over the text and suddenly either a paragraph is highlighted or nothing is).

I love ElseviereBooksonVitalSource for my nursing text book. It’s easy to copy and paste important information into my GoodNotes app with ElseviereBooksonVitalSource. No to mention I much prefer carrying around my light iPad over a 6 pound nursing book anytime.

Love it!

This book cannot be opened on an iPad. Only on a computer or laptop. Wish I knew that before buying. This book is really heavy and that’s why I purchased it digitally.

Only function I wish it had was a customizable sensitivity to side swiping. Often when scrolling down the page I accidentally side swipe which brings me to the next/previous chapter. This would be a good function to have if it was less sensitive, but as it is now it’s just annoying

I am a professor and I use ElseviereBooksonVitalSource all the time. Incredible how I can get the information ASAP when I need it. THAN YOU!