Elsevier, a publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services announced its “Apps for Science” challenge today. The competition is calling out to developers from the U.S, U.K, Australia, Germany, India, Japan and the Netherlands to develop applications that “enhance information search and discovery for researchers,” and are built for Elsevier’s SciVerse platform, including a number of the company’s resource pools.  It’s the latest in ongoing efforts to rally support and innovation around big data, finding new ways to put it to good use.

“In combination with third party APIs and open data, applications can be created utilizing content APIs which enable integration with Elsevier’s full text article database SciVerse ScienceDirect and abstract and citation database SciVerse Scopus.”

A panel will evaluate eligible entries, and developer behind the winning app will receive $15,000. The second and third place candidates are also rewarded, and so do the developers awarded with the 2 honorable mentions. The call for entries opens April 7 and the deadline for submissions closes July 31, while the panel and public judging takes place August 15 through September 12. The winners will be announced in October.

The company who’s powering this completion, ChallengePost, is the same one behind the NYC BigApps 2.0 Competition we covered last week, which acted as a great opportunity to discover new ways of using big data to make the Big Apple more efficient.

Indeed, big data trends are taking over the enterprise space, and beyond. Healthcare is one of those areas, and Practice Fusion – a start-up who generates its revenue by offering a free electronic medical record system to doctors and selling healthcare data stores big data – recently raised $23 million in funding. The round was led by Facebook’s first outside investor, Founder’s Fun.

Big data analytics is also influencing customer service with the rise of companies such as ClickFox. Online marketing is yet another industry directly affected by big data analytics, and our News Editor Kristen Nicole interviewed mBlast CEO Gary Lee – one of the new marketing tools proving this claim.