LONDON (Reuters) - Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier has launched a free advertising-funded cancer Web site with its academic journals primarily targeting U.S. health care specialists and the fastest growing therapy area in the world.

Elsevier, Reed's science and medical arm, said this week it is hoping to attract 150,000 doctors and health care professionals within a year. It describes the site, www.oncologystat.com, as the first such online community launched by a scholarly publisher.

The site requires users to register so they can search and download current articles from more than 100 Elsevier cancer- related journals and summaries of important research from leading oncology and hematology publications.

Users are not getting the entire journals for free, but can also get video interviews, blogs, podcasts, database access, regulatory updates, electronic newsletters and surveys.

The free content is coming from journals such as Lancet Oncology, The Breast, Cancer Letters and the American Journal of Medicine -- specialist publications that carry hefty subscription charges.

Monique Fayad, a senior vice president in Elsevier's health sciences arm and publisher of Oncologystat, said the company was tapping into a $1 billion health science online advertising market in the United States.

Fayad said Elsevier was targeting more than one million U.S. health care professionals involved in cancer diagnosis, treatment and research.

CANCER A KEY MARKET

Non-professional users such as consumers, cancer patients and caregivers researching cancer issues for their own needs can also register, providing a broader pool of readers for advertisers.

"What we are seeing is pharmaceutical companies looking to target media specialists during their online activity," said Brian Nairn, Chief Executive of Elsevier's health sciences division.

"Society is targeting cancer as one of the diseases where treatment can be improved or life span extended so there is a great deal of interest in the latest treatments and drugs."

Axel Grothey, an Oncologystat advisory board member and associate editor, said oncologists research the Web more often than other clinical specialists because there are more than 500 cancer drugs in the pipeline.

The portal's revenue will come from online advertising -- drug companies with products to sell -- and sponsorship.

Reed, bolstered by its exit from education publishing, which is expected to see around $4 billion returned to shareholders, announced earlier this year it was focusing more on digital opportunities in its science and medical, legal and business markets.

"Effectively, Elsevier is experimenting with an advertising funded model rather than the traditional subscription based model," said UBS media analyst Polo Tang in a research note.

The portal will provide an incremental revenue opportunity, he said, adding the Elsevier science unit should generate organic growth of around 6 percent in the second half.

Elsevier has not given revenue projections as it works to attract readers via the free advertising-funded platform.

"This is a strategy we will monitor very closely rather than as a toe in the water experimentation," Nairn said.

He said the free-content portal did not threaten to cannibalize Elsevier's existing subscription products.

"You are exposing practitioners to journals they may not have had exposure to," Nairn said, adding the site would also open U.S. and European specialists to publications, research and insight they may not have previously come across.