Significant Science

Listen up, publishers, librarians and scientists. Here is something really important in Web content and scholarly publishing. In a really innovative and fascinating move in the world of scholarly and sci/tech publishing, the search engine firm DeepDyve is today announcing an initiative to introduce a sort of iTunes/Amazon Kindle model for scholarly content delivery the difference being that the articles are “rented” rather than purchased (although customers can work their way up the content consumption food chain to purchase if an item looks enticing enough).

Okay, who will want to read the rest of this post on this intriguing development on the scitech/academic publishing front? Well, scads of people actually.

Anyone interested in the economics of publishing generally (let’s say anyone who consumes content on the Internet, which includes just about anyone who can read and access the Internet) should familiarize themselves with the outlines of what I will dub, for the sake of convenience, the DeepDyve Initiative. (Doesn’t that sound cool—like a Robert Ludlum title).

And academic and medical librarians would be affected by a shift in how sci/tech publishers market and offer their wares and so would independent researchers. And so would those affiliated with major institutions that might, though resource-rich, lack a subscription to a particular journal. Faculty members in such settings might want to get a snapshot view of a key article and not have to pay the full price at all or at least not without a stronger sense of what might be in the full article. It is too early to tell if this “peek and maybe purchase the whole kit and caboodle” model will play in the Peoria of the highly conservative sci/tech publishing industry. But you sure do have to tip your hat to DeepDyve CEO William Park for some brilliant, innovative thinking that might actually help sci/tech publishers make at least a little money on articles that might otherwise render them none at all and that might actually lead to downloads of the whole enchilada of articles in many instances.

Medical societies and professional membership organizations in the sciences, social sciences (which often produce academic journals and depend on the revenue produced thereby and leverage such publications for member recruitment and retentions purposes) and even in the liberal arts might be persuaded to look at this model as a way of getting more of their material out on the Web for viewing and possible purchase by nonmembers, thereby bolstering their bottom lines and garnering eyeballs and attention for content from new audiences. And some fairly significant players on the scientific society/sci-tech publishing scene have signed to the DeepDyve Initiative.

For instance, here is a quote from DeepDyve’s press release (hey, I am not above cribbing from press releases—info is info):

“DeepDyve Unveils Online Rental Service for Research… The web is transforming the publishing industry and creating opportunities for new users to access our content,” said Martin Frank, Ph. D., executive director of the American Physiological Society. “The rental model that DeepDyve has pioneered enables us to serve these new users without compromising the products we offer to our traditional subscription customers.”

Now, the fact the leader of a leading scientific society has brought it on board with the DeepDyve Initiative is pretty convincing evidence that the initiative has legs. New publishing models are not something that are adopted willy-nilly in the world of sci/tech publishing and I find the fact that someone with the gravitas of Mr. Frank, who oversees a society with a quite broad, respected and influential publishing operation has given the DeepDyve Initiative his imprimatur persuasive evidence that Mr. Park and DeepDyve may be on to something.

I have talked on the phone to Mr. Park and I am of two minds about the DeepDyve Initiative.

On the one hand, he makes a persuasive case that there is an untapped market of knowledge workers and researchers unaffiliated with research institutions that publishers are currently not reaching, thereby missing out on the chance to leverage and milk to the fullest extent possible the content that they have at great expense produced. Park maintains that by offering such knowledge workers sneak peeks at articles publishers would get at least some revenue and that some is better than none and that many peekers will plunk down the dough for the whole shebang.

On the other hand, will the publishers (think Elsevier, Springer, Wiley et al) agree with Mr. Frank here, “…enables us to serve these new users without compromising the products we offer to our traditional subscription customers” or will they just regard the DeepDyve Initiative as cutting into the lucrative library institutional subscription market? And, indeed, how will librarians react? What is to stop, say, a medical librarian in a cash-strapped hospital library from taking advantage of this feature of the DeepDyve Initiative (I am quoting here from the DeepDyve Press release):

Affordability: Users can rent the full text of an article for as little as $0.99, or join a monthly plan and enjoy greater discounts and increased flexibility.

Ease of use: With DeepDyve, users can click, rent and read without any hassles.

I mean, couldn’t librarians budget for a monthly plan, read a rented version of an article, absorb that info and paraphrase it for the clinician who has requested a literature search and so not bother ordering the actual article via Docline and other interlibrary loan systems?

After all, the publishers might be leery of helping small libraries and independent researchers read online something that they might then have little need to read again in a full PDF procured at great expense from a richer library (in the case of the small library) or via personal download (in the case of the independent researcher). If the DeepDyve model caught on would big research libraries have the incentive to purchase the expensive institutional subscriptions that they monetize by charging smaller libraries interlibrary loans fees for and which faculty might not need as much if they could plunk 99 cents for a peek at an article, thereby saving their institutions thousands of dollars per year in unread journal issues? And those institutional subscriptions are the lifeblood and cash cows (hey—metaphors are handy things so cut me some slack on my prose style here, okay?) of the sci/tech publishers. But Mr. Frank, the leader of a quintessential, respected mainstream scientific society seems unfazed by the notion that the DeepDyve Initiative would somehow damage revenue models and seems to think it would simply enhance the position of sci-tech publishers. I am not so sanguine, but I am not as smart a cookie as Mr. Frank and Mr. Park.

Also, I am not sure if the subscription model will gain traction. Getting anyone to buy anything these days is not easy. And getting people to pay for content on the Web is particularly hard. But if you make your living by research, you might go for the DeepDyve Initiative. Here is more from the press release,

“Start Researching with DeepDyve Today
DeepDyve is currently offering a risk-free, 14-day trial that allows users unlimited access to thousands of authoritative journals at no cost. Users enjoy continuous access to any article until their Free Trial expires, after which they may join one of three plans: Basic Rental Plan: For just $0.99 per article, users of this “pay-as-you-go” plan can rent and read a premium article from one of the many prestigious journals available through DeepDyve. Articles can be read multiple times for up to 24 hours. Silver Monthly Plan: For $9.99 per month, users can rent and read up to 20 premium articles per month. Each article can be read multiple times for up to seven days. Gold Monthly Plan: For $19.99 per month, users can rent and read an unlimited number of articles for an unlimited amount of time. There is no expiration date.”

Seems like a good idea to try it out. That way, knowledge workers (and clever librarians in resource-poor settings) could determine how much they can they can absorb of an article online only (and that would be enough in many cases, given that often one needs only the gist of an article and skims or skips the methods, etc. sections anyway) and if they would indeed like the pluses of such things as:

Personalized suggestions: DeepDyve will automatically display suggested articles based on a user’s profile.

Email and RSS alerts: Users can receive regular updates of new articles and search results delivered directly to their email inbox or RSS reader.

More Like This: DeepDyve offers links to related content with every search result and article page.

Now those are features that readers will like and that publishers should take note of.

For instance, I am quite interested in the subject of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In the course of examining the workings of search engines, I use “amyotrophic lateral sclerosis” as my test search term. I have actually purchased some quite expensive items in journals–and indeed in one case an entire issue of Elsevier’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America on the subject as a result of just such tools as DeepDyve’s More Like This tool (which in itself is a neat thing and displays DeepDyve’s prowess as a search engine).

Thus, I would really encourage sci/tech publishers to take a serious look at the DeepDyve Initiative. After all, if I don’t know about your content, I can’t purchase it and even though publishers might be leery of this model (again from the DeepDyve press release, “Free search & preview: Researchers can be certain of an article’s relevance before renting”) it makes sense to try to entice readers with a glance at content.

Take a chance, publishers. Yes, as a reader I may just go with getting the gist of an article from the peek and you might, therefore, make only 99 cents off me (minus DeepDyve’s cut) that time. But 99 cents from thousands of people like me adds up and I can’t imprint onto my brain the graphs and charts in your content—to get those, I would indeed have to order the full article. And I would be more likely to do that if I could see them via a preview.

At the very least, DeepDyve is, as Mr. Frank (who cares both about science and his society and is thus not likely to do anything to harm the interests of either and that is good enough for me) says, pioneering in the content delivery and scholarly publishing world. That is news and exciting and intriguing. Won’t it be fascinating to see what happens?