I have been meaning to write about the latest quite fascinating doings at DeepDyve for several weeks. They are of interest to all of us who follow the news in research methods, scholarly publishing, e-content, online publishing, librarianship, Web matters and so on. Not to mention intriguing business models and interesting alignments of search/Web companies with what have been up to this point some quite conservative professional societies in the health and other sciences.
This is all quite fascinating for those interested in how publishers are faring in a rapidly changing online world in which both the public and policymakers are scrutinizing the existing cozy, rigid realm of sci/tech and medical publishing and not liking what they see.
I have written about DeepDyve’s innovative “Research. Rent. Read.” model before and have since then chatted on the phone with DeepDyve’s CEO, William Park. I had been planning to write about DeepDyve’s interesting alliance with CiteULike but wanted to first attend ScienceOnline2010 because I knew that there was to be a session there called, “Online Reference Managers”
and that one of the firms to be discussed at it was to be CiteULike.
And here I am going to digress into matters of nomenclature. CiteULike itself uses the wording, “free service for managing and discovering scholarly references” and “scholarly bookmarking services,” whereas at ScienceOnline2010 we saw the wording, “Reference managers, sometimes called citation managers or bibliography managers, help you keep, organize, and re-use citation information.”
Soooo, take your pick. I think I am going to stick with social bookmarking as that seems the most common term, and it is easier for me to type the word “social” than the word “scholarly.”
In any case, I am glad that I attended that session at ScienceOnline (and if I were a vendor or startup that had anything to do with software in the sciences I would send a huge contingent to next year’s conference, as there will be many opportunities there to get a feel for products that the online science community needs) because it gave me a better handle on social bookmarking in the sciences. Oh, rats—maybe I should have stuck with the term scholarly bookmarking. So many words for the same thing.
I am actually somewhat grateful for my sloth since then and for not having written about the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance (which is not a partnership per se, as far as I can tell) because there have been several developments at DeepDyve in the interval that I can now discuss in this one post, having finally roused myself to a state of modest activity.
Let us first examine what makes the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance interesting and what might enable the two firms to actually make some money from it.
Here are the pros at this stage as I see them.
First of all, Mr. Park has long argued that there is a substantial pool of researchers (and I would argue a vast unrecognized group of laypeople who have a driving interest in a scientific subject whether as a hobby or because they are activists on an environmental issue, say, or are afflicted by or love someone with a dire illness) who have need of scholarly articles but who have no access to resource-rich libraries and so have to either pay whopping sums (say $35 a pop for maybe seven pages of text), prevail on the good will of those who do have access to such resources (and those so beseeched may feel uneasy about complying with such supplications given how confusing and occasionally draconian copyright rules are on sharing scholarly articles) or do without the information.
DeepDyve’s pitch to publishers is that this is a huge market and that sci/tech publishers (many of which are professional societies that make money from their publishing operations and which have simply ignored non-members or disdained them as dilettantes or ignoramuses unworthy of attention) are better off trying to entice them by risking peeks at articles online for 99 cents in the hopes that the lurker will so like what he sees via his non-reproducible, non-downloadable peek that he will pony up for the actual PDF or otherwise downloadable version.
The trick for both CiteULike and DeepDyve is to persuade the publishers that they are better off trying the 99 cent peek gambit than to remain aloof from this group and continue their present ways of making money: squeezing libraries until the pips squeak (not a sustainable strategy given cost pressures in academia at even the richest of institutions, let alone cash-strapped ones), charging ever more for personal subscriptions, and assuming that the general public is willing to continue forking over $20-45 for articles when they are becoming aware of the Open Access movement. This awareness and concomitant disgruntlement are fueling the drive for public access to taxpayer-funded research. In the current anti-corporate, tar and feather the price gougers public mood DeepDyve could actually provide some cover and heretofore untapped revenue streams for the publishers willing to partner with DeepDyve (and DeepDyve is making major strides there—more on that below).
Let us stick with the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance for the moment. Another plus for the publishers that they should take note of is its potential as a way of advertising the existence of its offerings to educated (who also tend to be affluent ones) readers.
For instance, if you do a search in CiteULike you often will come up with journals you had not heard of before. Now, if I could take a series of 99-cent peeks at various articles in a periodical without even getting up my from desk (as opposed to, say, emailing asking for a free sample copy which I may or may not be granted and which may take weeks to arrive in hard copy and which may be several years old and thus not good advertising of the value of the journal) I might be impressed enough to subscribe to the journal itself or simply go ahead and purchase the full text of several articles.
The risk for the publishers, of course, is that I will do nothing but peek, get the gist and never do much more than that. But at least they would have gotten maybe $5 out of me that day, which is better than nothing.
Another plus for the publishers of the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance is that as more and more libraries cut back on journal subscriptions even researchers that are affiliated with universities will find that they can’t get what they need from their own institutions and may start using the 99-cent peek and either download the full article (a win for the publisher) or try to get the full article via their library’s interlibrary loan service (which is still a win for the publisher in that some interest has been generated in the journal, which means some library somewhere will continue subscribing to it).
A minus for the publisher of the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance is the rather inert state of scholarly bookmarking services (and spam problems at Connotea, for instance), so whether they would truly get much business from hooking up with the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance is another question. (For instance, I just tried out CiteULike again for really the first major go at it since I set up my account way back in 2005—but then I am not a heavy duty scholar).
Likewise, for CiteULike the value of the relationship with DeepDyve can be realized only if DeepDyve can demonstrate that it has many big-name publishers on board.
For example, I tried a search just now in CiteULike on my usual search term, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Because DeepDyve has no relationships with publishers that feature the huge number of journals in the neurological sciences that, say Springer (which, as the sponsor of CiteULike, you would think would come on board with the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance) or Elsevier do, I saw not a single icon for the 99-cent peek.
But the fact that I could not see the icon for my search is really an argument for the value of the CiteULike-DeepDyve alliance to publishers. I mean here I was, doing a search. My debit card is in the room. I could easily have ordered several articles if I had had immediate access to a peek and possibly sizable sums of money could have been extracted from me just now.
Think about that scenario, publishers. Do you really want me to have to try to find your stuff in Google or hope that I know enough to use PubMed and get to your toll access sites from there and then hope that I will simply hand over $35 or so without a peek or peep?
And DeepDyve is starting to forge a pretty impressive roster of blue ribbon publishers among its offerings and is approaching critical mass in terms of raising the comfort level among prestige publishers with its “Research. Rent. Read.” model. It now has relationships with major scholarly publishers such as the MIT Press, and the University of California Press, and with professional societies like the American Institute of Physics, the Radiological Society of North America, and the Association for Computing Machinery. Not bad.
I am quite puzzled, actually, as to why this quite interesting company is not getting the attention it merits in the library and scholarly publishing blogosphere. Perhaps librarians aren’t writing about it because they can usually, via professional networks and personal relationships, get their patrons what they need. Open Access people are not writing about it because they are philosophically opposed to cash changing hands when it comes to research information.
But let’s talk ugly truths here. We are not in a world where everyone has access to library resources galore. And not everything is Open Access yet. There are large numbers of people who need scholarly information and should have an affordable option for getting it and publishers should be aware that there are ways to make some money is some instances rather than none in many and that 99-cent peeks can lead to years of individual subscriptions.
William Park is an endlessly creative thinker. DeepDyve started off a nice little search engine. That in itself was interesting and worthwhile. He is now creating new models for the entire sci/tech publishing industry and making what had been a rather tired Web tool (social bookmarking) interesting again. Gotta hand it to the guy–there are second acts in American life.
I think a bigger hurdle for DeepDyve is the question that, if there is indeed a market for this type of access, why would a publisher need a third party to provide it? Why not just rent articles yourself, and not split the revenue or pageviews with someone else?
Hi, David. Thank you for your interesting comments. On this point, “…why would a publisher need a third party to provide it? Why not just rent articles yourself, and not split the revenue or pageviews with someone else?” I think the key advantage for publishers for going through DeepDyve would be simply convenience in that DeepDyve has set up relationships such as that with CiteULike and would handle all the bothersome technological and business details that such arrangements require. If the publishers going with DeepDyve don’t like the model for whatever reason, they can simply drop the arrangement with DeepDyve and not have to fire staff they might have hired to try out such a program themselves.
I agree with you, though, that it would have made sense for the publishers to do what DeepDyve is already offering to do for them. But DeepDyve is quicker off the mark incoming up with innovative revenue models for the scholarly publishing industry and the publishers may simply be holding back to see if the 99-cent model works before simply bypassing DeepDyve and doing what you suggest: handling everything themselves. We shall see what we shall see. Thank you for making me ponder these matters!
Because each journal presents unique content, I’m not sure there’s a great “first-mover advantage” here, like there would be for a service like offering classified ads (Craigslist) or auctions (eBay). I’m not sure how much the CiteULike tie-in matters either. The traffic that reference managers like this send to journals is pretty minuscule, particularly compared to something like Google or PubMed which send most journals a large percentage of visitors.
Regardless, most big publishers have a dedicated IT staff who could build in similar functionality, and most smaller publishers outsource such things to platforms like Atypon or Highwire who could do the same and amortize costs over many different journals. The question is whether there’s enough of a market here to cover those costs and to replace the potential losses in pay-per-view revenues that are likely to occur.
There are tons and tons of third party services out there looking to “partner” with academic publishers to provide services and take a cut of revenue. Most don’t offer very compelling services and those that do may face this question of why a middleman is needed.
Hi, David. A very astute analysis.
I find your comment here quite interesting, “…each journal presents unique content” very interesting because we seem to moving to an era in which it is the article and the subject matter that matters and not the journal. That is why the instant gratification for users of the DeepDyve 99-cents model via the CiteULike tie-in (although DeepDyve is not limiting it to the alliance with CiteULike) is so interesting because users would be doing a search on a specific subject and would not care what the journal was.
For instance, I am interested in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). You are right that journals offer unique content. The leading journal on the topic is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis:
http://informahealthcare.com/aml
but there are articles about ALS in many journals such as those on neuroscience and neurology, muscle and nerve, palliative care, nutrition, etc. It is the article that matters, not the journal. The publishers still think in terms of marketing the journal and are not very good at marketing the individual article or subject matter. (Even RSS feeds on subject matter are poor for various reasons—not enough specificity, such as those from Highwire, for instance.)
Peter Binfield’s work on article metrics is fascinating in this respect—I heard him talk about that at ScienceOnline2010:
http://www.scienceonline2010.com/index.php/wiki/Article-level_metrics/
I agree with you that Google and PubMed are the gateway to the content of most publishers’ sites, but so far most the publishers have not tried the 99-cent model (although they could do so with DeepDyve even without being tied to CiteULike). I think it would be great if the publishers tried the 99-cents model on their sites so that I could indeed simply be greeted with that option no matter how I found their sites: via Google, PubMed, etc.
I agree with you that the traffic from reference managers is probably miniscule. Perhaps if the publishers got their acts together via rendering their stuff more search engine friendly and making it easier to search once you get there (like Elsevier’s employment of NextBio for ScienceDirect—and that is a case of a big publisher calling in a middleman) they probably would need not need DeepDyve or any other middleman. But I still think DeepDyve deserves credit for coming up with the 99-cent model. That at least has generated some discussion about the incredibly high cost of individual articles.
And of journals. I had a nice exchange with a journals retention executive at Informa last week about the journal, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. I wrote him:
“I am an individual subscriber. I was told last year by one of your colleagues that there is now no distinction between individuals and institutions with this journal. I watched the journal increase in price from around $350 a year to around $850 to the now unaffordable $1,100. Please do tell your executives that the market simply will not bear that kind of inflation (which is basically price gouging) no matter how much we love the people we know with ALS. You are pricing yourself out of sustainability of subscribers.
It is these kinds of rate increases that add fuel to the demand for Open Access publishing—which is not in your interest.”
He said such comments are taken seriously—let us hope so!
You make a good point here, “most big publishers have a dedicated IT staff who could build in similar functionality, and most smaller publishers outsource such things to platforms like Atypon or Highwire who could do the same and amortize costs over many different journals.” But all of those are clunky given where we are with Web 2.0 slickness and, again, don’t offer the innovative 99-cent option. But as you say, “The question is whether there’s enough of a market here to cover those costs and to replace the potential losses in pay-per-view revenues that are likely to occur.” For instance, email alerts based on RSS feeds from PubMed are great and I might routinely purchase articles from the publishers linked to in those alerts if the costs were reasonable. MIT and the University of California Press are trying DeepDyve. I just wish the medical publishers would—that is where the need is greatest vis-à-vis quality of life for real people.
Maybe Springer or Elsevier could simply buy DeepDyve, thereby acquiring the services of smart thinkers in pricing and search expertise. (Or shutting them up by shutting them down, which they might prefer.)
Good point on the article versus the journal. I meant “journals” in terms of the platforms where the articles live, not necessarily meant to be used as a collection (particularly in an age where there seem to be mulitple journals covering many fields).
There have been many, many “search engines for science” that have cropped up over the last few years, and none have gained much traction. I’m not convinced that such tools are likely to do so, unless they offer some sort of new paradigm we haven’t yet seen. Though I will put in a plug for GoPubMed, which I think is superbly helpful:
http://www.gopubmed.org
NextBio do interesting things as well, but as I understand it, Elsevier paid them a substantial sum of money for the design and setup they use, rather than taking them on as a partner for shared revenue. One could easily see DeepDyve licensing their technology or even being bought out as you suggest, which would give a publisher a shortcut into this market.
As far as wanting them shut down, publishers want to make money. If this is a lucrative market, then they’ll want to exploit it, not make it go away.
Hi, David. Thank you so much for the clarification vis-à-vis platforms.
I found your skepticism about search engines for science interesting. You might be interested in the extensive interview I conducted last year with Michael Alvers of GoPubMed http://www.nextgenerationscience.com/science-resources/gopubmed-interview-with-michael-alvers/.
And I think that the work that Deep Web Technologies http://www.deepwebtech.com/index.html does with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) of the US Department of Energy like the search engines WorldWideScience.org http://worldwidescience.org/, Scitopia http://www.scitopia.org/scitopia/ and the E-print Network http://www.osti.gov/eprints/ are steps in the right direction.
I agree with you, though, that we will need a new paradigm for science search. That is why I have tried to get the search community interested in Open Science—search needs to get into that space both to advance science and to find new markets for itself. I hope that some search people will attend Science Commons Symposium – Pacific Northwest http://sciencecommons.org/events/salon.
I explained why I think they should in the post, “A Plug for Science Commons Symposium – Pacific Northwest” http://www.altsearchengines.com/2010/01/31/a-plug-for-science-commons-symposium-%E2%80%93-pacific-northwest/ and they should definitely attend ScienceOnline http://www.scienceonline2010.com/.
I had an interesting note from Jean-Claude Bradley the other day as we both mulled over the many comments on your post, “Science and Web 2.0: Talking About Science vs. Doing Science” http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/02/08/science-and-web-2-0-talking-about-science-versus-doing-science/.
Jean-Claude and I both found it odd that some of the readers of that post argued that Open Science does not appeal to scientists of a competitive temperament and that Open Science is too squishily collaborative in nature to make it into the mainstream research realm. Jean-Claude made the point to me that in order for scientists to excel in science these days and to make their reputations, the first thing they often look for is brilliant potential collaborators. That is where Open Science and the new science search paradigm you mention would come in—we need platforms that would enable scientists to quickly find collaborators. Research Scorecard http://www.researchscorecard.com/ and Elsevier’s grant finding platform SciVal Funding http://www.info.funding.scival.com/ are on the right track on that.
Many of the commentators in that forum argued that Open Science is not the way for ambitious scientists to go. I would argue that those who are career-minded should do Open Science for hard-headed, calculated, career-building reasons. In an Open Science world, the results of one’s brilliance are on display 24/7 to a worldwide online audience and one’s name and work become recognized far more quickly and among a broader community than that that the specialized journals cater to. After all, how can you get ahead in science if your peers can’t get copies of your articles because the libraries at their institutions have dropped them and they themselves can’t afford personal subscriptions? Get your name and your science out there. Get cited. Get ahead. Do Open Science. Idealistic? Do Open Science. Mercenary and me-minded? Do Open Science. It works for everybody! What a deal!
The publishers seem to get the need for facilitating the search for collaborators. It is just that they are having spam problems (as The Scholarly Kitchen has noted of Elsevier’s 2Collab http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/02/10/are-publisher-linking-networks-choking-to-death-on-spam/
As you say, Nextbio was paid a substantial sum by Elsevier. I hope other search services will look into the Open Science space. The in-house teams could use help from such firms, apparently. It will be fascinating to see what happens with DeepDyve.
Hope – thanks again for re-iterating the point about Open Science potentially being a safer choice for scientists who want to avoid being scooped! It is a counter-intuitive concept for many people but in practice it has proven to work to the scientist’s benefit.
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