Q. How does ArticleFinder, your online scientific, technical, and medical (STM) database, differ from GoogleScholar? In 2006, Infotrieve reverted back to a free access model for ArticleFinder, from the paid service mode that was introduced in 2003. What prompted this shift and how has the market responded to this change to a free access model?
A. Infotrieve reverted back to a free access model for ArticleFinder because of customer input and our interpretation of market forces as supporting free-access search models, subsidized by advertising or other revenue streams such as document delivery. Market response has been favorable thus far, both by individual and corporate customers. In our analysis, ArticleFinder differs from GoogleScholar because users use one website and one vendor from the point of discovery to the point that journal articles are ordered, users can add orders to a shopping cart and continue searching/shopping within the original search environment, historical orders and personal preferences reside in the one online location where they can also search, and there is an absence of advertising on ArticleFinder results pages.
PS: In ArticleFinder, only the search is free; the articles themselves are mostly pay-per-view. For companies with priced content, free searching is like advertising: eminently sensible, even a business necessity, but nothing to crow about. Not providing it would be like Walmart not letting customers walk the aisles.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/12/2006 07:51:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
