Open Access News

With unlimited access to 35-plus million full-text articles available to subscribers for $19.95 a month or $99.95 a year, HighBeam Research is already a considerable bargain, particularly when compared with traditional services charging pay-per-view on top of subscription fees. Now, HighBeam has made 1.5 million articles from its library available to anyone at no charge; the service does not even require registration information. To reach the new “freebies,” searchers conduct a standard HighBeam search and receive results reflecting the entire library with labels identifying the free and “premium” content. However, a Modify Results box to the left on the screen allows searchers to display only the free material.... HighBeam draws its content from arrangements with full-text aggregators, such as Thomson Gale and ProQuest, and increasingly from direct licensing from publishers. The free 1.5 million articles come from more than 200 sources selected for their user interest and availability. Most of the material is current as of a day or two; archives can go back as far as 20 years or only 2 or 3. Examples of available titles are BusinessWire, Financial Management, Science News, and USA Today. Patrick Spain, chairman and CEO of HighBeam Research, said that the free service will usually include all of the articles HighBeam carries from the 200-plus sources. In contrast, the full HighBeam collection of more than 35 million articles includes more than 3,000 business, trade, academic, special, and general interest publications. The addition of Knight-Ridder’s 30 newspapers will support local and regional news searches, while TheWashington Post’s addition will offer national news archiving back to 1987. Spain stated that he planned to expand both the free and premium content on HighBeam. Although the announcement of the new free full-text collection stated that it encompassed 200-plus sources, the actual count is 368....I asked Spain why he had chosen to change its policy and offer material without requiring either subscription or registration. He admitted that when he started the company, he never planned to offer anything totally free, but times had changed. “We were driven by two reasons, one from publishers and one from users. A number of our publishers have adopted the free model. For example, the Fortune line is now all free. We have had it in our premium area for a long time. The challenge became, ‘Is it fair to sell something that’s available elsewhere for free?’ As the Web becomes more transparent, we effectively can’t. The second is that users are increasingly unwilling to pay, which is why publishers are making more [available] free.” I asked Spain whether the free service might be withdrawn if it didn’t work out. He said, “No. We understand costs and will keep testing our new free content, but we’re unlikely to withdraw it. Basically we’re driven by a market we don’t control, both publishers who keep evolving in response to advertiser rates and user behavior and users who are increasingly aware that some advertiser will pay for what they want if they go looking for it.” He admitted: “If users hate ads, then we may evolve back to an ad-free environment, but if you want your site highly rated on Google and Yahoo!, free ranks higher and that keeps driving traffic.”...Spain told me, “An interesting thing is starting to happen. Free content gets people to look at our site and use our tools. While they’re getting the free material, they keep running into our premium content and see the tools that subscribers get. It seems to help us get subscriptions.”