The State of the A&I Market – The publishers perspective? Mark Furneaux Business Development Director, Wize Nordic AB 13 November 2009

Outline Types of A&I Value of value added Is anything dying? What does the future hold What else is changing? Conclusion

Types of A&I Scenarios a)Index header records from e-journals b)As a) but include non-electronic and/or non-serial content c)Index electronic and hardcopy content using editorial skills to include hard to process content d)As c) but include foreign language content without English summaries e)As c) but include hard to find material, local grey literature, with local input centres f)Index at a deeper level within a paper (e.g tables and figures), make objects interactive Battle lines are drawn between some A&I producers

Value of value added Print and CDROM A&I products are not dead Heavy investment in value added by A&I publishers a)Value added for librarian – Scopus analytical tools, helps those who buy the products b)Value added for end-user – author profiles, citation searching, Derwent patent families, advanced search options, social tagging to allow comments, ratings etc c)New products as alternate revenue sources – RefWorks, CSA Illustrata, Summon

Is anything dying? High price, easy to process, low added value products should die – Google Scholar will do. Low price, easy to process, low added value may have a role (eg BL Inside, J-Gate) High price, high value added comprehensive databases - Scopus and Web of Knowledge – big brands, end-user penetration, high value added, high price tag Is there room for Scopus and WoK? Specialised sources – niche A&I publishers, often non-commercial or side-line, close to their market, high value, high A&I content, no economies of scale – bought up or consumed Content changing – A&I producers change what they include because of free web (eg TWI patents) Key measure of A&I success is usage, ProQuest reports exponential increase in usage driven by value added extras and alerts

What does the future hold? A&I innovation has been disappointing – most databases like hardcopy. Innovation in delivery, value added services, A&I record mainly cost reduction Biggest weakness of A&I and full-text – more and more content retrieved, less and less time to read On the fly review creation from A&I search results and full-text articles On the fly translation of non-English content into English and of English search results and full-text into non-English. Searching in non-English Searching often pretty simple still Summon – will indexed combination of library catalogue, institutional repositories, free web, plus a few paid for sources be good enough (95%?) to replace need for Scopus, WoK, METADEX etc? Is a single interface needed?

What else is changing Publishing specialisations are becoming blurred Publishers have own platforms, aggregators publish, agents aggregate, primary publishers produce A&I, A&I publishers aggregates - disintermediation Blurring of division between A&I, full-text and e-books – indexed summary still one of most effective ways to retrieve full-text accurately Some products combine A&I and full-text – CABI has abstracts database with hard to find full-text ProQuest acquisition of Dialog – impact of a common platform A&I services trying to become one stop shop, almost a federated search (Thomson adds CABI, PsycINFO to WoS), also Elsevier, EBSCO, ProQuest etc Horses for courses - complex searches (eg patents) need specialist sources, native interfaces with advanced search features, depth of coverage, simple searches (often by undergraduates) need easy to use tools, common interface, less than comprehensive results. Research based universities have greater need of A&I.

What else is changing (cont) Corporate need for A&I may differ from academic – ROI, time, comprehensiveness, specialist use specialist tools Searchers want answers, dont care where they came from or who paid for them Many A&I databases now indexed in Google Scholar and can be accessed from subscribing institutions via that route – drives usage Most searching is Google-like Platforms becoming portable, customisable widgets allow access from departmental web pages, course pages etc Any search of a library resource is better than Google. Quality and authority less important – will Wikipedia do? Increasingly hard to get new sales of A&I products Third World needs may be different

Use of A&I

Conclusion Evolution and change Some species of A&I will die out A few innovations (mutations) will flourish and dominate A more crowded information universe demands better tools to prosper Need to see innovative A&I products, not just value added enhancements of same old products