ASIDIC 2000 Spring Meeting

1
ASIDIC 2000 Spring Meeting

• CEO Panel
• Dennis Auld
• Database Access Group, LLC

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Thank you and good morning. I am delighted to be
able to be part of this Tuesday morning ASIDIC
event, and thank Tom and Jay for inviting me.
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Todays Talk

• Who Database Access Group is
• Mission Statement
• Strategic assumptions
• New secondary model

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This morning, as the new kid on the block, I am
going to introduce you to Database Access Group,
talk about who we are, what we plan to do, and
more so, the strategic assumptions that lead us
to believe that there are, possible more than
ever, opportunities for organizations to
successfully provide what has been called
secondary publishing products and services, even
though you have heard repeatedly, that the demise
of secondary services is at hand.
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Database Access Group, LLC

• Dennis Auld
• John Kuranz
• Partners
• Access Innovations, Inc
• Distributors
• Publishers

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Database Access group is comprised of John Kuranz
and myself. In addition, we are partnering with
other groups, in accordance with what is needed
to respond to the rapidly changing
marketplace. Access Innovations is a critical
component for the production of the new databases
that I will describe later. What Access brings
are skills and knowledge in these important
areas - intellectual work which is done in
Albuquerque - offshore resources in several
locations combined with extensive knowledge of
their capabilities, performance results, costs
and reliabilities.
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- In house systems expertise well versed in
database production, data conversion, file
manipulation, web expertise, XML and SGML -
and an extensive involvement in many key industry
issues which brings a broad based perspective to
bear. This is a critical resource as we believe
there will be a shift in secondary database
production to a much more automated process. We
are currently working with several distributors,
negotiating arrangements and will be announcing
the results fairly soon. We are looking at
distributing directly, but understand that
distribution is still largely effected by those
organizations with deep distribution knowledge
and existing customer base.
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A key functionality of the products that Database
Access Group will produce is the linking
capabilities. As such, we are viewing
relationships with the other participants in the
information chain very differently than has
historically been the case. We expect to have
relationships with primary publishers that is
more aptly described as a partnership, as opposed
to the traditional one that could be described as
an arms-length non-relationship. I will talk
more about this relationship later.
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Mission Statement

• The mission of Database Access Group, LLC is to
  design, develop and produce products and services
  that meet the information research needs of
  professionals and students in their respective
  fields. DAG will analyze markets to see if
  evolving demand, generated by the influence of
  the Internet, is being met, or can be met by
  current product offerings. Where a competitive
  advantage results, DAG will build product.

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The Mission Statement of Database Access Group
sums up our assumptions that because of several
factors significant opportunity currently
exists, and is ready for exploitation, if the
appropriate resources, business plan, and plan
execution is effected. Although the Mission
Statement may appear to address only the
institutional markets, it also covers what we
believe to be the next great opportunity for
secondary publishers, that of the individual
market. Now, why secondary databases?
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Strategic Assumptions

• Technologies
• Content
• User Behavior
• Communication
• Linking
• Pricing/Packaging

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I mentioned forces that Database Access Group
feels is changing the competitive landscape,
forces that if not successfully addressed by
current organizations in the industry, will allow
new entrants of competition to emerge.
Competition that, if correctly responding to
these forces, can create not only expanded
markets, but may do so at the expense of
traditional players not responding to these
forces. A summation of some of these forces are
shown in this slide. I will go into more detail
on each of these.
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Technologies

• Internet - Delivery channel of choice
• Responding to and creating demand
• Driving publishers
• Revolutionizing entire process
• Generation of original content
• Presentation of content
• Interface tools

14
The impact of the Internet is pervasive, and a
trend of migration from research using print to
research using online is clearly happening. Even
though less user-friendly than print, the
capabilities that online brings are clearly
winning over users. Not only has online emerged
as the delivery channel of choice, but as it is
rapidly responding to demands it is, at the same
time, creating new and greater demands, demands
at the end user level, which now is, or should
be, the primary focus of secondary
publishers. Just as secondary publishers are
challenged by these forces, primary publishers
are migrating their products from print to
electronic form, and are keenly aware that the
whole landscape is changing, and has potential
for revolutionary change.
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Not only are the types of content expanding, but
the traditional process of generation of original
material to the consumption of that material is
undergoing significant and growing pressure to
change. All publishers, primary and secondary,
are not only faced with changing content, but
also have to be concerned with how the users are
interacting with their content, i.e. the evolving
user interfaces. The data-centered print world,
and the user-centered online world, need to be
joined in creating user-friendly and functional
interface's which will satisfy the users demands.

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Content

• Source material
• Journals, books, newspapers,monographs
• Pre-prints, ListServes, Grey lit, Web sites
• Chat rooms, author email, other researchers
• Migration to electronic form
• Breakdown of meeting needs
• Shift in Costs

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Not only has the list of source material
expanded, the form in which these materials is
desired has changed. To respond to this demand,
publishers and authors are migrating to
electronic form. In addition, electronic
repositories at various stages in the publishing
process are appearing. Although the bulk of
material is still being produced in print, and
the majority of authors still prefer submissions
to print, the preference for electronic is
mounting rapidly. In conjunction with this
movement, publishers are learning that electronic
is not an extension of print, but a wholly new
medium. For secondary publishers, decisions must
be made as to what form to cover, what form to
reference, what form to link to.
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Especially for products in the STM area what is
regarded as published, what is archival, what do
I do with this material that does not fit current
guidelines, current specifications. As this
evolution accelerates, difficult decisions must
be made. Clearly the signals coming from user
studies indicates a desire to access all relevant
materials, now, at the desktop, to complete the
research process within the immediate
environment. And that equates to electronic vs.
print. What also is emerging at this time, is a
signal of lack of quality differentiation. While
authors still rate highly where their manuscripts
will be published, and the attendant readership
of those journals, users are signaling they do
not care who published the document.
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This means that there could evolve a new system
that satisfies their needs, and builds in a new
way of assuring quality. Primary publishers are
aware of this factor as they move from print to
electronic distribution. What this means for
secondary publishers is how do I control costs,
how do I keep costs down as expectations rise,
and change. How do I deliver the satisfaction
without increasing price. Normalizing the
expanding source material, creating and
maintaining the links, and responding to the
attendant demands, will become much more complex
and costly. It is probable that a shift in cost
support from data-centered investment to
user-centered investment may be essential.
20
User Behavior

• Rapid migration to online
• Print vs. online
• Simplicity
• Frequency of use
• Web culture/influence
• Demands

21
For an unfortunate length of time, there has been
no surveying of user behavior patterns.
Fortunately they are beginning to emerge. They
are almost universal in showing a preference for
utilizing online for research as opposed to
print. The preferences, and demands emerging from
those preferences, are taking on an appearance of
geometric progression. Moreover, user
expectations are often unreasonable as the online
search process is complex, and most users have
not become well acquainted with either the search
systems or the content variations. Even though
the great preponderance of material is still in
print form, current user patterns are showing
limitation of their focus to electronically
available materials, even with the attendant
difficulties.
22
Online searching means content and search
capabilities that are highly interactive and
intertwined. In this regard, publishers need to
be aware of technical overkill. The speed of
online search and retrieval tool development is
overpowering the abilities of users to cope with
them. User studies show that they prefer
simplicity to sophistication, easy navigation and
easy online help, and the understanding that
online searching means conceptualizing a
continuous space of information within which they
must learn new information gathering techniques.
These studies also show that use of electronic
research significantly increases the frequency of
access. With speed as an expectation, and a
learning curve in play, single trips to the print
references are being replaced by multiple trips
to the online tools.
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Many, probably most users of traditional research
databases have spent time searching the web, and
bring many of those habits, influences to the
research process. Developing tools to respond to
these habits, such as quick search development,
logically presented and relevant results, links
to new and many potential sources for appropriate
materials, and ease of navigation, have to be
built into the new secondary products. In brief,
the explosion of demand, the accelerating nature
of demands, the judgement call of keeping
technological advances in sync with user
abilities, are all putting new pressures on
secondary services, ones that are critical to
resolve.
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Communication

• With publishers
• With market
• With new source materials
• With electronic repositories
• Institutions/individuals

25
For secondary publishers, communication with the
other value-added producers in the information
chain is not only going to increase, it must
expand dramatically. Previously, secondary
communication with the primary publishers of the
materials they were covering was almost
non-existent. Continuation of this practice
spells disaster. Technical, contractual, and even
opportunities for new joint partnerships to
respond to emerging user demands speak to
significantly increased communications with these
providers of source materials. Certainly the
tools being largely developed by the web
communities speak to increased communications
with the market, be they institutional or
individual. Instant messaging and chat
technologies enable individualized customer
support.
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Demand by the users to be successful, or quickly
acquire online help, is the baseline for customer
support. They want to communicate with the
content supplier, the publisher, the author, the
search engine, each other. To be successful,
secondary publishers will need to provide these
support functionality's. With the desire of the
users to access and evaluate the emerging forms
of information along with the traditional forms,
secondary publishers will have to, at a minimum,
provide links to pre-print servers and to
electronic archives. In addition, providing users
abilities to communicate with these repositories,
beyond linking to specific documents, is very
likely to emerge as a demand.
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It is likely, at least for the near future, that
products and services provided to institutions
will be different than those developing for
individuals. As such, different communication
needs will probably require publishers to develop
a variety of support capabilities. Identifying
and satisfying those needs will be very
important.
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Linking

• Shift of resource allocation
• Dynamic
• Articles, publishers, authors, websites,
  archives,

29
User behavior patterns show that linking is an
accepted, understood, and desired tool. Access to
the full text, to holdings, to related documents,
to communities, to other people is almost
automatic in their expectations. Investment in
creating, supporting, and maintaining links is as
important to the new secondary services as
indexing has been in the past. Secondaries will
have to analyze the costs of supporting these
demands, and see if these costs can be added to
present structures, or if they create a need to
reduce costs in other areas to maintain price
stability.
30
Supporting the linking capabilities also means
that adding records to static databases is no
longer the case. The files have become dynamic
with the demand of upgrading the links as the
source material becomes electronic, or changes in
the linking references occur. Being concerned
with the links to the source materials is not
enough. All the various information providers, be
they traditional or emerging, will provide places
for the user to communicate with and provide
capabilities aimed at satisfying the users
demands. This will require not only links, but
an effort on the part of the secondary publishers
to respond to the total environment of the users
demands, within which linking is a critical, but
not the only requirement.
31
The new secondary publisher will provide and
maintain those links, and the attendant services,
or the users will find other ways to satisfy
those needs. In Web terminology, this is called
"stickiness." To effectively support the users,
all the providers in the process will have a
greater need to communicate with each other. This
linking ability is complex, needs cooperation
across providers, and must be addressed.
32
Pricing/Packaging

• Institutional - subscription based upon FTE
• Individual - subscription
• Packaging
• Past/new influences

33
One can say that as an industry, we have tried
pretty hard to be fair in pricing and packaging
to the market, to distributors, and to
vendors. Because of the rapid evolution of the
delivery mechanisms, aggressive packaging/pricing
contractual arrangements by vendors, new pricing
metrics evolved by publishers, a hodge-podge of
pricing has emerged. This will be difficult to
support and explain as the Internet becomes the
primary delivery vehicle. In many consumer areas,
the Internet has definitely shifted the
traditional advantage of the supply side to a
more level, and even in some cases, advantage to
the demand side.
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Information as to product and price is now at the
consumers fingertips, be they individuals or
institutions. The current patchwork of pricing
will be difficult to shield, and be difficult if
not impossible to support in the newly informed
environment of the customer. A logical pricing
mechanism fitted to the online environment needs
to be put in place. One that is easily
understood, can be described on a one page price
sheet, be easily incorporated by distributors,
and one that protects the supplier and the
purchaser as shifts in the user base occur. The
marketplace, both institutional and individual,
appears to respond favorably to fixed pricing,
subscription pricing, but one that fits an online
world, not a print world.
35
In the institutional market, the activities,
clout, and knowledge of the consortiums is
already putting pressures on these pricing
discrepancies. Products/services for the
institutional market need to satisfy the demands
of that marketplace, but also generate demand for
continuation of service in the still very
embryonic but potentially lucrative individual
market. The packaging, and the pricing in both
arenas will most likely be very different, but
the attractiveness of serving both will prevail.
OK, we've briefly looked at these forces, now
lets look at the first product of Database Access
Group....e-psyche.
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e-psyche

• Coverage
• Citation Indexing
• Links
• Publisher relations
• Institutional/Individual

37
The primary focus of Database Access Group
initially will be the e-psyche database, a
database focusing on the needs of the field of
psychology and related behavioral
sciences. Although looking much like a
traditional secondary database, there are several
features that recognize the factors that I have
been talking about, and include investments in
areas that are in concert with what we feel are
the new secondary files. Lets look at these
features.
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Coverage

• 4200 journals
• dissertations
• pre-prints
• web sites
• books
• archives

39
The journal material has been expanded to include
source material relevant to the lay person as
well as content for the professional. In
addition to the traditional sources of materials,
e-psyche will add pre-print materials, web sites,
listserves, and other appropriate sources that we
identify. In relation to decisions as to print
or e-versions, e-psyche will carefully evaluate
each situation, but philosophically lean toward
the electronic. We will emphasize the utility of
content, even though it may mean linking to an
electronic version and ignoring the print. The
variety of archives also means we will invest our
resources in constantly reviewing these
locations, and adjusting our references, and
links accordingly.
40
The aim here is to give the user the appropriate
content and search capabilities, and to complete
the process by linking to the full text, to other
sites, to archives, to other users, whatever
means completion for the user. Again, coverage
now not only means types, depth, and quality of
content, but incorporates navigation issues,
policy issues, access issues, interface issues,
and user expectation issues that are
intrinsically linked with the content.
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Citation Indexing

• Initially follow ISI guidelines
• Use DOI
• Link into CrossRef (hopefully)
• Follow publisher requirements
• Order of preference
• Direct to article
• To publisher URL
• Notification in e-psyche record

42
For citation indexing, initially we will follow
the ISI guidelines. We will probably expand on
this at a later date. Unlike ISI, which had to
set up its own proprietary linking mechanism, we
will be using the DOI as the linking tool. WE
also hope to form a working relationship with
CrossRef, following their linking mechanisms. We
hope that the various archives, pre-prints, and
publishers will agree on the mechanism that is
being proposed at CrossRef. This would certainly
make everyones life easier. Ideally we will link
to the article itself. If not, then to the
publisher URL, or to a location that the
publisher wishes. Last, as the e-psyche file
builds, we will analyze if the users would like
the links to go to the appropriate e-psyche
record, either in lieu of, or in concert with the
full text.
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Links

• To publisher URL
• To author e-mail
• To article DOI
• Citations - DOI
• To pre-print, archives, listserves
• Publisher calls
• Flexibility for change

44
I mentioned earlier that a central functionality
of the e-psyche record are the links. Publishers
will designate to us where they would like links
to go in relation to their material that we
cover. We will also enter author email addresses,
and use DOIs wherever appropriate, as the
identifier of the article itself, and in the
links to the references. As I also indicated
earlier, we will communicate with publishers much
more frequently than has historically been the
case. We will work with the publishers closely as
the linking process will most likely change
frequently, and as linking evolves we will be
flexible in accommodating changes.
45
Publisher Relations

• Offering database access in exchange
• Work closely on links
• Will keep active communication
• Publisher area on website

46
To form the basis of the relationship, we have
been asking publishers to send us materials
appropriate to the database, in print or
electronic form. We hope to eventually move all
input to electronic form, but that will take a
while. In exchange for their materials, we are
offering to the publishers access to the e-psyche
database for all they designate, at no cost. We
are also planning to develop a publisher services
section on the web site, identifying resources,
tools, information, capabilities that will be
beneficial to publishers, also at no cost.We
approach the relationship with publishers as
partners, and expect that opportunities will
evolve over time that can benefit from that type
of relationship.
47
Institutional/Individual

• Initially an institutional product
• Analyze individual professional offering
• Develop appropriate technologies
• Expand appropriate content
• Develop complementary services
• Subscription pricing

48
I mentioned earlier that we are currently in
conversations with several distributors. We also
plan to distribute directly, and the results of
these conversations will shape how we approach
the institutional market. Although the
institutional market is critical, and it is what
we are focusing on, we will be spending time
analyzing and preparing for the individual
professional market. It is assumed, largely by
observing current developments, that the products
and services that will be offered this market
will be different than those provided to the
institutional market. Experiencing the rapidity
of which things change, however, this
differentiation may be short lived, or an
evolution to new sets of differentiation emerge.
49
This will require significant analysis, market
research, and eventually, investment. We feel,
however, that this market is developing rapidly
and we will be into the early stages of planning
very soon. As has been discussed, not only the
packaging of the content, but the surrounding
technologies will also be evaluated and
implemented as appropriate. Market segmentation
will most likely require different packages of
content, support capabilities, navigational
tools. These will have to be addressed. As in
the institutional market, this service will be
priced on a subscription basis, and will rely on
subscription income as the main source of
revenue. Transactional and advertising revenue
streams will also be looked at, but the core
stream is planned to be subscription income.
50
Traditional Secondary Files

• Traditional publishing oriented
• Costs predominately on content
• Institutional orientation
• Publisher relations minimal
• Technical infrastructure
• Legacy

51
To sum up then, we believe that the traditional
secondary product is one that can be described by
these elements. We believe that these databases
will need to change considerably to be able to
respond to the changing demands of the
marketplace. Some of these changes are already
occurring with some of the files, but the
response to some of the forces that I mentioned
here are not going to be trivial. These changes
will require decisions at policy levels,
technology infrastructure expansion, legacy
files, all of which are complex and are resource
intensive propositions.
52
New Secondary Files

• New content
• Different cost structure
• Publisher relations
• Links
• Aggregators
• User demands

53
The new secondary databases can be described as
ones that will include a much greater diversity
of source material, and will aggressively seek to
obtain and present this material in electronic
form, even if it means difficult policy decisions
in relation to print. Cost structures will
change dramatically, basically moving from an
emphasis on content to that of an aggregator,
focusing on utility as equal to, or even more
desirable than content, shifting from a data
orientation to a user orientation. Relationships
with the other value added providers will change
necessitating adoption of roles that are more
like partners. A much greater degree of
research, analysis, and communication with the
users will be the norm, as focus on their demands
are essential to success.
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Obviously links will be key. The core
functionality of the Internet is communication.
The core functionality of the World Wide Web is
publishing. These two worlds are joined in the
minds of the users, and create expectations that
embody decision-making incorporating elements of
both. Just as the customers have become better
informed, the publishers must recognize the fact
that user behavior in the research process has
changed dramatically. Publishers must realize
the extent of this and adapt their products and
services to the new information seeking process.
This we believe to be a picture of the
evolving marketplace, and describes the
conditions and forces that Database Access Group
plans to respond to. Thank you.