IP Profile of Biggest for-profit companies in BGP/Publishing Companies with focus on BGP

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Elsevier

  • Headquarters in Amsterdam
  • 70 offices in 24 countries
  • Governance: two divisions: Science & Technology and Health Sciences
    • Science & Technology's main publications: VirtualE, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scirus, EMBASE, Engineering Village, Compendex, Cell.
    • Health Science's main publications: 'Consult' series (FirstCONSULT, PathCONSULT, NursingCONSULT, MDConsult, StudentCONSULT)
    • 1.5 billion pounds per year revenue
  • Producers and Users: unsurprisingly, mostly researchers and academics (those who can afford the subscription fees)
  • Output - Narratives
    • 250,000 journal articles published per year in 2,000 journals
    • Primary journals: Lancet (medical), Cell (experimental Biology, including molecular biology, biochem, genetics, and structural biology), Tetrahedron Letter (organic chemistry)
    • ScienceDirect (online collection of journals), launched in 1997
    • Scopus (online citation database)
  • Output - Tools
    • 2collab - a tool for networking and information sharing among scientists (see below)
  • News:
    • 2003-2004, several universities rebelled against increasing costs of journal subscriptions cut their subscription levels (Elsevier seeks to build bridges )
    • Several entire boards have left in criticism Journal of Logic Programming, Journal of Algorithms, International Journal of Solids and Structures, Topology,
    • European Economic Association dropped one of Elsevier's journals as their official journal over a pricing dispute
    • Recently establishedBiotech, The Journal, (Elsevier's New Biotech Journals," Library Journal, March 15, 2007)
    • Reed Elsevier ditched its ad-supported, business-to-business publications. Said its future is in subscriptions (Smith, Laura, "Reed Elsevier ditches print to embrace digital future," Information World Review, March 2008, Issue 244)
  • Possible Commons-Based, Peer-Production, and Open Access News
    • Communisphere: binging together over 300 scientists to help identify products that Elsevier should bring to market. Not really commons-based, but it's a start. ("Elsevier Partners With Communispace to Launch Global Online Community")
    • 2collab: a tool for networking and information sharing among scientists (Smith, Laura, "Elsevier Dips Toe in Web 2.0 Water," Information World Review, November 2007)
      • store, filter, and evaluate information ("2collab")
      • main tools ("About 2collab"):
        • online bookmarks
        • interest groups
        • networking opportunities - opportunity to send messages to people
        • profiles
      • free, though have to register first ("FAQ")
    • Scirus Topic Pages: allow scientists to discuss and provide information about their fields (e.g. share citations, information, and other resources) ("Elsevier Dips Toe in Web 2.0 Water,")
    • Sponsored Articles: Elsevier allows Physics scientists to pay a fee for their articles to be available online for free ("Elsevier Sponsors a More Open Access Journal Model")
    • Networked Fact-Checking: Y.S. Chi, vice-president of Elsevier BV, announced informal plans to have a system so that correct usage of scientific terms was automatically checked ("Elsevier Gets Networking")

PubMed Central

  • Headquartered in DC
  • Governance
    • Funded by the NIH
    • Managed by the NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
    • Independent advice from PubMed Central National Advisory Committee
  • Producers
    • authors of peer-reviewed scientific works in the life sciences or biomedical research
  • Users
    • Anyone
  • Output - papers
    • free database of life science and biomedical research
    • All publications must be peer-reviewed
  • Output - tools
    • The PubMed search tool allows searching of the PubMed Central database of articles, as well as the MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) database of citations and articles
  • News:
    • Launches in 2000 with for-profit sister organization, BioMed Central
    • 2007 President Bush requires that all NIH peer-reviewed research be accessible in PubMed Central
      • Since the mandate, publications submitted to PubMed have risen significantly
    • January 2007, Wellcome Trust establishes UK Pubmed Central
    • Currently in the process of digitizing back issues of some journals ("PMC Back Issue Digitization Project")

Nature

  • Nature Publishing Group headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Tokyo, Basingstoke, UK, Buenos Aires, Boston, Delhi, Hong Kong, Madrid, Mebourne, Munich, Paris, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Seoul.
  • Governance
    • owned by Nature Publishing Group, subsidiary of MacMillan Publishers, which itself is owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
    • Holtzbrinck group has reach over a wide variety of publishing areas – active in 80 countries, with a revenue of over 2.4 billion Euros (circa 2007) "Facts and Figures"
      • it would be very interesting to see how Holtzbrinck's larger strategy influenced Nature's Web 2.0 and open-access actions - does Holtzbrinck encourage or discourage this sort of work
    • Users
    • traditionally researchers, but new platforms have increased accessibility. Sermo makes commentary on articles available to practicing Mds, Connotea gives anyone the tools to reference articles, and Nature Videos are accessible to all people, laymen included.
  • Output - Papers
    • One of the last cross-disciplinary scientific publications
    • subsidiary publication - Nature Biotechnology (highest cited journal in the biotech and applied microbiology field). Andrew Marshall, Editor ("Nature Biotechnology")
  • Possible Commons-Based, Peer-Production, and Open Access News
    • Self-publishing: 2002, becomes one of the first journals to allow authors to publish articles on their own websites
    • Open Access Genomics: for articles publishing the primary sequence of an organism's genome for the first time, Nature issues the articles under a CC attribution non-commercial share-alike license ("Policy Statement: Nature Publishing Group")
    • Distributed Innovation Platform: Partners with Innocentive to create new platform for publishing scientific problems to be solved for a profit ("InnoCentive and Nature Publishing Group announce partnership")
    • Open Access Option: European Journal of Human Genetics now has for-fee Open Access option. For US$3,000, articles immediately put into PubMed Central under a Creative Commons license
    • Second Life: Created three islands in Second Life for educating the public of scientific principles, and for giving ordinary people an opportunity to interact with scientists ("Scientists Get a 2nd Life")
    • Free Access in Developing Countries: Giving open access to its journals in 65 developing countries ("Developing nations get free journal access from Nature")
    • Reference Management: Develops Connotea - free online reference management site ("Connotea")
    • Social Networking for Doctors: Allows scientists to discuss articles published on Sermo, an online community for M.D.'s and D.O.'s ("Nature Injects Sermo Buttons")
    • Social Networking for Scientists: Create Nature Network, a social networking tool for scientists ("Into Facebook and Old Friends")
    • Free-Form Conference: Organized free-form conference at the Googleplex - no set topics or agenda ("Foo's Paradise")
    • Open-Access Video Archive: Open-access video archive of scientists explaining and commenting on their work ("Online Video Streaming Archive")

Springer Springer

  • Headquarters in Germany
  • Governance
    • Revenues at US$1.25billion
    • Private equity firms bought BertelsmannSpringer in 2003, merged it in 2004 with Dutch Kluwer Academic Publishers
    • Appears that Springer is headed for sale again ("Springer on Block")
  • Producers
    • unsurprisingly, because Springer limits itself to traditional publishing outlets, it restricts itself to traditional academic and research-oriented authors
  • Users
    • Like with the other companies, researchers and academics. However, Springer also sells textbooks directly to students
  • Output - Papers
    • Unlike the other publishing companies we've looked at, Springer does not focus primarily on journal publishing, but also has significant investments in textbooks and reference books
    • Also does not focus solely on the sciences: textbooks in business, law, and the humanities
    • Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing, focuses on biomedical and clinical engineering
    • Pay extra options for online reference searching: purchasing the print version of a journal does not allow you online access, nor vice versa ("Cutting-Edge Resources")
    • SpringerLink: database of over 2,000 Springer journals ("Welcome to SpringerLink!")
  • Possible Commons-Based, Peer-Production, and Open Access News

BioMedCentral

  • Headquartered in London
  • Governance
  • 199 Peer-reviewed open access journals ("BioMed Central")
  • Pre-publication submissions (i.e., early drafts, reviewers reports, author's responses) included with the publication of the initial article ("What is BioMed Central?")
  • most journal articles released under a CC attribution license, BioMed Central makes money through additional subscription-based services
  • CC-licensed articles are placed in PubMed central
  • relevant titles: Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine, BMC Biotechnology, BMC Genomics
  • Created YouTube channel for movies related to articles published in BioMed Journals (www.youtube.com/BioMedCentral)
  • created "Online Reporting System" for its prepay and postpay accounts to assist in article management and budgeting for submitting organizations
  • their journal management system is made available for free to suitable groups of researchers ("Starting an independent, open access journal")
  • new meta-database: lists open access scientific databases on the web (BioMed Central Databases")
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