DeepDyve rents articles
DeepDyve has started to offer journal articles at 99 cents apiece. The service also provides monthly unlimited subscriptions for flat fees, but 99 cents buys you 24 hours of unlimited access to an article. The service is aimed at people in business and scientific fields. Read more on Information Today’s News Breaks. Some of the content included in the DeepDyve search is open access or otherwise free, like Medline, but most is paid-subscription content that requires you to shell out some dough. Now, keep in mind that you’re not buying the article – it’s not like buying a song on iTunes. From the IT article:
Rental means just that: DeepDyve is not selling articles for you to own. You can read the article on the screen. You can’t download it, you can’t use a screen capture, and you can’t print it. You can take notes from the article you’re viewing-but only with those old-fashioned devices, pencil (or pen) and paper. The viewer is Flash-based and is a proprietary system developed by DeepDyve.
While I like the idea of being able to purchase articles one at a time instead of having to buy a yearly subscription if you don’t want one, it saddens me that services like this exist…and get subscribers. If only their customers would get library cards (for free) and access the articles they need for free from the library’s website. The success of a service like this speaks to the horrible job we’ve done as a profession of getting the word out about what we do. How much outreach does your academic or public library do to local business organizations? How much work have you done letting people know about the free content they can get online through your library website? Compare that with how much money you spend on that content, and you’ll see a discrepancy I’m sure. Let’s take this product launch as another kick-in-the-pants to refocus on marketing our digital resources. Please?
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I can understand why some–even those with library cards–would find this appealing. To ILL a journal article takes time, a day, a week, more. To buy a $.99 article and get immediate delivery? Appealing. If you are not affiliated with a college or university library, you’ll either have to wait or drive and pay anyway. Maybe we need to focus on improving that aspect of PL services.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Rachael, that depends on the library. Many states subsidize and/or negotiate subscriptions to journal databases, including the EBSCO Academic Premier suite and others like it, for public libraries. And remote access is part of the deal, so if you were a patron at my Ohio library and you had internet access, you could log on using the link from my library’s website, do your search, find the article (although admittedly Academic Search offers a lot more in abstracts than it does in full-text, which can be frustrating) and read, print, email or save a copy. See http://www.oplin.org/databases/ for a sample list.
But Sarah is correct, in that we still have a long way to go in publicizing the service to the public. Every autumn we try to get a feature article in the local newspaper, encouraging parents to bring their kids to the library and listing some of the services we provide. We speak at local business and service groups, we host Boy Scout/Girl Scout troops and school classes, and still people are amazed when they discover how we can help them. I’d really welcome thoughts on how to present ourselves more effectively!
November 4th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by CMRLS Ref Center, Thompson Library and Amy Han, Tim Lentz. Tim Lentz said: http://bit.ly/2LDcbk Another take on Deepdyve. Does this service merely duplicate what is available in libraries? [...]
November 4th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Yes, this is attractive as an alternative to ILL. But what about the thousands of journals the library has already in its online databases, ready for immediate access to its library card holders? That was what I was referring to. Personally, I think ILL is ridiculous. For articles (which rarely happensi n public libraries), using a service like this instead of whatever outdated ILL article model we have is probably not only cheaper, but faster, & better for the customer as you pointed out.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:10 am
[...] [via Librarian in Black] [...]
November 5th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Did a quick search, DeepDyve found 17 articles, 4 were free, the rest we had in our databases. Hopefully we can continue to get the word out to our students that we have already paid for these.
November 18th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I agree that libraries need to do better outreach, as is always the argument, but it never seems to take hold, especially in the smaller libraries that need it most.
But I disagree that DeepDyve is doing the job of libraries. How many requests do you get for research articles at public libraries? I think we need to spend more time explaining to people the difference between good and less-than-good resources. THEN, they will want DeepDyve, and THEN we can step in.
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