 How did
e-psyche get started?
Two names need to be mentioned:
me, John Kuranz and my partner Dennis Auld. We 've been in this
business all our business lives. Dennis started ABI/INFORM and
I started Management Content and the Computer Database, which
we have since sold. Two years ago Denny and I looked at what
the market wanted in terms of new databases. We piloted 10
subject areas always looking at what the competition was, what
the customers wanted, what the opportunities were and the
overall market size. Psychology came up because Dennis worked
at PsycINFO for 8 years. We looked at what PsycINFO was doing
in the market in terms of its customers needs and it became
apparent it wasn't doing much.
The database lacked features?
Among the things we
looked at was coverage. Keep in mind that although it is
driven by its membership, PsycINFO is not serving the other
fields of behavioural sciences very well. e-psyche includes
over 4,000 journals and PsycINFO about 1,500. We also looked
at the capability of the file. We believe strongly that there
are a lot of features that we bring to the table that were
asked for by customers, citation indexing being the top
request, but not included in the PsycINFO database. The iGroup
implementation of e-psyche, which is one of three, is the most
fertile in terms of citation indexing.
Then there were a
variety of other requests. Of course, getting the data out
there as fast as possible is crucial. We have relationships
with over 1,100 publishers who in some cases give us
electronic feeds so we can be nimble and agile in terms of
update frequency. Users also wanted communication with
authors. So we have an email feature which has been nicely
implemented by the iGroup. Another feature of linking back to
the publisher is highly accepted by researchers who want to
link to full text, purchase an article or enter a
subscription. Again, the iGroup has loaded all our publisher's
names and addresses, phone and fax numbers and email
addresses.
Pricing is a strong determinant to
subscribe. How does e-psyche compare to PsycINFO?
PsycINFO is a very
extensive product, its back file goes back 100
years. However, it is beyond the reach of some parts of the market. Small schools
cannot afford it and now with a recent price increase, big schools
are hesitating. We have a very simple FTE (full time
equivalent) pricing policy with no minimums, no levels and
no bands. FTE is the number of potential users who can
access the database. What that means is if you have a
portion of your student body who cannot get to the database, we don't
count them. If you put it in the main library
and all students go through the main library, you have
to pay for all the students. But even
then it's very, very affordable. We 've seen our pricing go
out at half to a third the price of PsycINFO.
One of our objectives is to encourage a
much wider use and appreciation of psychology and behavioural science
information and we do that by having a great
product at a reasonable price.
What 's the
overlap between e-psyche and PsycINFO?
We took Biosis,
Sociological Abstracts and of course PsycINFO and did some
overlap analysis. We cover 4,260 journals. Of these titles, 42
percent are unique to e-psyche so we have a significant
uniqueness in our file. Put another way, a direct comparison
with PsycINFO reveals we have a 62 percent uniqueness or 2,600
journals that PsycINFO does not have, plus we cover 100
percent of the PsycINFO journals. The reason for our extensive
coverage is that we are not mandated by membership on what we
should or should not include. We cover the world of psychology
from South America to Australia, from Bangladesh to
Korea.
How
important are publishers to the creation of the database?
We have two primary
partnerships in our business. One is with our distributors as
we will not deliver the database direct to customers. The
other partnership that we have built the company around is
with publishers. We have a contract with every publisher in
the database because we allow them to use it free of charge in
return for all their data, links and URLs. We send the
customer to the full text URL as supplied by the publisher as
we intend to remain a secondary database publisher who does
consistent aggregating, indexing and abstracting.
Anything
else besides journals in the database? What 's your editorial
policy?
We 've decided not to
put books in at this time. Instead we 're doing a linking deal
with either Barnes & Noble or Amazon. As far as journals
go, journal articles are the number one source of the
database. We also do newsletters, conference proceedings,
websites, dissertations and in the second quarter of this year
pre-publications. We 're finding websites throughout the world
with psychology papers that haven't yet gone into a primary
journal. So we are going to capture them, even though they may
not have been refereed.
Is the
linking technology exclusively DOI?
Right now we have
four ways to get to full text: DOI; links to document
suppliers like Information Express; URLs provided by the
publisher to their own full text offering on their own their
server; or to services where their journal is published like
the HighWire Press. We believe in presenting as many links as
possible.
You have
three implementations - iGroup, Ebsco and CSA - are more in
the pipeline?
Our plan was to do
three for the first year, which we 've done, and we certainly
have a number of other companies that are interested. We don't
believe in making e-psyche available on 10 or 15 platforms
because we get a more focussed effort from a small number of
companies like iGroup in the Pacific Rim. But as time goes on
we will pick new distributors in terms of their strengths.
You 're not
going on any of the major online services?
Dialog came to us
and the problem was that their pricing models are
unacceptable. We firmly believe in FTE pricing, unlimited use
at low cost. Dialog wanted to charge an hourly rate which we
won't do.
|
|
John Kuranz,
President e-psyche
What's so
good about the iGroup implementation?
What is really
satisfying is to see what's been done in the references area
of the database. First, when you do an initial search on
bibliographic only, from the result list you can see which of
the records have references. When you then go into the record
you can see if it
is linked to other
records in the file. And then when you go further into the
reference citations you can find out the year where it resides
which in a sense is like doing a backfile search. The iGroup
has also added cited author, cited article title and cited
journal links that take the researcher from a record to other
records where the same author, article title or journal has
been cited. So the iGroup has implemented three levels of
links providing powerful reference citations of the same
quality and level as the Web of Science.
What
reception do you think e-psyche will receive in Asia and
Australasia?
I think we will get
much wider use of psychology information because of the cost
structure and broad coverage of the database. I'm very
familiar with the new, higher PsycINFO pricing which is having
to be phased in because of the steep increase. We on the other
hand are very affordable which provides an opportunity for us
to capture the market.
Are you
indexing non-English language journals? Korean or Japanese for
example?
If it's translated
we take it. We include European languages if the citation and
abstract is supplied in English or if we can buy it.
Do you do
your own abstracting?
When we have to, we
do it. We prefer to take the author abstract which is far more
valuable than an abstract written by an indexer. From the
beginning we've had the keystroking done in India with the
indexing done by our own staff in the U.S. That is changing as
we now have ten editorial staff in Hyderabad, all with degrees
in psychology and some with doctorates.
Will you be
offering archival CDs to libraries whose authorities require a
tangible product?
All our distributors
have the right to cut archival CDs for their customers. When
you subscribe to our database you get perpetual rights meaning
that if you buy a year's worth of our data you get to keep it
or access it even if you unsubscribe. So if a distributor can
give a CD of that data it's fine with me. It's the same
principle as subscribing to a journal: if you cancel, the
publisher doesn't demand return of all the paper copies.
What would
you say to a Serials Librarian to persuade them to buy
e-psyche rather than PsycINFO?
First, our breadth
of coverage. We have more than twice the number of journals
than PsycINFO. Second, although our backfile goes back to 1998
and in some cases to 1993, in fact when you do a search the
references on each record can go back to the early 1970s, as I
mentioned earlier. So what you're getting through e-psyche's
reference citations is a mini backfile search on every search
you do. I also believe that email connections to authors is a
valuable tool as is the connection to publishers. Last, is our
pricing: if it's not half to one third less than PsycINFO,
something is wrong. This will be a real decision maker for
many institutions.
So we're
going to see a psychology database war?
APA has already
started changing PsycINFO. They've gone from monthly to weekly
updates and I understand they're going to do author emails.
I've also heard they're getting more responsive to their
customers. The beneficiary of all this will be the subscriber.
Competition is good!
The iGroup is
offering free introductory searches on e-psyche. Click here to
register.
|
