Where Thomson scientific has already for quite some years the free website ISIhighlycited, Elsevier has launched today (?) a competitive product called TopCited. Albeit not the same, it is clear that the competition is inspiring both companies to come up with new products in each other niches. The databases are effectively a lure to get reserchers interested in the products behind it. TopCited gives an overview of subject-specific top 20 cited articles in the past 3, 4 or 5 years of publication. The underlying database for the citation data is Scopus of course.
I just discovered it, some quick impressions:
- A time frame of maximally 5 years is a bit brief. I would love to see a 10 year frame as well.
- I suspect they have some difficulty of determining the research field of article published in multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science. They seem to be lacking from rankings, albeit a glimpsed a few. Too few according to my impression.
Later on I will look at this new site more carefully, and will attempt to make a comparison with the competitive Thomson databases.
A while ago John Dupuis did a great post on Ebook business models. In the comments a few additional suggestions were made to improve on his really well thought list of bullet points. Today I ran into yet another addition for his list.
Elsevier send their fourth installment of the Books Connect newsletter. As a Life Science institution we are certainly interested in their new Encyclopedia of Ecology. When you follow the link to the website for this reference work you end up on a site that only refers to the paper edition of this encyclopedia. No mention of an electronic version. This explains the title in the post, does this publisher take ebooks seriously?
When we want to grow the acceptance of ebooks, the reference works are the ideal place to start. Quick reference, fact finding, ideal in the electronic format. Exactly what our users scattered all over Wageningen and far beyond want.
Okay, backtrack for a moment. Look again at the BooksConnect newsletter. There is this banner add on the newsletter that says “available 2008 on ScienceDirect“. have a look at that and you’ll be disappointed again. The encyclopedia is not to be found on the page for reference works nor on the page of forthcoming reference works. Simply it is not there. Which is a pity.
So another bullet on the list for John would be:
- e-books should be published on time. They should become at least available when the print edition is published. Preferably an electronic edition should be available before the paper edition comes out.
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