EBSCO Publishing grows its full text databases

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Sept, 2001

The origins of EBSCO Information Services are remarkably similar to Questia (see article above). In both cases, young entrepreneurs just leaving law school switched their career focus to the library business. Questia's Troy Williams yearned for a full text, online library when checking citations for the Harvard Law Review. EBSCO's founder sold magazine subscriptions door to door to pay for law school. EBSCO, however, was founded in the 1930's. The company started out aggregating magazine subscriptions for libraries and allowing those organizations to pay with a single billing. Today, libraries remain the customer for a collection of offerings from the company's two largest library divisions, EBSCO Subscription Services (Birmingham, AL) and EBSCO Publishing (Ipswich, MA).

EBSCO Publishing's EBSCOhost is an online service offering databases that consist of journal articles, magazines, reviews, newspapers, pamphlets and reference books. A search results in a list of articles with abstracts and full text documents, and the company is aggressively working to grow its collection of full text sources. Subscribing institutions receive unlimited access for all constituents, and prices are based on the number of databases selected and the size of the institution or consortium. The majority of this business now resides on the web, but the company continues to publish DVDs and CD-ROMs for markets with limited Internet access.

Publisher Participation

Numerous publishers are agreeing to deals which put their full text online for a share of revenue. Publishers receive a percentage of overall database revenues, and that percentage takes into account the price of their paper publication. Academic publishers do, of course, have fears of cannibalizing their core business with the online access, but Sam Brooks, senior vp of sales and marketing, points to a number of ways in which EBSCO has been able to address those concerns. (General magazine publishers, as differentiated from academic publishers, says Brooks, have such a limited share of business from the academic community that they see virtually no risk in the full-text model with EBSCO.)

Primary to EBSCO's success with academic publishers is the fact that subscriptions to paperbased journals also form EBSCO's core business. Brooks points out that the database product accounts for only a tenth of business within the billion-plus dollar subscription company. Conversations with publishers and sales efforts to libraries emphasize that publishers control the destiny of electronic editions of these articles, and there is no guarantee that they will remain in the database. Full text databases, cautions EBSCO, are not a substitute for a print subscription in a library's collection. Many publishers also protect their subscription base by placing an embargo period on articles before they appear on the database.

Another possible hesitation for participation is that publishers perceive an opportunity to sell electronic journals directly to the customer rather than go through an aggregator. Brooks points out, however, that many of the publishers who license their journals to EBSCO for inclusion in databases also sell individual, electronic journal subscriptions through EBSCO. This means that EBSCO is aggregating their content in multiple ways. Many publishers also recognize that most of the administrative challenges addressed by aggregators in the print environment persist with electronic journals as well.

Participating publishers, says Brooks, view participation in a database as additional volume, not a replacement of subscriptions. There is also the chance that users' access to the full text article combined with EBSCOhost's administrative tools that allow librarians to track usage will encourage new subscriptions.

Brooks hopes that their new pay-per-view model, launched in January of this year, will also drive subscriptions. Both divisions of EBSCO use the same model to link a citation to a pay-per-view article. Brooks says the publisher sets the price, and most publishers want to participate because they set the prices high enough to protect their existing business.

EBSCO is also expanding possibilities for full-text access with "EBSCO SmartLinks" (a trademarked name) that recognize an institution's holdings. If, for example, a search in EBSCOhost identifies an article that does not have a full-text presence on that system, SmartLink technology can automatically find a full text edition in the institution's electronic journal holdings via EBSCO Online or other EBSCO products.

EBSCO Online, an offering of EBSCO Subscription Services, allows library customers to identify, access, acquire and manage electronic serials. EBSCONBT allows customers to search, order and claim magazines from EBSCO's database of 260,000 serial title listings via the web and perform additional transactions related to those serials. EBSCO Book Services offers web-based book procurement with an e-commerce environment tailored to libraries.