IDEAL refines the revenue models for their database of scientific, technological and medical journals

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

Speaking broadly of online libraries and the dramatic impact of the web, Chrysanne Lowe, director of online sales and marketing for Academic Press, says "We are finding this is not ready to be called a mature business yet."

The statement is made regarding a well established sector, by a company that has been in business for 60 years, and on behalf of a library that has great flexibility because Academic Press owns the entire collection. In 1996 Academic Press, a Harcourt Inc. company, launched their flagship product, IDEAL (the International Digital Electronic Access Library), an online library with a collection of journals, reference works and database products in the scientific, technological and medical fields. It accesses two collections: one includes 175 journals in over 30 disciplines from Academic Press and the other is comprised of 143 Harcourt Health Sciences journals from W.B. Saunders, Churchill Livingstone, Bailliere Tindall and Mosby. It is licensed in more than 33 countries by more than 2,200 academic institutions that represent 10 million registered users. With Reed Elsevier's acquisition of Harcourt, the databases are likely to be combined into a larger offering with ScienceDirect from Elsevier Science.

IDEAL offers three tiers of access. In the first and most traditional, libraries and consortia license the collection and receive unlimited access for their membership. Pricing for the Academic Press collection is derived from evaluating current holdings. Institutions often gain access to the entire collection at a price lower than their existing print and electronic holdings from the publishers.

A recent analysis of usage statistics for IDEAL, says Lowe, shows that 32% of usage comes from journals that the customer did not historically hold in print That figure varies across the globe with 48% of access from European institutions outside of traditional holdings, 36% among United Kingdom institutions, 29% among institutions in Japan, and 23% in the United States. Those figures are expected to climb as users become more accustomed to the service. From 1999 to 2000, growth of downloads averaged 54%.

While IDEAL has demonstrated considerable savings, or at least improved value, with the licensing program, the company knows it is not a one size fits all solution. Roughly a year ago, IDEAL launched the Individual Publication License (IPL) program and IDEAL OnDemand, a pay-per-view model.

The IPL program, explains Lowe, has allowed Academic Press to reach new markets. While the company had always had a small industrial market, the IPL program has brought in new subscribers from industrial and commercial settings. These customers had been using document delivery systems to access articles, and the IPL program lures them back as a direct customer. Pricing structures vary somewhat between the two collections. Harcourt Health Sciences offers volume discounts for the number of titles or increased users, and titles from the Academic Press collection have set prices for the number of users.

IDEAL OnDemand has brought in a similar new customer base. Pricing of $35 per article is based on concurrent usage desired by the customer--pharmaceutical companies, for example, want global access). The license allows articles to be printed and stored electronically, but not sold or redistributed.

In January, Academic Press introduced a service that emails users alerts of new journal articles that match their profile. The free service adds value to subscribers (who can link to the article) and makes non-subscribers aware of the collection.

ScienceDirect in Brief

ScienceDirect offers access to the Elsevier Science journal collection of more than 1,200 titles along with journals from other publishers. The subscription offers full text for a year's collection of journals. The company is at work providing full-text backfiles for the collection which are licensed separately. All ScienceDirect subscribers will have free access to search the backfiles and read abstracts, but access to a full-text database requires an additional one-time purchase. Full text access will be made available in clusters covering a particular subject or field. Organic Chemistry, made available at the end of April 2001, was the first. So long as the customer remains a ScienceDirect subscriber, they have access to purchased backfiles.