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Internet Health 2003;2:3

Walking in a local mall this weekend, I passed a Doubleday bookshop. I mean it; I passed right on by. This is a singular event, since my family is well aware that I am constitutionally incapable of not entering a bookstore (new or used). Simply put, a single publisher's output is more likely to be frustrating to browse than it is to delight or surprise.

Scirus, with a preponderance of Elsevier content and a dearth of society publications, is similarly nearly worthless in the overall scheme of things. PubScience was hamstrung by the refusal of the American Chemical Society, among learned associations, to participate. Scirus benefits from corporate synergy, gaining references from Elsevier's Beilstein database. Scirus also scores some society journal citations through Medline(!), which provides basic bibliographic data for a host of material which does not receive the full intellectual effort of indexing. Still and all, Scirus falls well short of the mark of a research caliber bibliographic database.

Medline, and other major subject indices, offer a breadth of coverage, a totality, which Scirus does not begin to possess, which Scirus will never attempt to create. Scirus is a marketing expense for Elsevier and its various brands. Medline citations to articles retrieved from Scirus do not point to PubMed <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed>, they point to the BioMedNet load of Medline. BioMedNet is a marketing arm of Elsevier. Medline access from Scirus requires voluntary registration with the Elsevier marketing bureaucracy. Until the bizarre notion of critical mass, adequate for research, residing in a single publisher's "database" of original content is laid to rest once and for all, publishers will continue to seek competitive advantage by showcasing their wares to the near exclusion of all else.

Self-serving press releases from SIIA aside <http://www.siia.net/sharedcontent/press/2002/11-15-02.html>, the demise of PubScience constitutes a true loss for independent researchers, public libraries, K-12, community colleges, 4-year colleges, and others who do not have the wherewithal to provide unlimited access to Compendex, INSPEC, and other major subject databases. PubScience was a free utility, unbiased by marketing motives, to help bridge that gap. SIIA correctly touts the open comments period as an integral part of DoE's decision making process.

Quoting from ALAWON 11(89) <http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon/alwn1189.html>: While there were only 7 comments in favor of ending PubSCIENCE, there were nearly 240 public comments, many from librarians and other PubSCIENCE users, pressing for continuance of the indexing service. Negative comments generally originated from members of the information industry and some publishers. The numbers do not bear out SIIA's assertion that the association is not responsible for the demise of PubScience. Perhaps one of the other 6 publishers or organizations which made negative comments, presumably the ones which had the influence which SIIA lacks, would like to step forward and explain their thinking on the matter? ALA's Washington Office has publicly posted their comments to DOE <http://www.ala.org/washoff/pubscience.pdf>.

Unlike the comments in the reportage <http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1111/web-science-11-13-02.asp> to which I took exception last month, _PubSCIENCE: A Unique and Needed Scientific Resource_ is a solid document which has not been properly addressed, thus far. I look forward to seeing greater discussion of this mater on the discussion lists, in the library & information trade journals, and at conferences in the near future.