Subscription Options
Soulful vocalist Smokey Robinson said it in 1961, and it’s still true today: “You better shop around!” Although the most compre- hensive indexing and full-text Web-based services will never be
inexpensive, you should look closely at those that are free. Often individuals need to know about only a handful of Web sites to optimize their general research and recreational reading. Many individuals may choose to subscribe to a service that offers an easy search and document delivery mechanism. eLibrary heads this list. eLibrary, which offers the full text of more than 600 peri- odicals (not counting other matter such as television and radio show transcripts), costs $19.95 per month or $99.95 per year.
Questia (http://www.questia.com), a company that markets to college students and their parents, offers a virtual library includ- ing approximately 150 journals; access costs are $19.95 per month or $44.95 for three months with the annual subscription priced at $119.95 in 2003. XanEdu (http://www.xanedu.com), another product aimed at college students, offers thousands of full-text periodicals priced at $19.90 for three months, $29.90 for six months, and $49.90 for a year. Another option is Infotrieve’s ArticleFinder priced at $99 per year.
Pay-Per-View
Another popular option is using pay-per-view services. Ingenta at http://www.ingenta.com (approximately 28,000 publications), Elsevier’s ScienceDirect (scholarly journal articles), and HighWire Press at http://highwire.stanford.edu are among the resources offering this arrangement. Note, however, that occasionally these services may offer some journals, especially back issues, for free.
For example, out of a total of 342 HighWire hosted journals, 254 are pay-per-view. When choosing the pay-per-view option, the infor- mation consumer needs to become a savvy shopper. Prices of indi- vidual articles can be tolerable or terrible, depending on the service. Example: Let’s say you’re a college student enrolled in a distance education English composition course and studying author Tom Wolfe. You need to locate three background sources for a short research paper. You have several options even if you haven’t
subscribed to the monthly or annual services. The professor has recommended using Ingenta because you can search it without charge and view full-text on a pay-per-view basis. The type of retrieval you can expect is shown in Table 1.1.
The total cost to view all these articles is $62.07. But if the objec- tive is to locate three full-text articles about Tom Wolfe, you should know that you could find the three articles previously listed for free using a Web site called FindArticles. Unfortunately, no single resource will have the answer to all of your information questions, but it pays to know which tool to consult for free information.
FindArticles is the best resource for entirely free periodical arti- cles. Its publication list hovers around 500. Because it has been available for several years, it appears to have a degree of durability.
Librarians have observed, however, that some journal titles are dropped without notice. So if you become dependent on FindArticles for reading a specific magazine, you may not always find that title the next time you search the resource.
Article information Services where located Full text delivery cost
"The End of the Ectomorph"
by John Derbyshire.
National Review, November 20, 2000
Ingenta $22.25
"Hooking Up" by Midge Decter. Commentary, January 1, 2001
Ingenta $21.50
"Material Boy" by Rand Richards Cooper.
Commonweal, May 7, 1999
Ingenta $18.32
"
Table 1.1 Typical article retrieval from full-text journal services, including cost
A Note on Article Formatting
When you use a free resource such as FindArticles, you should not expect too many frills. The strength of a free resource lies in its provision of the verbal content of articles. A value-added, pay-per- view or subscription service may often produce the same full-text content and add the images from the original article.
On the other hand, many of the articles offered by the pay-per- view and subscription services, particularly older archives, omit images. For example, LexisNexis Academic Universe, a powerful full-text database service focused on newspaper and journal articles and commanding a high subscription price, does not include the photographs that run with the original material. Whether you choose a pricey database with full images, a pricey database without images, or a free resource without images, depends on your own requirements. Is it important to see another still photograph of Alan Greenspan as he testifies before the United States Congress or will reading his comments suffice? Is it sufficient to read about the lat- est oil spill off the coast of Spain or do you need to view the damage?
Depth of Coverage
Regarding FindArticles, one issue that I needed to explore was the depth of coverage of each periodical. Associates at the Gale Group, the company that supplies the full-text content for FindArticles, state that the coverage for the majority of the publi- cations extends back to 1998 and is continuous. They are quick to add that as new publications come on board, however, coverage begins at that point (there is no retrospective coverage of new peri- odicals). But could a free resource really include all the articles from the publications it covers?
I performed a few test searches and learned that every article from the March 2002 issue of one of my favorite magazines (Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals) was available free. I checked this by looking at the print copy and comparing it with my search results from FindArticles. If you wanted a print
copy of Searcherto read and file away, the cover price was $8.95. If you had deep pockets, you could get the full text of the articles by paying over $20 for each article at Ingenta (including the service charge and copyright charge). Regarding that specific issue of Searcher, FindArticles passed my test.
The very popularPsychology Todayis among the hundreds of other periodicals FindArticles covers. Again I wanted to verify that every article from this publication was available. For Psychology Today’s January/February 2001 issue, I noted that 39 articles (from very brief to moderately long) were published in the print magazine. I found all the articles free online via FindArticles with the exception of one.
Still skeptical, I explored one additional title: a scholarly, peer- reviewed journal published by Cornell University called Administrative Science Quarterly. In my test of its volume 45, issue 4 (2000) contents, all the printed articles were available free at FindArticles.
FindArticles has one major problem. The user must read the
“Search Tips” to effectively locate information. Failing to execute a query as the Web site specifies will retrieve hundreds of irrelevant documents. Unlike Google or other resources we may be accus- tomed to, this database requires some training for successful usage. Nonetheless, as the list at Table 1.2 shows, if you use just six percent of FindArticle’s periodicals, you save over $2,000 per year.
Other publications available in FindArticles include American Forests, American Journal of Sports Medicine, ArtForum, Harper’s Magazine, Hearing Journal, Macworld, Pediatrics, Saturday Evening Post, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, The Sporting News, and Wines & Vines. (The full title list is available at http://www.find articles.com/cf_0/PI/name.jhtml.)
Was the Tom Wolfe search too offbeat? A more topical search that may demonstrate the benefit of using FindArticles over a pay- per-view service, shown in Table 1.3, concerns the collapse of Enron and the impact its demise had on investors. The three arti- cles referenced in the table appear free at FindArticles.