Slides from the ReadCube Access Fast Tech talk at Charleston 2012

1. Labtiva
readcube
A content delivery platform
and reference manager for scholarly articles

2. The History Of ReadCube
• Labtiva formed in a Harvard dorm room in
2007
• ReadCube was originally written as a
simple tool to organize a researcher’s PDF
library
• Investment from Digital Science in 2011
• First version of ReadCube released in
October 2011
• The ‘Web Reader’ launched as a platform
extension on nature.com in November
2011 Siniša Hrvatin and Rob McGrath (founders)
• ReadCube grows into a fully functional reference manager during 2012 and is now used
in 5,000 institutions
• ReadCube Access, an e-commerce system for individual and group purchases of single
articles launched in September 2012
• ReadCube is to be launched on multiple publisher platforms by the end of this year and
beyond
• More publishers have agreed to participate in ReadCube Access

3. An Introduction To ReadCube
An intuitive
interface for the
entire lifecylce
of an article
Automated
discovery tools
enable users to
find RELEVANT
content quickly

4. Addressing the growing
pains of the single-article
economy

5. From The Publisher Viewpoint
• Scholarly output
doubles every 20 years
• This is in-line with:
1. Research output
2. Number of papers
published
• The proportion of university
funds spent on the library is
falling
• Publishers provide value
• This is a about how
institutions choose to spend
their money

6. The Library Viewpoint
Serial Expenditures in ARL Libraries (n=107)
300%
Costs continue
250% to rise linearly
AP introduces
200% Big Deal
Change since 1986
150%
Serial (Unit cost)
Serial Expenditure
100%
Serials Purchased The Big Deal
50%
improved access
0%
1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004
-50%
• The rate of increase of costs is still 5-9% and would outstrip library budgets even
if they weren’t falling
• Irrespective of value, subscriptions are increasingly unsustainable

7. What Happens When A Researcher
Visits A ‘Paywall’
Earlier this year, we
polled our users and
asked them
• The Pie Chart shows all responses to
paywall events
• Respondents only report purchasing
content on 3.6% of occasions
• 25% of events result in an ILL request
• Users use file sharing 40% of the time
• 27% of the time, users gave up or found
Results consistent with Access to content in a different journal
Scholarly content: Gaps and
Barriers, JiSC/RiN Dec-2011

8. Where Are Researchers Getting
Articles?
Friends with
access
Interlibrary Twitter
loan #icanhazpdf
OA
repositories Bulletin Boards/
Forums*
Author
website/email Google Scholar
* One single unnamed website responsible for $1.4m in lost
revenue during 2008 Int J Med Informatics, 5, 1 (2009)

9. The Benefits Of A Sustainable
Article Economy
For Publishers For Libraries
• Significant incremental • Reduce costs associated
revenue with inter-library loan
• Wider dissemination of • Provide instant access to
content more content
• Help define and meet • Measure demand and
expectations of the inform collection
market management
• Reduction of file sharing • Maintain engagement
risk to sustainability with patrons
• A disorderly transition from one dissemination model to
another is in nobody’s interest
• It is important to discuss these issues and find mutually
sustainable models

10. Why Don’t Researchers Buy
Articles?
• Researchers perceive the price point to be too
high
• Generally, researches are unwilling to use their
own money
• Many funding agencies prohibit the use of
research funds to buy content
– NIH is one such example
• PPV requires a Credit Card. Institutions often
require purchase orders and invoices
As a result, researchers use slow, poor-
quality methods to obtain content

11. Removing The Barriers: Library
Supported Purchases
Purchasing articles through ReadCube Access
is more convenient than file sharing
• Easy to use
• Instant delivery
• ‘Free’ to the user
• Library creates pre-
paid fund
• Designed by
researchers to fit
into the researcher
workflow

13. Trial At The University Of Utah
• Objective
– Establish whether ReadCube Access represents a
sustainable purchasing mechanism
– Assess whether researchers prefer ReadCube access to
other ways of obtaining individual articles
• Method
– ReadCube Access was offered on a subset of serials from
nature.com (29 serials)
– Promotion was limited to approx. 1,090 faculty and post-
doctoral fellows (~25% of campus)
– Number of purchases was compared to the average
number of ILL requests
• Preliminary Results
– Number of ReadCube Access purchases ~50% higher
than expected when compared to ILL

14. Provisional Trial Conclusion
‘ReadCube Access represents good value
for money and a sustainable model’
-Rick Anderson, Interim Dean, Marriot Library, Utah

15. The Individual Article Option
• A simple 3-step purchasing system makes buying
single articles easy
• Articles can be purchased in two places
1. The Web Reader, linked from the article page
2. The ReadCube desktop reference manager

16. Summary
• ReadCube’s objective is to improve access to
scholarly literature for scientists, in collaboration
with libraries and publishers
• ReadCube was designed by researchers around
the researcher workflow
• Disorderly disruption of scholarly communication
should be avoided
• Demand-Driven Acquisition is one part of a multi-
access environment including subscriptions, big
deals and open access
• Initial trials of ReadCube Access show it to be
sustainable and good value for money