Re: NYTimes: Reed Elsevier's Online Ads

["Tony McSean" <tmcsean@hollar.co.uk>]

All large public companies live within the culture that expansion 
and diversification is essential to long-term survival and, for 
top management especially, to conciliating the goodwill of the 
shareholders.* Like all scholarly publishers, Elsevier faces a 
core market (research library acquisition budgets) that is both 
saturated and in long-term decline and so feels the need to do 
more of the same only better.

I agree with Joe that this is an attempt to generate additional 
revenue, but rather than cherry-picking this development is more 
likely to be a carefully selected trial to see what sort of 
returns might be available on this business model, and what if 
any crossover they might suffer in revenue and also negative 
feedback, particularly amongst real, reading- and-writing 
researchers.  This fits with other Elsevier approaches to 
innovation, eg the toe dipped in the OA maelstrom with its 
Sponsored Articles journals.

The other point that no-one has yet raised (unless I've missed 
it), is the potential value stemming from the development of a 
self-maintaining worldwide register of information-savvy 
researchers in particular subjects:  authors, possible candidates 
for targeted cross-selling, plus the opportunity for the company 
to develop a buy-more-Els-products lobby within research 
institutions - books, journals, Scopus, etc.

Maybe, he wrote with a smile, we will see an Open Adverts 
citation advantage to match that claimed by advocates of other 
business models.

Tony McSean

* And as an Elsevier shareholder I must declare an interest.