Web 2.0

The Story Behind the Elsevier Purchase of Mendeley – Interview with Co-founder Victor Henning

I was so taken by Mendeley that I enrolled to be one of their first advisors and over the last few years have taught hundreds of our students, colleagues and external parties on the software. Despite never really using reference management software that much I knew that this was going to be big, and have enjoyed watching it’s development via the advisor forums, meet-ups online and even a trip to their London headquarters.

 

Mendeley didn’t just happen, it was created by three academics, Dr. Victor Henning, Jan Reichelt and Paul Föckler, all of whom had seen how academic knowledge was locked down in a Web 1.0 world and information sharing was often at the behest of large publishing companies. It came around the same time as other notable social reference tools such as CiteUlike, Connotea and Zotero. Mendeley like Zotero came in two flavours, with a downloadable interface, which allowed the user to access their papers and annotate them anywhere. This was one of the most popular functions and also the one which most irked the academic publishing community and the copyright officers. Nevertheless the company grew and grew thanks to a large community of advisors and financial investment. For advisors like me it felt only like a matter of time before a big fish would come and buy the company. The rumblings on the Web started a few months ago and were finally confirmed a week ago as Elsevier announced the purchase.

 

Since there has been an awful lot of chatter on the Web, with many articles written all trying to predict what this means for both companies and academic publishing as a whole. The news led the New Yorker to publish the article ‘When the Rebel Alliance Sells Out’, a piece documenting the major differences between the two companies in terms of their business models and ethos. The truth is that no one really knows what impact this will have on the open access and altmetrics movements just yet. In addition how it may impact digital copyright, as many saw Mendeley as not only the iTunes of Reference Management, but also the Napster. Certainly the iTunes model is a possibility as some have branded the idea of the application being used as a front end for researchers to purchase papers directly from Mendeley. Certainly, whatever happens Elsevier is in the business of making money so will have already got ideas on how they can utilise their new purchase to make a return, although some fear that Elsevier have just bought Mendeley to reign in the biggest threat to their empire with over 2 million users and over 100 million papers.

 

I had met co-founder Victor Henning at one of the Mendeley Advisor days and via various contacts on Twitter and have found him to be always willing to talk about the software and support advisor initiatives like my Minute Mendeley website. So with that in mind, I decided to contact Victor to ask if I could run a short interview to get the Mendeley side of the story, something I think all Mendeley users should hear before they make a rash decision to close their accounts as some advisors have done in protest. Now don’t get me wrong, I was concerned by this purchase as much as the next advisor, as like so many others had put great trust in supporting this tool and following the recent news that Google was shutting down their brilliant Google Reader tool was wary of other such mothballing of great applications. I was also concerned by a potential step backwards in the fight to make knowledge more accessible, on the Cloud and via publishers.

 

As I said earlier I think it is too early to decide on what the future holds, as with last week’s BBC Radio 4’s Material World show which featured interviews with Henning and ImpactStory’s Jason Priem the debate is finally starting to open up to a wider audience. The Mendeley purchase has brought the issue of academic publishing to a very big table. How Elsevier treat this or how other groups who share the Mendeley ethos will react nobody can say, but this feels like the end of one chapter and the start of another. Whether this chapter will be behind a paywall time will only tell.

 

Here is the transcript of the interview with Victor Henning – CEO and Co-Founder of Mendeley.com – I’d like to thank Victor for taking the time to respond to my questions.

 

 

The article is published under a Creative Commons By Attribution Licence – please feel free to share and repost.

 

The Elsevier purchase has been on the horizon for a some time, what were the reasons for going with them?

You’re right – they had actually been supportive of us for a long time. First, by recommending users of their 2collab tool to migrate to Mendeley, then by sponsoring our Science Online London conferences which we organized together with Nature Publishing and the British Library, and then by being the first publisher to build an “altmetrics” app on our Open API.

 

Late last summer, we were introduced to Olivier Dumon, who had just left eBay to join Elsevier and lead their database and web businesses, like ScienceDirect and Scopus. Because he came from a tech background, we immediately hit it off – he understood our vision for Mendeley, of trying to build a platform that served researchers’ workflow needs. In fact, he had a similar vision for Elsevier’s web businesses!

 

So we started comparing our respective roadmaps and found that they were perfectly complementary. The one thing that’s always bugged me about Mendeley’s user experience is how hard it is for our users to get access to full-text content – even the content that their library has already paid for! Users discover metadata in Mendeley, but are then sent away via DOIs or OpenURLs. Elsevier knows a lot about authentication solutions and access entitlements, and we can use that to make content access easier.

 

Conversely, Elsevier felt they needed to understand their users better. They knew when one of their PDFs was downloaded from Scopus or ScienceDirect, but then lost track of it. Mendeley helps them get a better sense of research trends in the academic community on an anonymized, aggregate level – which lets them improve the content they publish. Also, our recommendation technology allows them to improve content discovery for Scopus and ScienceDirect users.

 

Olivier and us also began to imagine how we could improve Mendeley’s crowdsourced, and thus sometimes messy, data with the clean, structured data from Scopus. Scopus also has data which we don’t have: Citations, and 17 million user profiles generated from those citations. We can use that to build amazing new services, for example to alert you when one of your publications, or any of the documents in your Mendeley library, receives a new citation.

 

We would never have been able to realize these ideas as a simple partnership or side project – as a start-up, Mendeley had to focus on becoming profitable. However, as part of Elsevier, we need to worry less about monetizing every new feature, and can think about these long-term goals instead. That’s why both Elsevier and Mendeley felt that it made sense to go “all in”.

 

What do think the reaction has been from the Mendeley Community, in particular the strong network of Mendeley Advisors to the Elsevier purchase?

Understandably, there has been a lot of concern about what it means for Mendeley – will it still remain free? Will we continue to support collaboration and sharing? Will we maintain our Open API, and will be keep our data open under a Creative Commons CC-BY license? The answer to all of these questions is yes.

 

Fortunately, while our Mendeley Advisors voiced the same concerns and had a lot of questions, they generally continue to support us based on our track record of listening to our users closely. We promised to them that this wouldn’t change, and I think they will hold us accountable.

 

On Twitter and elsewhere, there have also been angry voices about why we would sell to Elsevier, or to a publisher in general. It wasn’t an easy decision, but as I explained earlier, one that we felt made sense for us and will ultimately benefit our users.

 

What are Elsevier’s plans, will the software or the pricing change much in the near future?

 As I outlined earlier, we are now in the fortunate position that we are under less pressure to monetize. We’ve already doubled our users’ cloud storage space for free and upgraded our Mendeley Advisors to free Team Accounts. We’re currently reviewing how we can make sharing and collaboration easier and more affordable.

 

Apart from that, the plan is to focus on integration between Mendeley, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. Ultimately, we’re aiming for single-sign-on, meaning you can use the same account on all three websites, which will make it easier to search for content directly within Mendeley, or save articles to Mendeley more easily.

 

Do the Mendeley Advisors still have a part to play in all of this?

Yes, absolutely. They’ve been great at teaching Mendeley to students and faculty on their campus, and we continue to rely on them to provide us with feedback from their campuses around the globe. Next week, we’ve actually scheduled three days of user testing session for new features at the Mendeley HQ.

 

 

 

Considering what Elsevier does and how it operates, do you think this purchase will help the Altmetrics and Open Access movements in the long term?

 I believe so. Elsevier already supports and provides data to ImpactStory, the popular altmetrics tool. Mendeley will keep offering altmetrics data via our API, and thanks to access to Scopus data, our data will be cleaner, richer, and more complete.

 

As for Open Access – while Elsevier is certainly not know as a big OA publisher yet, this is changing. They have doubled their number of OA journals last year and introduced additional hybrid options, and acquisitions like Mendeley will enable them to build new business models around OA.

 

Do you think the purchase will have opened the doors for similar applications in Altmetrics such as Figshare and Impact Story to reach a wider audience or will it make academics interested in this area a little more wary – considering how many feel about the publishing giants.

Yes, I think so. Altmetric.com and Figshare are already owned by a major publisher – Macmillan/Nature – and when Elsevier starts to integrate Mendeley’s altmetrics data, it will be brought to a much wider audience. Elsevier has 10 million monthly users!

Do you think the purchase will help loosen very tight copyright laws that prevent the sharing of information, or at least the accessibility of academic content within the Cloud for individuals and their own access and groups?

In my mind, the laws are not necessarily the issue – they keep getting more permissive anyway, for example with the UK Hargreaves review. To me, it seems that we simply don’t have an easy solution to determining who should have access to which piece of content. The information about this – e.g. a user’s affiliation or multiple affiliations, the various holdings of the different libraries of a single university, authentication methods – is too decentralized. We hope that Mendeley can indeed make this easier and thereby increase the accessibility of content.

 

What will yours, Jan’s and Paul’s involvement be with Mendeley from now on?

We’re still in the same roles: Jan runs our day-to-day operations, Paul manages projects and interfaces between business requirements and technology, and I work on the strategy and product vision. Additionally, I will join the Elsevier strategy team as VP of Strategy.

Looking back 6 years ago, could you have ever imagined that Mendeley would be where it is today?

To be honest: Yes

 

We always hoped, and passionately believed, that this idea could turn into something big – and I think it’s fair to say that it has! Of course, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride, we’ve had many setbacks and catastrophes along the way. The friendship between Jan, Paul, and I played a big role in overcoming those challenges – we supported each other and kept believing in our idea.

 

Are you working on any other projects or are you planning to concentrate on your own research more again?

No – Mendeley is keeping me busy enough, and that won’t change for the foreseeable future!

 

Though my girlfriend Michelle just finished her diploma in nutrition, and I’ll help her get started with her own nutrition and health coaching projects. Can I plug her amazing food blog? It’s here: http://phelanhungry.tumblr.com/. Of interest for academics, she also just published an article in Wired Magazine called “How to eat yourself smarter”: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/03/how-to/how-to-eat-yourself-smarter

 

Food for thought…

Dr. Victor Henning is the Co-Founder & CEO, Mendeley Ltd. @mendeley_com

 

Tattersall, A. (2011) References, Collections, Corrections and Mendeley. MmIT Journal, 37 (4) 11-12.

Prizes to be awarded at “Cloudbusting — Demystifying the Cloud”

We’re delighted to announce that Facet Publishing is providing three prizes for delegates at the MmIT 2013 national conference.

The prizes include Cloud Computing for Libraries by Marshall Breeding (one of our keynote speakers from MmIT 2012)

The No-nonsense Guide to Legal Issues in Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing by Charles Oppenheim

and Getting Started with Cloud Computing, edited by Heather Lea Moulaison and Edward Corrado

Book your place now through our online form: https://docs.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFlyZUFyNHF5UDAxeEVwZlpGcGwwR2c6MA#gid=0

The full conference programme is available on our Events page: http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/multimedia/events/pages/mmit-conference-2013.aspx

#MMIT2012 presentation – A Free Web Toolkit for the Modern Library

Andy Tattersall  and Claire Beecroft’s MMIT 2012 conference presentation, A Free Web Toolkit for the Modern Library,  is now available.

Abstract:

A Free Web Toolkit for the Modern Library
There are legions of free Web based tools that can help you promote and organise your library and information service. You may have heard of many of them, but how do you choose from a bewildering number of tools? Which will survive in the long term? Which ones offer true value? And which will have true impact? In this session, delegates will be introduced to a variety of tried and tested web 2.0 tools which we believe offer something of real value to LIS professionals. We will debate their pros and cons before demonstrating some inspiring ways in which they’ve been put to use, drawing on examples from public, business and academic libraries. The workshop will show delegates how to make the tools work best for you with minimal effort and how to make them join up to make a cohesive tool kit for any modern LIS. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering ‘Where do I begin with web 2.0?’, the answer is ‘Here!’

A Free Web Toolkit for the Modern Library – a MMIT conference workshop promo video

Here’s a promo video for Andy Tattersall and Claire Beecroft’s ScHARR Workshop: “A free web toolkit for the modern library”. In the workshop, Andy and Claire will introduce delegates to a variety of tried and tested web 2.0 tools which offer real value to LIS professionals.

This workshop is part of the MmIT National Conference 2012: Reduced budgets? Increased impact!
Tools and technologies for an effective library and information service being held on Tuesday 17th April 2012 at the University of Sheffield.

Open Source news: FOSS4LIB launch and more

In January, LYRASIS Technology Services  launched FOSS4LIB.org, a website to provide guidance to the library community about free/open source software (FOSS). The site already hosts an impressive registry of open source software as well as ‘decision-making tools‘ to help when considering making the move away from proprietary software.There’s more content being added all the time and you can also sign up for an account if you’d like to contribute.

In other OSS news, the Vufind discovery software has just released version 1.3. This latest version includes enhancements such as new search plugins (Europeana search, Google Maps, visual timelines), a ‘book bag’ feature and enhanced RSS feeds.

Kyushu University Library has also announced the release of Cute.Catalog, an Advanced Discovery Service build using eXtensible Catalog. You can see it in action at: http://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en

The story so far: Google+

June 28th 2011 was a big day in search engine & social media land, seeing the  launch of Google+ (pronounced ‘Googleplus’ or ‘Googleplussed’?). Well, ‘launch’ is perhaps the wrong word, with only a small amount of early testers having access to it; the general launch date apparently “won’t  be long” (https://plus.google.com/). Essentially, Google+ may be seen the introduction of social networking elements with the ubiquitous Google search interface…why use a search engine and a social networking site when you can do both at the same time? Google+ allows users to log into the Google environment and personalise it as usual, with the addition of a live and customisable newsfeed stream called ‘Sparks’ and a way of putting contacts into groups for social networking known as ‘Circles’. ‘Hangouts’ allow a small group of contacts (10) to link up for a webcast session, and a ‘Mobile’ element most notably allows group instant messaging chats. For a fuller description of features, check out the official Google blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html.

Overall, the jury is currently split. Clearly Google is trying to take on Facebook with this venture, with the aim of drawing all users into one information finding & sharing tool. This is not lost on a great many commentators (cf. xkcd’s rather amusing strip), and it’s true that most people are focusing on the looming assault on Facebook. With high-profile failures in the form of Google Buzz and Google Wave, Google really need to do well with this product, though the project is not an off-the-cuff venture and has been in development for some time (cf. this very positive review from Wired). But it seems to be trying to do more…certainly one can see the appeal of having a tool which makes it easy to search and share, and addition of web-conferencing and mobile tools is a powerful incentive to try it. There are downsides with the current version (read Phil Bradley’s blog posting, which highlights the confusion about the ‘+1′ function for web-links which doesn’t seem to act like a ‘like’ button on Facebook), but it’s too early to really tell what will happen. Perhaps the big question many will keep asking is ‘Would it replace Facebook?’, though (speaking personally) this author of this posting would be tempted to try it in a workplace setting before deciding whether or not to shift lock/stock to Google+. Certainly this has the potential to be far more than ‘just  another social networking tool’.

Will you be planning to use Google+? Join the debate below!

Getting started with Yahoo Pipes

Using Yahoo Pipes has fast become a cornerstone of mashups in the library world. This popularity is largely down to just how accessible it makes the process of mashing data. It provides a nice, visual interface for remixing and reusing information from multiple sources.

At its simplest, Yahoo Pipes lets you combine multiple RSS feeds into a single, comprehensive news or information source. The introductory video seems to have disappeared from the website, but there are some great guides and pretty extensive documentation available in other places. We’ve also put together a walk-through for creating a basic pipe from multiple feeds. This is available as a word document which you’re welcome to modify and/or reuse.

Another way to get to know Yahoo Pipes is by viewing the source and cloning existing pipes to see how they were constructed. And in that spirit, I’ve listed a few that demonstrate some of the main uses of Yahoo Pipes. Click on ‘Edit Source’ to see what’s happening behind the scenes or clone the pipe to use it as a starting point for your own creation.

Starter pipe: A very simple pipe to combine RSS feeds and sort items by publication date.

Library Technology: A Different Version- Combines multiple feeds and returns results for these that match particular keywords.

UK Academic Library Blogs - Combines multiple feeds, sorts into ascending order and limits the feed to 5 items at a time.

This is hopefully enough to get started and, like most things, the best way to learn about something like this is by trying it out yourself.

In a future post, we’ll take a look at some of the more advanced features such as geocoding.

Nice ideas for the future of library catalogue design

Today, Gizmodo have been highlighting the awesome web design of Bret Victor on his website, Worrydream.com. Particularly worth checking out for those in the library world is the Interactive Library prototype. Hopefully this is the type of thing we’ll start to see reflected in library website design in the near future.

The end of RSS on social networks?

The Stay N Alive blog has an interesting post about how both Twitter and Facebook seem to have unceremoniously ditched RSS .

While Twitter have provided some basic information about how you can still use RSS (using the developer resources — so not particularly user-friendly), it’s still a crying shame that the RSS icon is no longer such a visible presence on the homepage. There are also various workarounds to be found for accessing Facebook feeds but no telling how long these will last.

New Delicious owners announced: What does AVOS stand for anyway?

Good news. The Delicious bookmarking service has found a new home with an Internet company called AVOS. AVOS is a new venture by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and all signs so far indicate that they plan to continue (and further develop) the service. Not sure what the name means though (and The Guardian have it written as Avos).

Yahoo has contacted Delicious users to announce the sale and seek permission to move their bookmarks over. The current service will remain available as is until July. There’s more information for current Delicious users available in a series of FAQs on the Delicious site:

http://www.delicious.com/help/transition