Canny partnerships in STM
Jinfo Blog

16th June 2010

By Joanna Ptolomey

Item

The first half of June 2010 has already been a busy month for Elsevier, with what looks like two shrewd partnerships in the STM sector. Elsevier, already known as a world leading healthcare and scientific publisher, with great products such as Scopus, has reached an agreement with New York based InfoDesk, to co-develop a federated drug pipeline intelligence solution for pharmaceutical and life science companies. The product combines Elsevier business intelligence content with InfoDesk’s technological ‘know how’ in managing large feeds of data. It is thought the product will essentially help with managing risk and decision making – the ‘go, no-go’ decision. The product should ‘push’ content to users in a way that helps with this process. The product can be hosted not just externally, but also internally in the organisation’s firewalls. The vendors anticipate a first release the second half of 2010, with additional modules scheduled for release 2011 with expanded federated search and integration of proprietary internal data. The second ‘marriage’ of Elsevier this month is the acquisition of Collexis Holdings, Inc. Perhaps we should have seen this in the pipeline, having had hints about recent dalliances in the LiveWire with Elsevier’s product Scopus (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28577). In fact in that post in 13th April 2010 I wrote ‘this is powerful stuff. They are leveraging their expertise onto a global platform, and I think they have some great outcomes on that’. I did not realise how quickly this sentiment would ring true. Collexis Holdings, Inc have hardly been out the LiveWire and VIP news this last year also. In fact Collexis have been ‘on a roll’ this last few years with a range of fantastic products based on semantic technology such as Expert Profiler, Review Finder and Professional Social Networking mainly around workflow management and the power of people and relationships. The Collexis products are very good – easy to use, powerful and with returns on investment economically and socially. They are very adaptable products with many business uses, as well as the marketed science and research uses. In particular here at FreePint we have reviewed AIP UniPHY (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e24639 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e25323) and BioMedExperts.com (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29146 and http://web.freepint.com/go/shop/report/1650). What I really find exciting about the Collexis products are that on the surface they seem niche products, but I believe they have mass appeal. They take great content and give it a ‘different spin’ – the result is fresh, exciting and valuable knowledge. Obviously Elsevier have felt the same as me – very canny decision making going on here.

« Blog