Wired article about Scirus

Wired News has an article about Scirus. It's nearly a promotional item for the science search engine owned by Elsevier, but the author does make a point about why this for-profit publisher would make a search engine this useful available to anyone without a fee.

"The Scirus search engine is free, but that's not to say its owner, Elsevier, a giant in science publishing, doesn't benefit from operating the science search tool. Elsevier publishes 20,000 journals, books, electronic products, services, databases and Web portals.

Scirus includes Elsevier publications, like BioMedNet and ScienceDirect, in its results. Those results are ranked like any other, but also feature an eye-catching logo. Some results supply only an abstract, and require a fee to read the entire paper."

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Giving it away...

Thomson owns West Publishing (which includes Westlaw, the legal and news subscription database). They also own Findlaw, which is a free service. Reed-Elsevier owns Lexis-Nexis, another legal and news subscription database. To compete with Findlaw on the free-service front, Lexis launched LexisOne.com a few years ago. LexisOne.com gives 5 years worth of free case law as well as US Supreme Court cases going back to 1789. Reed also owns Martindale Hubbell which is a national and international legal directory. The print version is very expensive; however, there is free version on the internet. The free version is scaled down and not the same thing but it is free and gives one the basic information.

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