From: John Sack <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2017 03:59:43 -0800

Alvin,

I'll try and answer your questions using text supplied to me by
Alexandra Bash, director of product management at HighWire.   You are
welcome to send followup questions to me directly ([log in to unmask])
or to the list, and I'll involve Alex in the reply.

I would recommend that you set up searches in either Google Scholar,
or (if the domain is biomedical) PubMed.  Scholar in particular has
long had a broader reach than HighWire's list of journals, so should
give you more comprehensive results.

HighWire works extensively with Scholar, and the team there is
substantial and very stable.  I can't speak to your question about
whether Scholar would ever discontinue its alerts service, however.
(If that's a real concern, I can ask Anurag Acharya or Darcy Dapra if
they have any comment.)

------from Alex Bash (written last week):

We have been updating our search technologies throughout the HighWire
publishing platform to the SOLR search engine.  One of the last
vestiges of the previous search implementation is the ability for a
researcher to search across all content from all HighWire publishers
from the HighWire Portal (see
http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/search?quick=true).

Much of the value of this search capability has been eclipsed by
Google Scholar, and we are not planning to rebuild this capability in
the new system. Usage of this service is low, and we do not believe
this will inconvenience your customers or researchers.  This would
only affect multi-publisher content search, and would not affect the
Librarian or Publisher features on the HighWire Portal.

John Sack
Founding Director
HighWire Press

HighWire's new corporate office location is:
973 University Avenue, Los Gatos, CA 95032
Phone: 1-888-849-9323
Fax: 650-725-9335


On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 2:34 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Hutchinson, Alvin" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 17:55:14 +0000
>
> Pardon the cross-posting:
>
> I have a number of saved searches with HighWire press and get results
> emailed to me regularly, based on a search I’ve done.
>
> But lately I have gotten this with the email alerts:
>
> IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR HIGHWIRE PORTAL ALERT SUBSCRIBERS
>
> This alert email is based on Highwire's portal search. We plan to
> disable both Highwire portal search & ALL associated Highwire portal
> alerts from Jan 31 2017. If there are particular types of email alerts
> (eg Table of Contents, Keyword, Author, etc) that you still wish to
> receive, then we recommend that you sign up to receive those alerts on
> your preferred journal\book sites. This will enable you to get the
> most personalised experience from your favourite journal\book sites.
>
> The first thing I should say is, I’m not complaining. This is/was a
> free service and HighWire has the right to discontinue it at any time
> for any reason.
>
> I have two questions—one specific and one general:
>
> Specifically:
>
> Does anyone know the reason for this? Was it too expensive to support
> in terms of technology or staff, etc.? I don’t want to set up keyword
> searches on all individual journal titles or even the publisher sites
> but is that the only alternative at this point?
>
> And Generally:
>
> Does anyone suspect that Google Scholar will also one day stop their
> alerts service? (Or stop altogether?)
>
> Again, it is offered at no charge so I can’t complain.
>
> But I wonder about how Google makes money from GS and if one day the
> powers-that-be will decide that although the cost is low, they can
> shave some costs by removing it from their portfolio of services.
>
> As I heard one of my esteemed colleagues say one time regarding
> another similar service: “the cost is low, but it’s not *zero*”
>
> -Alvin
>
> Alvin Hutchinson
> Smithsonian Libraries
> 202.633.1031