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