Microsoft is building an interface for priced information services into Office 2003. Every application within Office 2003 will support XML and DRM, and include a new Research Task Pane offering access to participating information vendors. So far, Factiva, Gale, and eLibrary have signed up. Actual access will be limited to free services or those for which individual users have paid subscriptions. The feature is included in the Beta 2 edition of Office 2003 and is expected to stay in beta until November 30 of this year. (PS: Does anyone know of free services that plan to participate? How about free details on the API? Of course an app doesn't need DRM to offer a similar interface to open-access sources. Is anyone working on, say, a browser or editor plug-in for searching OAI-compliant archives?)
I just discovered a Barbara Quint story on the same feature in the March 17 Information Today. Quint gives more technical detail on the interface, quotes some vendor reassurances to libraries, discusses some risks to users (such as buying subscriptions to services already licensed by their institutions), and names more of the participating information vendors, including West's WestCiteLink, LexisNexis, ProQuest's XanEdu, and BridgeInSight.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/17/2003 05:05:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
