Document Delivery Showdown:
Research Solutions v. Reprints Desk
When I’m in a crunch and need an article fast, I turn to document delivery services. I have had great success with Research Solutions, but there is a new kid on the document delivery block, Reprints Desk. Below is a head-to-head comparison of these two document delivery vendors.
History:Based in California, both Research Solutions and Reprints Desk are fairly new companies, founded in 2002 and 2006 respectively; however, the ability to retrieve and send electronic documents quickly and efficiently is also a relatively new phenomenon.
Access: A key resource in document delivery is accessibility to publications from a variety of institutions and services. Research Solutions claims access to over 100,000,000 publications. I cannot find a similar number for Reprints Desk, but they have a smaller focus, as they are primarily concerned with scientific and medical articles.
Pricing: Price may be the main concern when retrieving citations, and both companies are similar in the way they price retrieval. Research Solutions costs $15 per document; a rush request is $25 per document. In addition to these prices are any applicable copyright fees. Orders are filled using email, fax, USPS, FedEx, and UPS for no additional charge. If you have an account with Reprints Desk, the cost is slightly less per document, at $12, plus any applicable copyright fees; however, without an account, their general document delivery service is $15 per document. Reprints Desk does not have additional pricing for rush requests, as they consider all requests to be rush and deliver the retrieved document through an emailed link.
Requesting Multiple Citations: Both companies allow article requests through email, web-based form and phone. When requesting multiple citations on the Reprints Desk website, you are required to enter the article information, place an order and then repeat the process for additional articles. With Research Solutions, you can enter the information, then click Add Citation, for additional article request data fields. Both vendors have email addresses where you can send multiple citation requests. I use this method most often because you can copy and paste your citations into one email and send. The two vendors send confirmation emails within minutes of submitting the request, which gives me peace of mind.
Tips: Research Solutions account-holders can set a copyright fee cap. This means that if they have found an article you requested and the copyright fee is above the cap, they will contact you to see if you would like to proceed. This has been a great added feature for me, as I am often required to work within budgetary constraints for retrieval. I know of no such arrangement with Reprints Desk, but in my email request, I ask them to contact me if the copyright fee will be more than “X” dollars.
Overall: In the majority of cases, both companies have delivered the article to me within 24 hours. Additionally, both are very prompt in replying if they are unable to find or acquire the article. Reprints Desk was evaluated by Outsell in Document Delivery – Best Practices and Vendor Scorecard and scored very well against its competitors. Unfortunately, Research Solutions is not featured in the services evaluated. Even though Research Solutions has been around longer than Reprints Desk, both are comparable services that remain tuned in to the document delivery world. They both understand that when one needs an article, one really needs that article, and they go the distance to get it to you in a timely manner.
Category: Techno Review 3 comments »
February 12th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Nice comparison, Erin! We use Research Solutions (among other providers). I hadn’t heard of Reprints Desk but I’m off to check it out.
February 14th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Hi Erin – Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. Full disclosure before proceeding: I’m from Reprints Desk. Just wanted to let you know that we/Reprints Desk also offer a copyright fee cap.
Also, for anyone considering document delivery providers, there are a number of other variables to consider – some foundational (e.g. quality of service – which I think you’ll find extremely high at both Reprints Desk and Research Solutions – kudos to our document delivery brethren for this) and a number of others that are often more complex. Other variable are often dictated by workflow and configuration, which can vary in complexity depending on type of organization, size and reach, breadth and depth of internal support requirements, and suppliers and systems that an organization works with and would like to integrate with.
We’ve just published a free white paper about some of these other feature considerations as well as some of the desirable benefits (e.g. achieving better overall cost savings). It might be worth a read followed up by some more healthy analysis and discussion: http://goo.gl/D8Sg.
I’m sure some of the other document delivery suppliers have resources like this too and I’d definitely encourage anyone who is evaluating options to track these down in addition to seeking out perhaps the most useful source: crowdsourced user information via online forums like yours, listservs, etc.
Thanks again.
February 14th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
We helped design the ReprintsDesk service to suit our needs at Biogen Idec as the first docdel customer so this is not an unbiased comment
I do not have any experience with Research Solutions.
Three additional factors we focused on: 1) simplicity – it is completely automated through our linkresolver and usability of the order form is VERY high 2) 300dpi full-color PDF or better for EVERYTHING we get 3) no DRM issues (we had one DRM system that was read once/print once – I shut that down as soon as I heard of it)
I also find that we get most of our articles within minutes to hours with 93% (at last check) within 24 hours. The other thing I like about RD is their availability to embed into our workflows rather than forcing us to accommodate their workflows.
Thanks to Christian Gray (before he was hired into RD) for setting up the collaboration between RD and BI to get the docdel service set up as it has been the easiest and most successful outsourcing I’ve done. Now if I could only get the @#$%$ journal mgmt outsourced correctly.