>
> From:
> Ian Colford <Ian.Colford_at_DAL.CA>
>
>
> Just a heads up to collections librarians who might be on the
> receiving end of faculty and staff subscription requests. I have been
> receiving the occasional email from Dalhousie University staff email
> addresses regarding an online product called "JoVE: The Journal of
> Visualized Experiments," a product that archives and classifies
> videos of lab-based biology related procedures that other researchers
> can replicate in their own labs. The uniform tone and syntax of
> these emails tipped me off that they might not be on the up and up.
> Here is a sampling of the messages I received over a period of about
> 8 months:
>
> - Please subscribe to all of JoVE, including the Neuroscience, and
> Immunology & Infection sections - www.jove.com. It is a new journal
> publishing biological experiments on video.
>
> - I would like to recommend a subscription to JoVE. It's a journal
> that I find useful because they publish step-by-step video
> demonstrations of experimental research methods. It is a useful
> resource to learn new techniques. www.jove.com
>
> - I consider JoVE useful for my studies and research and recommend
> that our institution subscribes to it. JoVE, also known as Journal of
> Visualized Experiments, is an online PubMed-indexed video-journal for
> biological research at www.jove.com.
>
> - I have found www.jove.com to be really a valuable educational
> tool, and would like to recommend it for library subscription. The
> wide range of experiments shown in the videos would be useful to all
> types of scientists and students. These step-by-step demonstrations
> can save a lot of time and money when replicating and/or teaching new
> experiments.
>
> The subject lines were of this sort: "Request: I need JOVE" "jove
> request" "Please Subscribe to JoVE"
>
> When the latest message was followed almost immediately by a message
> from someone on the sales team at JoVE telling me that Dalhousie
> faculty and staff urgently need this product, I decided to make a few
> inquiries. I contacted several of the people under whose email
> addresses these subscription requests had arrived in my inbox. I
> learned that they had accessed JoVE on the recommendation of a
> colleague or friend at another institution. Once in the website, they
> pulled up the recommended video. Within the first minute or so, a
> popup appeared telling them that they must register in order to
> continue with their "free trial". They entered their email contact
> info and agreed with a message saying that they were about to
> generate a library subscription request, then clicked continue or OK
> to watch the rest of the video. Because I had been contacted
> previously by the JoVE people with a sales pitch (and at the time had
> organized a time-limited trial) my email address was on record in
> their system, so I got a message that appeared to come directly from
> a Dalhousie staff member. But at no time did these people compose an
> email to me recommending this product (in fact the people I spoke to
> told me they probably wouldn't use it again). The messages I received
> were generated by the JoVE system, hence the robotic tone.
>
> I don't know if JoVE are unique in their use of a sales strategy that
> I find dodgy if not downright unethical. And maybe I'm the only one
> who finds it annoying. But it seems to me that by creating a system
> that attempts to mislead me into thinking urgent demand exists for a
> product that people are accessing on a basis that could only be
> described as casual or perfunctory, the folks at JoVE are risking,
> among other things, the good will of the library community. I make no
> comment about the quality of their product--as far as I know it's
> unique in the marketplace, and those who do subscribe probably find
> it a valuable addition to their digital collections. But this whole
> business has left a bad taste in my mouth.
>
> Ian Colford
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Ian Colford
> Assistant University Librarian for Collections Development
> Killam Library, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H
> 4H8
> Tel: 902-494-3687 Fax: 902-494-2062
> email: icolford_at_dal.ca
Received on Fri Oct 29 2010 - 03:07:03 EDT