Traditional scholarly publishers and Web 2.0: the case of Springer

Purpose – Many traditional commercial publishers realise that they need to rejuvenate at least the interface part of their software in order to keep up with the trends in online information retrieval, and information dissemination that cannot be sufficiently limited by the software equivalent of the “No solicitation” and “No trespass” signs. This paper aims to look at the case of Springer and its attempts to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on the new version of SpringerLink (launched in August 2010) and other partially free services offered by Springer, the second largest scholarly publisher. The data reported here were collected during the first week of 2011.Findings – The paper finds that many of the Springer services can significantly improve the efficiency of searching the SpringerLink databases. Most can be and should be directly incorporated in an upcoming release of the software. Others need more time for improvement, and to become practical and functional.Origina...