One of my regular blogs is Dean Giustini’s Google Scholar Blog. It was seeing Dean’s editorial in the BMJ (http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7531/1487) that got me thinking about where the TRIP Database might fit in. Behind a subscription login/firewall is no place. As one of my colleagues said ‘no-one pays for search’. Not technically true as we have reasonable subscription levels – but I get the point. Do we continue to stay in our niche getting searched 50,000 times per month? Ordo we change to being free-access? The subscription allowed us to grow significantly in the 2-3 years we’ve been charging. However, our latest upgrade (Dec 2005) has increased my frustration of it ‘hiding’ behind a firewall. Biased though I may be – it’s just too good to hide….

So thank you to Dean for getting me thinking.