A/C
WebWorks
E-commerce: // Buono, II Brutto, II Cattivo
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he trailer for Sergio Leone's epic movie The Good, ,he Bad, and the Ugly boasted, "For these men the Civil War wasn't hell, it was practice" (1). Similarly, chemists who are "spaghetti" Western cinema buffs and heavy Web users might say, "The Internet isn't purgatory, it's practice." This column will examine e-commerce "reagents" concepts and Web sites which will change the practice of analytical chemistry Some suppliers will value to their products others will merely put UD Web sites and a few will do it all poorlv Thus some of the changes will be onnrl sotne bad and others ucrlv
E-commerce is touted as the "pump" that will drive business in the next millennium. The soaring fates ofAmazon.com, eBay, and others continue to fuel the prices of the initial public offerings of online companies' stocks. Some estimates place online advertising at over S8 billion by 2002, with online
Ray Dessy Virginia Tech
sales reaching $1 trillion. Chemistry has not been left out; e-commerce sites specifically for chemists have been "synthesized". What do online information warehouses such as ChemExper (http://www.chemexper.be/), ChemWeb (http://chemweb.com/), and ChemCenter (http://www.acs.org/) have in common with directories such as Chemcyclopedia (http://pubs.acs.org/chemcy/) and LabGuide (http://www.pubs.acs.org/ labguide/) and with retail sites such as ChemConnect (http://www.chemconnect.com/) SciQuest (httpV/www sciquest com/) LabDeals (http'/Avwwlabdeals com/) e-Chemicals (httnV/www e-chemicals com/) ChemQuote/ChemSell (httnV/www
IMAGES® COPYRIGHT 1999 PHOTODISC, INC. WWW.CHEMEXPER.BE/, CHEMWEBCOM/. SCIQUEST.COM/
camsoft.com/), Chemdex (http://www. chemdex.com/), PipeLine (http://www. sigma-aldrich.com), and others? They are probing the frontiers of "e-chemmerce" and of customers' comfort with online transactions. Chemists can now buy analytical instrumentation, bid on spectrometers, order chemicals, and request journal articles via the Web. Many of the items are tangible, but others involve intellectual property that is highly intangible and quite fugacious. Everyone is struggling with new distribution paradigms.
Analytical Chemistry News & Features, September 1, 1999 629 A
A/C WebWorks E-buying: The present
Despite the amount of free material on the Web, surveys by the Financial Times indicate a growing endorsement by users, merchants, and transaction-makers of the developing "dollars and cents" sales processes (http://www.ft.com/ftsurveys/ q4a42.htm). E-commerce software vendors are providing up to 128-bit Secure Socket Layer protocols that sell peace of mind for Web-based transactions (http://www. verisign.com/server/prod/secure/index. html). But recent estimates claim that more than half of all shopping carts on the Web are abandoned before the virtual check-out counter Total advertising revenue t o 11T\
but the price per click-thru (the number of times a user clicks on an ad) and the price
In OBI, the buyer uses a credit card or procurement account or requests credit to place an order. When the virtual vendor receives the order from a customer, it is parsed into multiple orders that are sent to suppliers using the OBI protocol. The virtual distributor charges the buyer for the order when the item is shipped from the manufacturer directly to the buyer. The distributor makes its money from commissions paid by the suppliers. SciQuest is an example of this kind of distributor. "We are consolidating all the [scientific] suppliers under brella Some people call us a virtual distributor " says Scott Andrews CEO of SciQuest
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times a banner ad fallen Both customers and suppliers have a ereat deal to nearn Fvery hndy is PYneri ri At present, most transactions in the "virtual mall" take place by credit card. Most of us don't realize that the pathway between our credit card scan and the bank (or other card-issuing agency) may involve 4-6 way stations: the consumer, the merchant, an independent service organization that confirms the transaction, the acquiring bank, die card processor, and the issuing bank. More man you ever wanted to know about this process can be found at http://www. virtualschool edu/mon/ElectronicProperty/ klamond/credit card htm- httoV/www mlrtmktcom/minfofaq html' and http-// www mktmkt com/minfofathtm Credit cards are fine for larger transactions, but their overhead costs for small payments are excessive. Esttmated electronic transaction costs are currently 7C for ATM cash dispersal, 280 for a debit-card charge, ,2C for a check, and 80C for rcedii tards. Customer-to-business e-commerce must change. The Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) standard could revolutionize die way companies purchase medium-cost, high-volume items. It is designed to simplify the process of business-to-business electronic commerce (http://www.software.ibm.com/commerce/ netcommerce/obi.html; http://www.emory. edu/BUSINESS/et/P98/obi/). 630 A
Considerwhatis happening in music, and extrapolate that to the dissemination ofscientific literature.
small, they can easily be transferred across the Internet. Software players abound (e.g., http://www.winamp.com/), and hardware players are here (e.g., http://www. diamondmm.com/). The concept is a portent of what is to come. Why? Consider what is happening in music, and extrapolate that to the dissemination of scientific literature. Many musicians are using the new MP3 technology to distribute their songs to their listeners, thus eliminating the need for record companies. Although there are problems with this approach— copyrighted songs are sometimes sold and redistributed illegally from Web sites—it gives new performers a chance. In addition, costs to the consumer are decreasing, and profits for the musicians increasing. Although the Recording Industry Association of America has had a reactionary response to the cept the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers recently came to with MP3 com (httoV/www washingtonpost com/wo-srv/ WPlate/1999-06/17/21,Sl-061799idx html)
The new music approach isn't limited to a few scattered individuals. Audio compression/distribution protocols are being propelled by IBM, Microsoft, Liquid Audio, and AT&Ts a2b, so the tsunami may well affect distribution of all intellecIntellectual property in transition tual property, including scientific literature. It is, therefore, an interesting juxtaposition However, money isn't the onlytilingthat that a single company sponsors the followconcerns vendors, particularly those who disseminate intangibles, such as journal arti- ing conferences: Electronic Commerce for cles. How do you distribute intellectual prop- Chemicals '99 and 2000 Information Manerty without losing control of it? How do you agement in Chemicals, and Digital Distribution and the Music Industry '99 (http:// continue to make a reasonable profit? wwwfirstconfcom) Music and print pubChange is slow because of the conservative have future nature of the vendors and the current habits lishers of the purchasers. But that song will change Consider the all-electronic Emerging as the current generation, which swings to Infectious Diseases journal from the henters MP3, becomes tomorrow's customers for for Disease Control and Prevention, the scientific information. MP3 short for MPEG citation-linking initiative for the Los Alamos audio layer 3, is one of three coding schemes e-Print Archive (http://www.princeton. for the compression of audio signals (http:// edu/~harnad/citation.html), and the Interwww.mp3.com/). The protocol net Journal lf Chemistry, which all tend to tual audio coding and digital compression to eliminate the "middle men" (e.g., journal information that the human ear can't publishers). Imagine how things might hear leaving what is essential for good hi-fi change if the National Institutes of Health listening Because MP3 musicfilesare proceeds with E-biomed, a proposed elec-
Analytical Chemistry News & Features, September 1, 1999
tronic publishing site that would have both refereed and preprint-style sections (http:// www.nih.gov/welcome/director/ebiomed/ ebiomed.htm). It is difficult for people and institutions to change, but the Internet forces us to do so faster than ever. Those who experiment, recognize their changing roles, remain flexible, and listen to the changing market will survive. E-IP: The future Many software houses are proffering packages that can deliver print intellectual property items discretely and safely. VIAexpress offers the electronic equivalent of a document courier service. (http://www. viaexpress.com/neoviadesign/ expressithtml). For those who want even more security, IBM's Cryptolopes provide copyright protection for downloadable content by "enclosing" documents until a user agrees to pay a fee for their release (http://www.software.ibm.com/ security/cryptolorje/chaithtm) To read Cryptolope material users need to install a free helper application into their Web browsers The helper application recognizes a "container" that encloses an encrypted document The containerOTVPSthe
your own special money), anonymity issues, and hype. Newer approaches include Carnegie Mellon University and Mellon Bank's NetBill (http://www.ini.cmu.edu:80/ netbill/), Digital's Millicent project (http:// rpcp.mit.edu/~pearah/micropayments/ Millicenthtml), Qpass (http://www.qpass. com/), eWallet (http://www.ewallet.com/), and lClickCharge (http://www.lclickcharge. com). A good review of micropayment plans can be found at http://www.w3.org/ ECommerce/roadmap.html. Micropayment schemes could shine in the distribution of scientific documents, where e-transmitted articles from services such as ISI Citation Databases, Chemical Abstracts Service, UnCover, and the Linda
Materials may be easier to acquire, but storing them in a useful e-format is not.
iiQpr details of the document's abstract price and rules for use the user aerees to the terms the helper application renuests a key over the network to unlock the actual document Magex from NatWest is a related scheme (http://www. 1 A
magex.co.uk/). Hopefully, such distribution will synergistically merge with micropayment plans, which are designed for 25C-$20 billings. In the U.S. consumer economy, 12% of transactions involve less than $20, where credit cards are not really efficient. A variety of third-party approaches have been proposed (http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/97/ HPL-97-14.html; http://www.cs.nyu.edu/ ~mitc7205/Micropayments/). Despite the advantages, the dust of the Internet has dimmed some of the glitter of micropayment, as the pioneer efforts known as DigiCash, CyberCoin, and FirstVirtual have failed to gain acceptance. These ideas got lost in proprietary script schemes (print
Hall Library cost ~$10-15 plus a copyright charge, if applicable. Eventually another concept, called "superdistribution", will become common for the distribution of intellectual property intangibles (http://www.reciprocal.com/ docs/comm/linkl.htm). In superdistribution, first proposed by Ryoichi Mori for software dissemination, the pathway for sharing intellectual property involves a tree-like distribution chain, where the traditional sales "gateway" is replaced by an international network of related individuals who forward products to interested colleagues (http://virtualschool.edu/mon/ ElectronicProperty/MoriSuperdist.html). Cryptolope and micropayment structures would funnel fees and royalty payments back to the appropriate origins regardless of the distribution chain (httpV/www research ibm com/people/k/kaplan/
cryptolope-docs/crypap.html). Information could be shared fairly and profitably. The bottom line Will this all lead to a proliferation of portals on the Web, each charging a small entry fee? Probably. What will Cryptolopes, superdistribution, and micropayments do to our scientific journals? Some feel that "free" bandwidth will allow articles to become longer and to include more supporting material—multimedia video; audio; and three-dimensional, interactive objects. Others feel that the current generation's proclivity toward what Camille Paglia calls a "multimedia, multilayered, multitasking sensorium" will result in publication of shorter more numerous papers. Will libraries select their subscriptions from those vendors who have the highest historical "hit rate"? Will e-journals recruit and even select authors with "drawing power"? Will authors collect a dime each their works? Will scientific labs become their own publishers? Will libraries adopt software with names like ChargBak oo BillThrui Meanwhile, scientists enjoy many aspects of e-journals, but they are frustrated by the maze of portals that presents constantly shifting interfaces and access restrictions. Materials may be easier to access, but storing them in a useful e-format is not. Articles and proposals may have more citations, but less are read—and fewer digested. The concept of an impact index, or impact factor, is being eroded. And many publishers don't appreciate what "value added" means. What has been your experience with e-chemmerce? Analytical Chemistry would like to bear from vou Thanks to Janine Hiller rnd Ed dener of Virginin Tech. (Comments are invited at rdessy@chemserver. chem.vt.edu. References (1) The Italian movie title HBuono, II Brutto, II Cattivo was rerrdered when translated into English to improve the phooetic rhythm.
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