As explained last week, we are uploading for our readers chapter extracted
from an conference of the 2007 Online Show in December. We will present
you what are the so called “open access market research reports” and who is
publishing them.
Nowadays, large Anglo Saxon and American groups such as Dun and Bradstreet,
Factiva or Thomson Corp dominate the business information market. These players
were born during the first wave of industry information providers. Launched in
the early 80’s, they focus on financial and economic information aggregation. Their database,
accessible by subscription, mainly targets Fortune 1000 and multinational
corporations.
Beside these giants around which the information industry gets structured,
the market is completely atomised. His peculiarity is the large number of
private publishers. This is especially true on the market research segment. Most famous ones are
Datamonitor or Euromonitor. These last distribute reports sold from € 1500 to
3000. Outsell estimates companies will spend more than € 12 Billion in 2010 in
market research reports
purchasing. This market grows by 11% a year in average.
These publishers’ global offer is estimated to 150 000 documents.
Specialized in distance selling, they make a great usage of opportunities
offered by Internet Search Engine for their document promotion. They also
distribute their content trough market research aggregator, such as
Reportlinker.com in Europe or Marketresearch.com in the USA. This last,
worldwide leader, references approximately 100 000 documents.
But the Internet is full of treasures. Apart form these reports, many free
market research reports are published on the Internet, by public organisations
such as Embassies, Ministries or Trade Unions. We estimate than 10 million of
these free reports are available online
today.
Definition : What do we call Open Access Content dedicated to
business research ?
Wikipedia defines the “Open access (OA) as immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital (…) material, primarily peer-reviewed research articles in journals.”
OA content business research can be described as:
- Information published for free on the Internet
- Information giving insight into markets or industries, countries or companies
- Information that has been structured and documented : source, date,
author….
We can divide the Open
Access Business Information into two categories :
1/Public Domain Information
- The public domain information are the so called “Public Sector Information” (PSI).
- Definition of “public sector body” given in the Mepsir report (June 2006) :
The definition of “public sector body” is taken from Directive 92/50/EEC as
“State, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law,
associations formed by one or more of such authorities or bodies governed by
public law” where “Body governed by public law” means “Any body that is
established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest,
not having an industrial or commercial character, and having legal personality
and financed, for the most part, by the State, or regional or local
authorities, or other bodies governed by public law; or subject to management
supervision by those bodies; or having an administrative, managerial or
supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by the State,
regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by public
law”.
2/Private Papers
- The private paper can also be defined as …..all the other documents !!
- Business information published by private companies to promote their
services companies or know-how (Analyst research reports, Annual
Reports…)
Which kind of open access content can you find on the Internet
?
Ubiquick estimates that more than 10 Million free industry reports are available on the Internet.
Obviously, and for commercial reasons, most of them are published by
organisation financed by States. But publishing information on a sector can
also be a promotional tool for many private companies.
Type and Source for Open Access Industry
Information
1/ Type
- Annual Reports
- Press Releases (?)
- White Papers
- Investment reports
- Country reports
- Economic indicators
- Trade Statistics
- Patent and trademarks information
2/ Source
- Embassy
- National Institute
- Competition Commission
- Ministry
- Local representation of state / federation
- Trade Union
- Customs
- National and Central Bank
- International Institutions
- Stock exchange
- Consulting firm
- Banks
- Chamber of Commerce
Summary : Type of public domain information by sources
