Unsub

We’re now OpenAlex

For years, we’ve been working under the name OurResearch. That name sat at the top of our org chart, with three child projects under it: OpenAlex, Unpaywall, and Unsub.

Starting today, things are simpler: that org chart now has just one parent—OpenAlex—with Unpaywall and Unsub beneath it.

Why the change? Three reasons:

1. Fewer brands is clearer

We’re a tiny team, and having so many brands has always been confusing. People wondered: are we OurResearch (or Our Research), or OpenAlex, or Unpaywall, or something else? From now on, the answer is simple: we’re OpenAlex.

2. OpenAlex is what we do

More and more, OpenAlex is the center of our work. It’s our biggest project and the one that takes most of our time. And it’s also the data engine behind our other projects: Unpaywall and Unsub both run on OpenAlex data. In fact, with the launch of our fully rewritten OpenAlex codebase (codenamed Walden) this week, Unpaywall runs as a subroutine of the OpenAlex codebase.

So in a real sense, Unpaywall and Unsub are just friendly wrappers around OpenAlex. Improving OpenAlex improves them automatically.

And the name OpenAlex, with its homage to the ancient Library of Alexandria, captures our long-term vision to gather, organize, and make open all scholarly information.

3. New name, new start

Legally, nothing dramatic is happening—our official name has always been Impactstory, Inc., and “OurResearch” was just a DBA. But this moment is more than just a bookkeeping change.

This is a new chapter for us. The past year has been tough: not much visible progress, a lot of repaying technical debt, and a long slog to rewrite our entire codebase. But that rewrite launches (in beta) this week. And with a fresh codebase comes a fresh start: we get to focus harder, move faster, and pour our energy into making OpenAlex as comprehensive, accurate, and open as possible.

So yes, the name change simplifies things. But more importantly, it marks a new focus and a renewed commitment to our vision: building a universal library of scholarship.

And while we’ll continue to support Unpaywall and Unsub for now, we want to be transparent: OpenAlex is the future. As its functionality grows over the next year or two, Unpaywall and Unsub users will be able to meet their use-cases directly via OpenAlex. The rising tide of OpenAlex lifts all boats.

This week is about OpenAlex

This post is the first of three announcements:

  • Monday: our name change to OpenAlex (that’s today).
  • Tuesday: our new logo.
  • Wednesday: the beta launch our fully rewritten OpenAlex codebase.

When we say we’re focusing on OpenAlex, it’s not just words—we’re shipping, this week. And there’s more coming in Q4:

  • A new API endpoint to directly download PDFs and parsed PDFs.
  • A self-serve curation portal (think Wikipedia editing, but for scholarly metadata), where your changes go live in a day or two.
  • A new vector search API.
  • Improved funder coverage, thanks to our new Wellcome Trust grant.

After a year of rebuilding, we’ve finally got the tools and the focus we need start delivering more substantively on our vision: a universal, open library of scholarly information. We’re energized. We’re ready. We’re OpenAlex.

Unsub pricing update

We’re rolling out a new pricing structure for Unsub, designed to be more fair to smaller institutions, and more streamlined for consortia.

New institution pricing

In the eight months since we released Unsub, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from folks concerned that our flat-rate pricing placed an unfair burden on smaller institutions. Big university libraries often manage budgets a hundred times larger than those of small college libraries; charging them both the same price feels inequitable to many.

We have come to agree–even before accounting for the fact that COVID seems poised to hit smaller colleges particularly hard. We want to build a fair, sustainable community around Unsub, and so we’re changing our flat-rate model to one where price is tied to institutional budgets.

Here’s the new pricing table: 

In this model, Unsub is cutting prices for most institutions; well over half of our prospective users fall into the new $500 tier. The richest schools, on the other hand, will pay more–but still less than they’d pay for comparable tools (specifically, the 1figr data report, which was around $15,000 for large universities, before Elsevier bought and discontinued it).

And even at the highest tier, we believe Unsub offers an unbeatable value for users. As Science recently reported “[Unsub] is saving universities millions of dollars in journal subscriptions.” We think–and are hearing from users–that $3,000 is a bargain, given this upside.

Based on our best growth projections, this will be a roughly revenue-neutral change for us. That is, we don’t expect to make (or lose) much money on the new prices; cuts at the bottom will be offset by the increase at the top. Our goal is to distribute the support burden more equitably. 

We put a lot of time into figuring out the correct pricing levels, and we had a lot of help. We’d like to thank the SPARC team, who provided helpful consulting, advice, and support. We’d also like to thank the folks who responded to our pricing survey, and the IPEDS database, all of which provided essential data. Of course we didn’t follow all of everyone’s advice, so we’ve erred, it’s our fault, not theirs!

The new prices will be effective immediately (4 August, 2020). If you are in the middle of getting the old price approved, that’s ok; just let us know and we’ll make an extension for you. 

If you’re already a customer, your next renewal will be at your current price (or the new price, whichever is lower). After that, you’ll get bumped up to the standard pricing (if that’s relevant for you; again, most universities will see the price drop or stay the same). So for example, if you’re a library with a $3M materials budget, and you subscribed in June 2020: when you renew in June 2021, you’ll pay the same $1,000 you paid to sign up, but in June 2022 you’ll get bumped up to $3,000.

As before, if you’re truly unable to afford the tool, get in touch, and we’ll do our best to work something out. It’s important to us that Unsub stays sustainable, but it’s also important to us that the barrier to entry is as low as possible. Our number one priority is the mission.

New consortium pricing

Our old consortium price deal was that if you could get 10 or more institutions to sign up together, we’d give you 20% off. 

This has turned out to be a bad fit for many consortia, because they want to do more of a rolling admissions system: they’ve got five institutions now, and expect another 20 to gradually sign up, one by one, over the course of the next year.

So, we’re modifying how the consortial discount works. It’s now a 10% discount, and there’s no minimum number of institutions needed to qualify. You just have to be getting Unsub through a consortium. Member institutions can sign up whenever they want, and we’ll bill the consortium right then (applying their 10% discount), and set up the new institution right away.

OK, that’s the news! We’re excited about these changes, because we think they’ll help us keep building the Unusb community in fair and sustainable ways. We really appreciate all the folks who gave us feedback. Keep it coming! We are learning a ton from our community and will keep making changes as we learn more and more.

Unsub: saving universities millions of dollars in journal subscriptions

Unsub was highlighted in a Science news article that just came out:

SUNY was facing an annual $9 million bill for its subscription to about 2200 Elsevier titles. But Unsub revealed that by spending $2 million a year for just 248 of the journals, the university could give researchers at its 64 campuses immediate access to roughly 70% of the Elsevier papers they are likely to read in the next 5 years. 

They were paying $9-10 million/year, so that’s a savings of 80%.

And maybe even better:

Unsub is a “game changer,” says Mark McBride, SUNY’s library senior strategist in Albany, and “I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks that.”

Read the full article here!

Unsub Q&A in a recent Scholarly Kitchen post

In case you missed it, Unsub was featured in a recent post on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Author Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (@lisalibrarian) interviewed us about Unsub, which she describes as:

“the game-changing data analysis service that is helping librarians forecast, explore, and optimize their alternatives to the Big Deal.”

Give it a read — dare we suggest, even the comments! — and let us know what you think 🙂

ps Unsub now has its own twitter account: @unsub_org and we’ll be using the hashtag #UnsubBigDeal for conference twitter threads etc.

Name change: Unpaywall Journals is now Unsub

As of today, Unpaywall Journals is now called: Unsub! That’s the only change–all the functionality is still the same, and of course it’s still the same Our Research team behind it.

Why the change? Two reasons:

1. We added data beyond Unpaywall. We started this project with a modest goal: a journal-level analysis of Open Access rates, using data from our free Unpaywall database. So, Unpaywall Journals was a natural name.

However, as we talked to early users, we learned that understanding OA in isolation wasn’t that helpful. Users wanted OA data, yes, but they wanted it in the broader context of a decision support tool. That required us adding a lot of new data and forecasting features. Unpaywall become just one data source of many.

2. We focused on supporting unsubscription. Early users helped us understand, they are not exploring the data for fun. They’re making Big Decisions about keeping or cancelling their Big Deals. These Big Deals have been leaking value for years, even as prices keep going up. As the inevitable cuts are made this year, Big Deals are an attractive target.

But users emphasized that they needed better data to understand their alternatives to the Big Deal, and how cancellations would affect campus access. As we worked to supply this data, Unpaywall Journals evolved into an increasingly focused tool, one built to help libraries unsubscribe with confidence.

So: time for a new name! One that reflects these two changes.

The result: Unsub! A tool to help librarians forecast, explore, and optimize their alternatives to the Big Deal. We hope you like it!