Web Wise Ways

As part of the Internet revolution, online communities have developed in recent years, making it very easy to reach out and touch someone instantly to learn more about your favorite subject, stay up to-date on an industry, or make new business and personal friends. A definition of online communities is:

Social relationships forged in cyberspace through repeated contact within a specified boundary or place (e.g., a conference or chat line) that is symbolically delineated by topic of interest" [Source: Jan Fernback and Brad Thompson:Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? (1995), http:ll www.well.com//user/hlr/texts/ VCcivil.html].

One such community, The WELL, has been around for decades, with a reported launch way back in 1984. A new book by Katie Hafner details the history of this pioneer service, (THE WELL:A Story of Love, Death, and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community, Carroll & Graf, 2001).

While in London at the Online-Information Conference last December, I heard again and again about the concept of "online communities." Just before leaving for the U.K., an e-mail message from Researcha arrived, describing its service as an online community for information professionals. After looking at the Web site and finding some services of professional interest, I decided to register there.

Researcha

Researcha claims an online community of more than 3,500 information professionals with a range of services geared just to researchers. Services include recruitment, news about the business information sector, feature stories, and interviews with leading information professionals. Emanating from the U.K., Researcha has potential for networking with information professionals, especially from countries other than the U.S. Since I'm interested in expanding existing contacts beyond my own vast but parochial borders, I've added Researcha to my list of important professional industry sources, along with Online Inc.'s Web site [http://www.on lineinc.com], with its industry stories and analysis and Information Today's NewsBreaks [http://www.infotoday. com] plus Newslink, its Monday morning e-mail alert service.

Researcha offers several services, but the one that especially motivated me to write this article is its database of free research reports. The Researcha Report Database provides useful background information and is one way to stay on top of a wide range of industries of interest to specific clients or users. If you work in a particular sector and gather information for a newsletter, Web site, or intranet, this is the kind of news you may wish to pubfish or post. Researcha sets up corporate accounts, allowing access directly to its database via company intranets.

The searchable database, a growing collection with currently more than 600 links to free, downloadable reports, covers a wide range of industries. The major focus is on the telecom, media, and technology sectors. Researcha e-mails a monthly alert to announce new additions. In a recent alert, they identified 76 newly added reports covering the following industries were added:

Automotive

Energy

Financial Services

Healthcare and Medical

Insurance

Media and Technology

Retail

Telecom

Examples from Telecom included recently published FCC reports, one about the cable industry, and another about telephone subscribership.

In another monthly alert, Researcha provided a section on General Statistics with links to a series of papers entitled "World Markets In Focus 2001" [http:// www.worldmarketsonline.com/wmo focus.htm]. These include analyses of key political and economic developments in major geographic regions such as Western Europe, the Middle East, the Former Soviet Union, Central Europe and the Balkans, Asia, the Americas, and Africa - and all reports are free.

Since the Researcha alerts come out monthly, there may be faster ways to learn about newly published reports, especially since many Web sites now provide individual alert newsletters on a daily or weekly basis. The Researcha Reports Database, however, is a valuable aggregation across several major industries and serves as a good starting point for identifying other sites of interest. The database seems to place greater emphasis on Europe, which is only natural since the business is U.K.-based, but to its credit the Researcha Free Reports Database also includes reports from the U.S., Latin America, and Asia, making it, unquestionably, a global resource.

Coverage

The Researcha Report Database emphasizes that it's "very selective about the types of reports we include." Care is taken to select from reputable sources that contain market or technical data. Typically, reports come from investment banks, management consultancies, trade associations, and government agencies. Over 90 percent of the reports in the database are downloadable in PDF format, with the remaining either in Word, Excel, or HTML. Options for finding reports include a keyword search or selection from two preexisting categories: Latest Reports, or those with three stars. Researcha uses a one to three star rating system. Though I could not find an explanation of the star system at the Web site, Martin De Saulles, Researcha's founder, explains:

The criteria are not terribly scientific but largely based on my experience of the types of reports I found useful when working as a researcher for a management consultancy. The two main things I look for are reliable statistical data and strategic insights into business issues. I suppose a good example of a three-star report would be one of the Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs reports. These usually contain some market forecasts (not always accurate but as good as most) and offer good explanations of technologies and business processes. Official documents from government agencies often get a high rating when they contain statistical data. Many of the commercial reports that cost several thousand dollars rely heavily on this data, which is often available at no cost. This was one of the reasons for starting the database - there is a large amount of extremely useful information available for free via the Web, and this will come as no surprise to information and research professionals. However, the problem was finding it and that is where I hope our Report Database is useful.

Once you do a search and select from the list of results, a very brief description is available with a link for downloading and the star rating (see Figure 1 on page 66).

Cost

Although the database was accessible as a completely free source when I initially registered, a subscription fee went into effect in February 2001 and the cost is 80 annually + VAT (value added tax) at 17.5 percent (Total = L94 or approximately $133). Subscribers outside the U.K. but within the European Union are exempt from VAT if they can provide a VAT number when subscribing. Each subscriber can also get a Report Annual, a downloadable PDF document of all database entries divided by subject area. Publication of this index began in the third quarter of 2001.

Other Researcha Services

As an online community, Researcha offers a range of services, including:

* A calendar of industry events

* Feature articles

* Job postings and CVs

* Vendor Directory

* Researcher Directory

* Useful Links

News

The Features section collects articles, reviews, and interviews with players in the information industry and it changes each month. At the time of this writing, it offered a June interview with Karen Blakeman, founder of RBA Services. Karen is well known in the U.K. for Internet training, consulting, and her manual, Search Strategies for the Internet: How To Identify Essential Resources More Effectively, now in its third edition.

Researcha welcomes suggestions for future articles and is pleased to receive feedback on ones already published. An Industry Issues Discussion Forum also provides a platform for responses to anything read on the site and encourages the online community to participate.

Why Use White Papers and Other Caveats, Even When from Reputable Firms

Bitpipe.com cites a survey that showed that over 90 percent of IT buyers refer to a white paper or case study before they contact a vendor for product information. Yet, over half of these people can't find the critical data they need to make smart IT decisions. White papers are Bitpipe's solution. Yet, in some explanations about white papers, there is a clear emphasis on the fact that a particular point of view is taken: At Whatis.comi the following depiction is useful as a way to further understand the role white papers play:

A White Paper is an article that states an organization's position or philosophy about a social, political, or other subject, or a not-too-detailed technical explanation of an architecture, framework, or product technology. Typically, a White Paper explains the results, conclusions, or construction resulting from some organized committee or research collaboration or design and development effort. Several versions of Webster's indicate that the term arose within the past few decades in England to distinguish short government reports from longer, more detailed ones that were bound in blue covers and referred to as "blue books" (not to be confused with the blue books used when taking college exams). A shorter government publication providing a report or position about something was bound in the same White Paper as the text -hence, "aWhite Paper." In information technology, a White Paper is often a paper written by a lead product designer to explain the philosophy and operation of a product in a marketplace or technology context. Many if not most Web sites for software products include aWhite Paper in addition to a frequently asked questions page and more detailed product specifications. In government, a White Paper is often a policy or position paper. The U.S. Government's June, 1998 policy statement on the "Management of Internet Names and Addresses" (known generally as "The White Paper") is an example of great interest to many Internet users.

Bear in mind, too, that when you obtain free analysts reports, you must be on the lookout for potential bias. Look at the disclaimers and don't plan to count on a free report, even if it's a quality report, as a sole source of information to answer a question. In a recent research project, I used nearly a dozen different analysts reports from various investment brokerage firms, each of which covers the conglomerate company I was researching. Part of my job was to synthesize all of this information into one report - and each contained information or coverage of some topic not provided by the other.

My point is that a professional researcher cannot rely on one free report, let alone free information, let alone fee information without conducting a more thorough investigation covering a range of sources. One free report may be a great way to get a quick fix or background on some topic or company, but it's certainly not the one and only - or responsible - way for professional searchers to produce and complete an end result deliverable.

I recall one situation in which a client told me about a detailed and lengthy free report she had found about an industry of interest, produced by a well-known investment firm. She wanted to know whether I thought it important or necessary to conduct additional research. I downloaded the free report and at the end found a disclaimer in which the investment house writing the report indicated that they were a market maker for several companies discussed in the report. A market maker is a brokerage or bank that maintains a firm bid and ask price in a given over-the-counter security by standing ready, willing, and able to buy or sell at publicly quoted prices (called making a market) [http://www.investorwords.com]. Since the firm is making a market, there is potential for bias though the company, most definitely, is ethical for disclaiming this.

Again, part of a researcher's job is to present various perspectives and a range of sources. For this request, additional research was warranted, especially based on the goal of conducting a thorough competitive analysis, and that's what I recommended. The client complied with my advice, hired me to conduct methodical research, and I indeed found a great deal of significant and critical information reported in other sources not covered by the analyst.