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(Note from the Washington State Library:  In order to participate in the Fall 1999 Washington State Databases Trial, each vendor was asked to address questions the Statewide Database Licensing Committee felt were most critical in order for library staff to evaluate products and vendors.  Please contact the vendor's representative, listed below, for additional information on this product.)

1. Describe the database product(s). Include information on subject scope, percentage of full-text, dates of coverage, target audience (including age ranges), and how often the contents are updated. 

Ovid Technologies, Inc.

Company Overview

Ovid Technologies, was founded by Mark Nelson in 1988 with a mission to provide platform-independent access to bibliographic and full-text databases for academic, biomedical and scientific research. In 1994, the company augmented its offerings with an acquisition of BRS Online. Ovid has since established itself as a leader in the electronic information retrieval services market with over 30,000 licensed users. More than 90 databases, including MEDLINE�, ERIC, a variety of commercial databases and Ovid's own Full Text Collections, are available via a highly intuitive user interface and advanced text-retrieval software. Headquartered in New York City, Ovid has a development and support site near Salt Lake City as well as offices in London and Sydney. The company had revenues of nearly $45 million in 1998.

Overview of Selected Ovid Products

(From the "Go to Ovid" link on the main SDL page, follow links to the Field Guides to learn more about each of these products.) 

A Note about Ovid Databases

Ovid licenses more than 90 databases that address scientific and academic research requirements. These databases are arranged in seven subject categories: Allied Health, Biomedical, Business, General Reference, Humanities, Science & Technology, and Social Sciences. They are updated weekly, monthly or quarterly depending upon publication frequency and/or user needs. For the Washington State Library trial we have decided to include a subset of health and medical databases, which is an area in which Ovid is particularly strong. 

Journals@Ovid

Ovid's first product was search software for bibliographic databases. Now we are also delivering the full text of journals to users' desktops, via one aggregated database: Journals@Ovid. It contains hundreds of prestigious journals from more than 50 different publishers, all accessible from a single intuitive interface with powerful search tools. In creating Journals@Ovid, we've seamlessly integrated full text articles with bibliographic databases, and linked the journals to each other through their references. Our solution emulates the way people use print resources, making the online versions of full text familiar and easy-to-use. We've also added new tools and functionality to save valuable research time and encourage more active exploration.

Full text journals can be licensed individually or as part of full text "collections" (Ovid Core Biomedical Collection, Ovid Mental Health Collection, Ovid Nursing Collection, etc.). Ovid selected the journals in the collections because they are considered "key" (i.e., highly subscribed, highly cited) journals in biomedicine, nursing, and mental health.. The journals in the collections are accessed in the same way as journals licensed individually, i.e. from within the Journals@Ovid database. In general it is more cost-effective to license the journals as part of a collection than it is to license them individually (assuming that the library is interested in most of the journals in the collection). 

Ovid Core Biomedical Collection (1993-) 

Journals available in the Ovid Core Biomedical Collection include the following:

Ovid Biomedical Collection II (1995-)

The Ovid Biomedical Collection II contains Ovid Full Text versions of the following essential biomedical journals:

Ovid Biomedical Collection III (1995-)

The Ovid Biomedical Collection III contains Ovid Full Text versions of the following journals:

Ovid Biomedical Collection IV (1995-)

The Ovid Biomedical Collection IV contains Ovid Full Text versions of the following essential biomedical journals:

  • American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy
  • Anesthesia & Analgesia
  • Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
  • Archives of Diseases in Childhood
  • Archives of Diseases in Childhood, Fetal and Neonatal Edition
  • Archives of Family Medicine
  • Archives of Otolaryngology
  • Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
  • Critical Care Medicine
  • Diabetes Care
  • Genitourinary Medicine (1995-1997)
  • Journal of the American Board of Family Practice
  • Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, British Volume
  • Journal of Medical Genetics
  • Journal of Trauma
  • Occupational and Environmental Medicine
  • Sexually Transmitted Infections (formerly Genitourinary Medicine)

Ovid Mental Health Collection (1995-)

The Ovid Mental Health Collection contains Ovid Full Text versions of the following essential psychiatry/psychology journals:

  • American Journal of Psychiatry
  • Annual Review of Psychology
  • Archives of General Psychiatry
  • British Journal of Psychiatry
  • Current Opinion in Psychiatry
  • Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology
  • Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
  • Psychological Medicine
  • Psychosomatic Medicine
  • Year Book of Psychiatry and Applied Mental Health

Ovid Nursing Collection (1995-)

Ovid Technologies' Nursing Collection is a natural extension of the company's original Biomedical Collections, offering professionals in the nursing field the same high-quality, searchable electronic full text that physicians, librarians and other researchers have used from Ovid. The Nursing Collection contains the full text of 15 leading journals in both general and specialized nursing fields, and hypertext links to the MEDLINE and CINAHL bibliographic databases and the other Ovid Full Text Collections make the user's search more efficient. Journals available in the Ovid Nursing Collection include the following:

  • Advances in Nursing Science
  • American Journal of Infection Control
  • AORN Journal
  • Dermatology Nursing
  • Heart & Lung: Journal of Acute & Critical Care (January/February 1996-forward) continues Heart & Lung: Journal of Critical Care
  • Heart & Lung: Journal of Critical Care (1995) continued in Heart & Lung: Journal of Acute & Critical Care
  • Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship
  • Journal of Advanced Nursing
  • Journal of Clinical Nursing
  • Journal of Emergency Nursing
  • N & HC: Perspectives on Community (January/February 1995-March/April 1997) continued in Nursing & Health Care Perspectives
  • Nurse Researcher
  • Nursing and Health Care
  • Nursing Management (RCN Publishing)
  • Nursing Standard
  • RN

Ovid Nursing Collection II: Lippincott Premier Nursing Journals (1996-)   

Journals available in the Ovid Nursing Collection II: Lippincott Premier Nursing Journals include the following:

  • American Journal of Nursing
  • AWHONN Lifelines
  • Cancer Nursing?
  • Computers in Nursing
  • JNSD:Journal of Nurses in Staff Development
  • JOGNN:Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing
  • JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration
  • Journal of Intravenous Nursing
  • Lippincott's Primary Care Practice
  • MCN, The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing
  • Nurse Educator
  • Nursing Case Management
  • Nursing Research
  • Outcomes Management for Nursing Practice

AIDSLINE

AIDSLINE (AIDS Information Online), produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, is a collection of bibliographic citations focusing on research, clinical aspects, and health policy issues related to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). This database includes articles from over 3,000 journals published worldwide, as well as government reports, letters, technical reports, meeting abstracts and papers, monographs, special publications, theses, books, and audiovisual materials.

Information in the AIDSLINE database is derived from the following sources: MEDLINE, CancerLit, Health Planning and Administration, CATLINE, AVLINE, meeting abstracts from the International Conferences on AIDS, the Symposia on Non-human Primate Models of AIDS, and AIDS-related abstracts from the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Microbiology.

CINAHL (Cumulative Index To Nursing and Allied Health Literature)

Produced by CINAHL Information Systems, The Nursing & Allied Health (CINAHL) database provides comprehensive coverage of the English language journal literature for nursing and allied health disciplines. Material from over 950 journals are included in CINAHL, covering fields such as cardiopulmonary technology, emergency services, health education, med/lab technology, medical assistance, medical records, occupational therapy, physical therapy, radiologic technology, respiratory therapy, social sciences, surgical technology, and the physician's assistant. Also included are healthcare books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of professional practice, and educational software. There is selective coverage of journals in biomedicine, the behavioral sciences, management, and education. The database currently contains over 250,000 records.

BioethicsLine

Produced jointly by the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the BioethicsLine database includes more than 47,000 records of English-language materials on bioethics. Documents are selected from the disciplines of medicine, nursing, biology, philosophy, religion, law, and the behavioral sciences. Selections from popular literature are also included. Covered document types include journal and newspaper articles, monographs, court decisions, bills, laws, and audiovisual materials. Approximately 100 primary sources and 40 indexes and databases are scanned for citations.  

CancerLit

Produced by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, CancerLit is an important source of bibliographic information pertaining to all aspects of cancer therapy, including experimental and clinical cancer therapy; chemical, viral and other cancer causing agents; mechanisms of carcinogenesis; biochemistry, immunology, and physiology of cancer; and mutagen and growth factor studies. Some of the information in CancerLit is derived from the MEDLINE database. Approximately 200 core journals contribute a large percentage of the 750,000+ records in this database. In addition, other information is drawn from proceedings of meetings, government reports, symposia reports, theses, and selected monographs.

Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews

Ovid's Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews is a database designed for use by clinicians and researchers. Reflecting current practices in the medical field, Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews will provide content from two premier sources; the Cochrane Database of Systemic Reviews, published by the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization dedicated to applying evidence-based-medicine principles to the review of important clinical topics, and Best Evidence, a database which contains the ACP Journal Club (a publication of the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine), and the journal Evidence-Based Medicine (a joint publication of the ACP and the British Medical Journal Group).

Health & Psychosocial Instruments

Produced by Behavioral Measurement Database Services, Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) is a database of evaluation and measurement tools designed to facilitate health and psychosocial studies. The measurement instruments available include questionnaires, checklists, index measures, rating scales, project techniques, tests, interview schedules, and a variety of other means of evaluation. Accessing these tools allows researchers to locate a variety of research methods, to reduce inefficiency and cost, and to eliminate research duplication. This unique database is a powerful tool which is valuable to practitioners, educators, researchers, and students conducting projects from class papers to grant proposals and dissertations. The database currently contains over 45,000 records.

HealthSTAR

HealthSTAR contains citations to the published literature on health services, technology, administration, and research. It focuses on both the clinical and non-clinical aspects of health care delivery. The following topics are included: evaluation of patient outcomes; effectiveness of procedures, programs, products, services and processes; administration and planning of health facilities, services and manpower; health insurance; health policy; health services research; health economics and financial management; laws and regulation; personnel administration; quality assurance; licensing; and accreditation.

HealthSTAR is produced cooperatively by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the American Hospital Association. The database contains citations and abstracts (when available) to journal articles, monographs, technical reports, meeting abstracts and papers, book chapters, government documents, and newspaper articles from 1975 to the present. Citations are indexed with the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject

Headings in order to ensure compatibility with other NLM databases. Information in HealthSTAR is derived from MEDLINE, CATLINE, the Hospital Literature Index, and selected journals. Additional records specially indexed for this database do not appear in any other NLM database. HealthSTAR replaces the former Health Planning and Administration database (HLTH).

MEDLINE�

Produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the MEDLINE database is widely recognized as the premier source for bibliographic coverage of biomedical literature. MEDLINE encompasses information from Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature, and International Nursing, as well as other sources of coverage in the areas of communication disorders, population biology, and reproductive biology. More than 8.5 million records from more than 3,600 journals are indexed.

Primary Care Online

Primary Care Online features the full text of nine bestselling clinical textbooks published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins publishers (LWW). The database is part of Ovid's new Web-based clinical information platform, Ovid On Call.

Nine Key Clinical Texts:

MEDICAL

NURSING

Pre-print updates of many of the textbooks will be available to Ovid customers. These updates, as frequent as four times per year for some of the texts, will ensure that the material is the most up-to-date available from any online vendor.

PsycINFO�

Produced by the American Psychological Association, PsycINFO covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines, including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, and other areas. PsycINFO's coverage is worldwide, and includes references and abstracts to over 1,400 journals in more than 30 languages, and to book chapters and books in the English language. The database includes information from empirical studies, case studies, surveys, bibliographies, literature reviews, discussion articles, conference reports and dissertations. PsycINFO currently contains over 1.5 million references, with over 60,000 references added annually. PsycINFO is the world's most comprehensive source for bibliographic coverage of psychology and behavioral sciences literature.

Search Software

From the company's inception, Ovid search-and- retrieval software has been designed to maximize data access, research productivity, and ease-of- use. Unique algorithms in Ovid technology give users a powerful tool for finding the information they want. Key features and capabilities comprise: 

Common User Interface. Ovid's user-friendly, graphical interface is the same across all platforms, obviating the need for user retraining; this is a significant advantage considering the range of computing environments in use today. Three levels of searching and multiple levels of customizability enable anyone from a novice to a professional searcher to leverage Ovid technology. 

Precision Mapping. Mapping enables searching with natural language terminology. Once a topic is chosen, Ovid suggests the correct controlled term for the desired concept and leads the user through a simple, step-by- step process to refine the scope of their subject query. Mapping is available in most databases with a thesaurus or tree structure, bringing the ease of controlled-vocabulary searching to end-users who do not typically benefit from database publishers' investments in indexing. 

2. What are the hardware and software requirements for using all the features of the product?

Web browser requirements are available at:

http://www.ovid.com/product/specs/html/interfaces_browsers.html

Requirements for the Ovid Java Client are available at:

http://www.ovid.com/product/specs/html/interfaces_java.html

3. Is remote access included for the subscription price?  If there are additional charges or requirements in order to offer remote access, please describe.   What methods of remote access are supported?

There are two components to the pricing: the database license (usually concurrent-user based, although sometimes a "site license" or unlimited concurrent user license pricing model is available) and the Ovid software price (also called the "remote access fee"), which is concurrent-user based. There is no separate pricing for remote access, since we assume that the databases will be accessed via the Internet (the library is responsible for providing Internet access).

4. Please discuss any methods or assistance you offer regarding remote access patron verification and authentication.

Authentication may be by i.p. validation or by id and password or by a combination of both (i.e., access to databases from within the library and the campus may be i.p. authenticated, but the library may distribute passwords to individuals for remote access). Each Ovid User License ("remote access fee") includes 50 passwords.

Additional information is available at:

http://www.ovid.com/product/specs/html/onlinevalidation.htm

5. What end user delivery options, such as printing, emailing or faxing results, are available beyond just viewing results on the computer monitor?

Search results can be sorted, displayed, printed, emailed, and saved to the local disk. The library may also opt to enable document ordering which allows search results to be routed to the library’s ILL dept. for forwarding to a document supplier (or sent directly to the document supplier). These operations are performed for bibliographic databases via the Citation Manager. Additional information about the Citation Manager can be found at:

http://www.ovid.com/dochome/user/webuser/webulnk.htm#_Toc371933371

6. What customer training is provided, and at what cost?

Application training is available at $750/per day plus travel and expenses. There is a host of documentation in a variety of formats available via the Ovid homepage at http://www.ovid.com/dochome/doctop.htm   (including Field Guides, Quick Reference Cards, etc.).

7. What customer and technical support is provided, including hours of operation.

The Ovid Support Department in Utah is staffed from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM (MST) Monday through Friday. Information about Ovid Support is available at: http://www.ovid.com/support/utah.htm   and http://www.ovid.com/support/support.htm

Ovid reserves a three-hour weekly window for maintenance of its servers and networks.This window is from 7:00 - 10:00 PM Mountain Time each Saturday. Modifications to these downtimes are announced through the News message as you log in to the service.

8. Describe the statistics you provide, and discuss whether your statistical reporting complies with guidelines developed by the International Coalition of Library Consortia which may be found at www.library.yale.edu/consortia/webstats.html .

Ovid's turn-key database report generator is called OvidStat. OvidStat is a flexible and powerful usage statistics reporting program that gives you valuable information on usage of Ovid software and databases at your site. OvidStat mines your log file and transforms raw statistics into actionable reports, giving you the information you need to tailor your Ovid database and full text offerings, concurrent user licenses, and even your hardware configuration to ensure that the right information resources are available to the right users when and where they're needed.

Using OvidStat's intuitive report design GUI, you can specify criteria such as user ID, user group, database name, client type, time, and IP address, and generate reports on the types of full-text publications viewed, overall database usage, usage of a particular database, peak system usage, turnaways, and much more.

OvidStat reports include statistics -- both aggregate and average values -- for numbers of search sessions, session length, numbers of search statements, as well as numbers of records printed, viewed, and saved. The OvidStat program supports most of the reporting requirements listed in the ICOLC document.

9. Describe your pricing structure or formula for the product. If there are additional costs for retrieving full text, describe the pricing for this service. 

As noted above, in general, there are two components to pricing Ovid products: the database license and the Ovid software charge. In some few cases the database publisher has developed pricing models for consortia (e.g. CINAHL). In most cases, however, publishers have to be approached with details of the libraries that are interested in licensing the database, providing such information as name/address/contact for each institution, and a size indicator (usually FTE). The publisher than provides Ovid with a custom quote for that specific group. Typically publishers have different pricing models for academic libraries, corporate libraries, and government libraries.

Because of the (extreme) variation in pricing models among the over 80 database producers offered by Ovid, it is not possible to discuss pricing in the absence of more detailed information from prospective libraries. Once there is an indication of the number of libraries interested in specific products, we would be happy to provide pricing.

The Ovid software charge is an annual, concurrent user-based charge, and will vary depending on the size of the institutions and the number of databases licensed. In some cases Ovid provides "package" pricing which bundles together the software charge with the database license charges.

10. What is the minimum participation level (however you care to define it) that would be needed to allow participating libraries to receive a discount? What is the minimum discount for a group buy? Please clarify how you would treat existing library customers with regard to a group buy.

There is no minimum number of institutions required (as noted above, Ovid has created special package pricing which is available to single institutions). These packages represent significant discounts over licensing the databases individually.

Participation in any consortial pricing model is open to existing Fixed Fee Ovid Online customers only at the time of database renewal (e.g. we will not be able to retroactively pass through discounted pricing if a library is already licensing a particular Ovid database). Consortium pricing is not available to local network customers.

11.  Please provide name and contact information (toll-free telephone number, e-mail address, hours, etc.) should libraries wish to make further inquires.

For additional information, please contact:

Sean O’Doherty
Manager, Academic Network Sales
Western Region
Ovid Technologies, Inc.
510-528-6234
fax: 510-528-3927

e-mail: [email protected] 

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