I have been off the internet for three days.  This was at first a glorious relaxation, then a growing frustration as I realised that the world was sliding by me, and I was not only snowed into my hut, but likely to be quickly so out of date that when I emerged blinking into the virtual world once again, my friends would remark on the vital sequences of great debates that I had missed.

One of those great debates concerns the articles and reportage surrounding the free publication on the web of essays dedicated to the memory of Jim Gray, the Microsoft researcher lost at sea three years ago.  Gray’s argument, the Fourth Paradigm, concerned the way in which data intensive scientific discovery is altering the way in which science conducts itself.  Gray pointed to the nature of collaboration and data sharing as critical areas, and demonstrated in astronomy, very often a good exemplar, that getting all of the literature in the same places as all of the data, and making them interoperable through distributed computing you could create new findings and, in effect, ” a worldwide telescope” as the New York Times notes in the article referenced above.  Another good example might be in cell signalling, where Signalling Gateway has the same effect in a collaborative environment commissioned from Nature.  And neuroscience now throws up a number of examples.

Even in my enforced absence from the network, I have not read everything in this collection (much of which I would imperfectly understand anyway), but I would strongly recommend Clifford Lynch’s contribution.  He sees the research paper as a “window” on the research field, and points not just to evidential data , but also reference data collections (often computed upon as the stuff of research) and to data mining, with all of the power of inferencing and semantic search brought to bear to discover the things we knew, but did not know we knew.

There is a huge challenge here for STM  traditional publishing and for the information sciences alike.  Who in this new world takes the impresarial role of ensuring that all these elements are available, and not just for science and medicine, but also for the soft sciences and humanities, is critical for the survival in the medium to long term of the structures of public-private sector interaction in the research marketplace.  Yet all around us publishers and the “Open Access” lobby are locked in a footling debate about whether an article is Green or Gold (degrees of openness to those who have too much real work to do).

And the way in which that trivial pursuit is now conducted  was the subject of an excellent note by Phil Davis on the SSP Scholarly Kitchen blog.  Why, he asked on December 15, does the consultative process set up by the Office of Science and Technology Policy have to be dominated by people like Stevan Harnad (the self-appointed arch evangelist of OA), who alone has made 26% of the contributions to this forum online: in  the real world, at a public meeting, “these blowhards are given their time and asked politely to sit down.  We don’t tolerate these people very well because deep down we feel that they are disruptive of democratic discussion where diversity is valued over dominance”.

Quite so.  This is an important comment about democracy and the way we debate on the web: it also reminds us that the time is long overdue for us to get away from the sterile open access debate, which on both sides freezes the research communication process in aspic, and get back to exploring the fast moving world of knowledge discovery itself, which is where Jim Gray takes us.  Then we can begin to properly re-invent “publishing “, and it will need the brains and risk capital of the private sector as well as the needs of scientists and institutions to carry that off.

Last week’s acquisition news appeared to catch the markets in two minds about when strategic players move to consolidate in recovering markets, and when another stage of private equity or other investment is needed to mop up the debt and sanitize the subject prior to flotation or trade sale.

One saga concerns the sale, after a very lengthy process, of Springer Science+Business.  Well, not much business any longer, since the guts of the small B2B operation that went into the mix when Bertelsmann went out had already been sold to offset debt.  In an earlier blog post (Springer’s Dance to the Music of Time) I looked at the potential of this deal to help consolidate the STM market, and concluded that while Informa was unlikely to do the trick (and so it proved) , putting Springer alongside Thomson Reuter’s remaining science interests did make sense.  Well, if that was an opportunity it went begging, since according to the Financial Times (10 December 2009) a deal has been struck with the Swedish private equity house, EQT, backed by the Wallenberg Family.  The reason the strategics kept their hands in their pockets was undoubtedly the debt issue: in the final analysis it looks as if Springer was sold for around €100 million, plus €2.2 billion in debt.

So this means that EQT will put in some fresh capital (€450 million says the FT), renegotiate the debt package at a new level of €1.6 billion, and then presumably refinance to take its profit out of Springer prior to a flotation in happier times when the public markets will be invited to take on these debts.  While the initial private equity intervention gave a strong new management team under Derk Haank scope to regenerate Springer, create efficiencies, make economies, restore margins etc – all of which they did in style – what does this new deal do?  Does it invest something in the company that it does not have already?  Does it improve its current industry-level profitability through creating scope for new investments in technology, or major acquisitions?  No, one sadly suspects it does not…in fact, it may just allow a wealthy Swedish family to eat at the same table where formerly the British Coal Board pensioners ate.  Not in itself an unworthy cause, but hardly a very progressive one for the industry.

Then again, look at what strategic buyers are doing.  Last week mighty Bloomberg bought the fledgling New Energy Finance.  Yes, Bloomberg.  After years of looking at everything and then emulating what it wanted, the very private Bloomberg has suddenly become an active purchaser.  The reason has to be speed.  Clearly, as markets move out of recession, comparisons between the major players in the financial services markets will become more acute. Bloomberg is the expensive one, yet Thomson Reuters is thought by many to more than match it in content.  This has to be a move about service levels and online commentary: energy is a vital market and New Energy Finance, the brainchild of Michael Liebrich, a man just as energetic as his subject matter, had grown a reputation for good commentary in a key sector.  Yet this was a start-up still in the initial growth spurt, so part of this decision has to be about the sort of growth that Michael and his team can do with Bloomberg support, as well as what this content adds to the Bloomberg offering.  Why this, why now?  The latter half of that question seems to be about speed to market – it is cheaper and faster to buy someone half way there than to start from scatch and try to overtake him, especially if you need what he can give right now.  And the energy information market is indeed contracting, as is the market for good financial commentary (Breaking Views would be the analogous case study there).

I should point out here that this blog has now reached 20 entries and while unformed and immature (i’ts the writers, I’m afraid) is very certainly available, and can be taken in a consolidation move while debt levels are as modest as its readership.  Offers please.

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