Open the gates!

December 2, 2004 5:03 AM

Lexis-Nexis...AlaCarte? Yes, it's true. The giant archive of news, corporate and legal information is now providing a pay as you go service. Queries can be entered for free, without subscription; charges are affixed to downloaded material on a per-document basis. (via Poynter)
posted by Smart Dalek (9 comments total)

I miss a lot of things from college, but free access to Lexis-Nexis is near the top of the list.
posted by SkinnerSan at 5:17 AM on December 2, 2004

There's also LexisOne. Not as cool as Lexis, but they have some free legal material available.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 5:55 AM on December 2, 2004

If you are an American, you can simply go to the Library of Congress, sit down at any ol' computer, and you will have access to hundreds of databases for free. You're already paying for it...
posted by reflection at 6:26 AM on December 2, 2004

I think that Google's big deployment of its IPO cash will be to buy Lexis-Nexis or one of the other big proprietary databases.
posted by MattD at 6:29 AM on December 2, 2004

Pretty interesting development, coinsidering that Martindale-Hubblell is now also positioning its ratings systems for lawyers as a promotional/prestige tool.
posted by ShawnStruck at 7:22 AM on December 2, 2004

I might be wrong, but Nexis running a Pay-as-you-go service looks to me as just a way to get non-subscribers onto the site, and then anally ream them for every penny they have. I have monthly service with Nexis. One month, (I suppose it was promotion for the service) my bill listed what I would have spent if I had paid-as-I-went. I would have spent CDN$16,000, it said. Considering the monthly cost for one user was about CDN$300, I was pretty glad that I had paid before I went.
posted by UncleDave at 7:29 AM on December 2, 2004

LexisNexis AlaCarte is nothing new, its simply a rebranding and a slight readjustment of the pricing structure of its former product, "LexisNexis by Credit Card".


MattD, don't hold your breath for someone buying out LN, its one of ReedElsevier's (LN's parent company) most profitable holdings.
posted by dicaxpuella at 8:12 AM on December 2, 2004

Also, almost every big aggregator has been doing this for a while... Go to Google Scholar and try to click on any article (that's at a commercial aggregator) and you'll see that it's pay-per-view, as well.

This is why Open Access Journals are so important.
posted by Human Stain at 2:01 PM on December 2, 2004

Also, most public university libraries let people on their network for free, which includes access to Lexis-Nexis.
posted by calwatch at 8:41 PM on December 3, 2004