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News Products from Factiva, LexisNexis and Thomson Compared in Current
Issue of VIP
An independent comparative product review of Thomson NewsRoom,
LexisNexis and Factiva (The Big Three) has just been published by VIP.
VIP conducts in-depth independent reviews of business information
products. To help customers choose among the major vendors, November's
issue takes on all of The Big Three and compares them side-by-side in
a detailed review.
The issue is available to purchase online as a one-off copy priced GBP
54 or by annual subscription starting at GBP 280 for a single location
at: http://web.vivavip.com/go/vip/48
New This Year
VIP conducted a similar comparative review in December 2006, mere
weeks before Thomson announced that it was discontinuing its Thomson
Business Intelligence service at the end of 2007. Among the challenges
of this year's research was to determine which other product within
Thomson companies would be best to compare to Factiva and LexisNexis
in terms of news research capabilities.
Editor Pam Foster selected NewsRoom as the Thomson product, following
extensive discussion with different divisions of Thomson.
The three major services are extensively and independently compared in
terms of number of sources, analysis by subjects, type of publication,
language, geography (including a table comparing numbers of sources
for hard-to-find countries); length of archive, number of full-text
items, number of abstracts, number of translated items; and timeliness
(how long before an item becomes available online), among other
factors.
The same searches are carried out on all three services, and the
results are analysed in terms of overlap, type of publication and
more.
Key Findings
Among the key findings of the research are the following:
- Language: Factiva is the most multi-lingual of all three services
(offering 22 languages) against 16 for LexisNexis and 11 for NewsRoom.
- UK and US coverage: Coverage of UK newspapers is evenly spread
across the three services.
- Asia Pacific coverage: Most of the major Asia Pacific newspapers are
available across all three services. For some titles, LexisNexis
offers a slightly older archive than Factiva.
- Latin American coverage: Factiva has a slight edge over the other
two.
- Middle Eastern newspaper coverage: Three out of four sources are not
available on NewsRoom. A deeper archive is available on LexisNexis
than on Factiva.
- Web content: Web content is available on all three but it is not
possible to distinguish web content from other published content on
NewsRoom
- Multimedia content: Factiva is the only one of the three to offer
multimedia content as part of its prime service.
- Company, industry and market data: Investext reports are no longer
being updated on LexisNexis and NewsRoom.
- Indexing and updating: All three services provide detailed indexing
but only Factiva and LexisNexis extend their updating to foreign-
language documents.
- Language interfaces: Factiva.com offers the same nine language
interfaces. NewsRoom offers a greater choice of interface languages
than the old TBI service. LexisNexis has extended its number of
interface language options and has new customised country interfaces
for UK, US and Australia.
- Source lists: LexisNexis and Factiva both enable the user to create
custom source lists.
- Search output: De-duplication when searching is a basic option on
Factiva and NewsRoom but an irritating omission on Nexis. The ability
to display all search results in KWIC format is a big plus for Nexis
users, as is the automatic and useful sorting of results by format,
subject, company, geography, language and people.
The full review runs 43 pages and includes screen shots, detailed
search results and editorial commentary throughout.
Information for Editors
VIP is a monthly publication of in-depth product reviews and news
analysis for the premium content industry. It is available by paid
annual subscription and is delivered in digital (PDF) format by email.
VIP is published by Free Pint Limited.
Pam Foster, editor of VIP, has been actively involved in the business
information industry as a writer and reviewer for 20 years.
About Free Pint Limited
Free Pint Limited is a UK-based publisher of web sites and
publications serving different niches within the global information
industry. Its properties include FreePint http://www.freepint.com, a
global community of over 79,000 information practitioners who find,
use, manage and share business information; VIP
http://www.vivaVIP.com, a paid-subscription publication for senior-
level decision-makers with budgetary control for premium content
products and services; Jinfo http://www.Jinfo.com, an online
searchable database of information jobs in the UK, Australia and North
America; and ResourceShelf and DocuTicker
http://www.resourceshelf.com, http://www.docuticker.com, two websites
updated daily with resources, full-text reports and other items of
interest to researchers, journalists, librarians and other information
professionals.
Learn more about FreePint at Onopoly, the one-stop site for
contributors and advertisers within the network:
http://www.Onopoly.com.
About VIP
VIP is a digital magazine published monthly and distributed to a paid-
subscriber readership of senior-level decision-makers with budgetary
control for premium content products and services. Each issue features
in-depth, unbiased reviews of premium content products, along with
analysis and commentary on news in the field. Subscriptions are
available on a single-site and multi-site basis and provide invaluable
insight for information professionals, analysts, publishers and other
stakeholders in the business information and premium content arena.
Qualified members of the trade press may submit a request for a
professional courtesy subscription to VIP. Requests will be considered
on a case-by-case basis. For further information, please contact Robin
Neidorf at robin.neidorf@freepint.com
.
- Ends -
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