a missed branding opportunity
Marie Kennedy on Jan 8th 2010
when a researcher is in literature review mode, she is downloading tens of documents at a time to read later. the usual organizational scheme at the beginning of a research project -for me at least- is to save all those files into a folder titled, “to read.” i’m usually caffeinated enough to save the pdf of the articles with my standard file title schema: Author last name_First word of title.pdf. sometimes, if i’m sleepy, it’ll get saved to my downloads folder using the default file name given by the article provider. enter: a missed branding opportunity.
default file names
- elsevier: science.pdf
- routledge: 74848_751305302_903929832.pdf
- emerald: ViewContentServlet.pdf
- sage: 3.pdf
- wiley: fulltext.pdf
see where i’m going with this? i wouldn’t have half a chance at figuring out what i had just downloaded if i didn’t make a conscious effort to rename my file upon saving. if a provider really wanted to be marketing savvy, it would make the default file name “wiley” or “sage.” even more awesome would be if they took the article metadata and named the file with the author last name. ever hopeful!
Filed in articles i'm reading,library,publishers | 2 responses so far|
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leavesamark Jan 8th 2010 at 10:45 am 1
I always liked how the New England Journal of Medicine places the subscribing library’s name and download date in the footer of their pdfs. Good branding for the library, plus it helps to counteract the “everything is free on the internet” fallacy.
marie Jan 8th 2010 at 10:46 pm 2
ah, that’s very nice. i don’t think i’ve seen that before on nejm.