"Springer, the publisher of SpringerLink, one of the world's largest scientific databases, is sponsoring CiteULike. They are also going to help us further spread the word about the site and provide access to lots of technical integration opportunities, hopefully expanding CiteULike's ability to enhance the social discovery of scholarly papers." - Michael Kuhn

Not sure how I feel about that. No conflicts of interest, hopefully. - Neil Saunders

Wonder how long till they start charging subscription fees. - Donnie Berkholz

I don't have a problem with sponsorship per se but I hope they can keep citeulike in the public arena. I always hoped it would make it through to the point where people started investing in these things as infrastructure for researchers. - Cameron Neylon

I did not see that coming :). I have been thinking that there are so many people working on these tools that there would be space for some strategic collaborations. Not ever publishers has the same development capacity as Nature for example so getting web tools developers and e-learning academics together with publishers sounds like productive partnerships. I was expecting more PLoS or BMC to do this. - Pedro Beltrao

Of all the people. Hmmm .. well benefit of doubt, but they can't slip up or there will be some screaming done :) - Deepak Singh

I am more pessimistic about this than most, it seems. I will be avoiding CiteULike now, even though I had just started using it (again, after a long break) because of recommendations here on FF. I do not see this going anywhere good and don't want to be relying on CiteULike when the shit hits the fan. Per Pedro's comment, what is wrong with PLoS/BMC strategic thinking that they did not step up to this opportunity? - Bill Hooker

To be blunt - I suspect lack of funds. PLoS and BMC are near or just above break even. Not sure they can take on another loss leader in the medium term. - Cameron Neylon

What Cameron said. CiteULike have been looking for a commercial partner / buyer for a while AFAIK (that's not a bad thing) and have held out until now, so Springer must be offering something interesting. - Euan

Publishers can offer more than just money. Users and awareness would be a big boost to many of these social sites. One additional offer could be resources in the form of development time. Letting their developers spend some time on developing the tool even if mostly to have a deeper integration with the publishers software. - Pedro Beltrao

We now have Connotea (NPG), 2collab (Elsevier) and CiteULike (Springer). So what is Wiley-Blackwell doing? - Martin Fenner

Wiley Interscience http://www.interscience.wiley.com (i.e. nothing interesting right now) - Duncan Hull

Lets not forget RefWorks + Scopus (Elsevier), they seem to be in bed together too http://duncan.hull.name/2008... - Duncan Hull

I think unless we have scholarly infrastructure providers then this kind of thing will have to have a commercial backer or good business model. Its no different from buying a copy of Endnote at the end of the day (which is not to say I am ready to start paying for it!) - Cameron Neylon

Cameron is correct. Unless the universities and research facilities are willing to step up to the plate and fund initiatives such as CiteULike, the scholarly community will be reliant upon commercial and society providers of information services. That can be a good thing, using Duncan's example of Refworks + Scopus, because services that are integrated and interoperable can enhance workflow efficiency. Providers *are* eager to know what services are working as well as what doesn't. - Jill O'Neill