Red Sage Experiment

The Red Sage experiment started in 1992 and ran through 1996. It was initially started by Springer-Verlag, the University of California at San Francisco, and AT&T Bell Labs. Ultimately, several other publishers joined in, and more than 70 biomedical journals were delivered to the desktops of medical students and faculty at UCSF. As with TULIP, the experiment proved much harder to implement than had been originally hoped for. To the best of my knowledge, there were no user charges, so no data is available on the interplay of price and user acceptance. But what is notable is that there was greater critical mass of user-preferred titles among the Red Sage titles and, as a result, usage was very high. The horse will drink if brought to the right water.