Q&A: Peter Derycz of ReprintsDesk.com

ReprintsDesk.com is made for customers to access reprints, ePrints and single articles -- published content they wish to access and use in a copyright-compliant manner. Customers can access reviews in periodicals, popular literature and cutting edge science and technical stories on products or services, but this is not geared for public consumption. We talked with CEO Peter Derycz who explained the ins and outs of this interesting and complex company.

LibGig: For our readers who aren't familiar with ReprintsDesk.com, can you explain to me a little about how your company works?

Peter Derycz: We operate in the world of scholarly literature and serve to find published articles and make the re-use of these stories easy, fast, simple and legal under copyright laws.

LG: It's not for the general public?

PD: No. These are articles you'd find in a biomedical library, and our customers are typically pharma companies or scientists who wish to reprint stories. I'll give you a concrete example. Take a company, a drug company, and they have a really good drug. It's a remarkable drug, and there are great science articles that talk about it, in a molecular or biochemical way. The pharma company wants these articles to be used and published to explain their message; as opposed to using advertising or other methods to get the word out about their drug. What they need is copyrighted material. Let's say they need 100 copies of each article, to give to each of their sales reps. We obtain a legal copy of the article; we do the logistics, printing and distribution. The company gets the articles into the sales reps hands. If the company wants electronic copies of the articles for their webmasters, we have a branch of our company called ePrints that reprints and "eprints" for their site. So essentially, we are in the business of mass distribution of large quantities of scientific articles.

LG: So large companies are your main consumer?

PD: Well, here's another example - this one of single article delivery. A scientist wants to read an article -- high end scholarly literature. Stuff you can't find in a regular bookstore or public library. We would funnel in just one copy for one article. For this one scientist.

LG: How do you handle copyright protection?

PD: We focus on what customers want and what publishers want too, so we nurture relationships with publishers and make sure when we access their content we do it legally and with proper royalty allocations. When somebody wants copyrighted material, we place the order, receive the order, and figure out the best way to get it to them. Sometimes we have to refuse to supply something. Sometimes a customer doesn't want to pay the copyright royalty and so we won't supply the information.

LG: Talk to me about your creative strategy moving forward.

PD: ReprintsDesk is in its third year and we continue to move forward. We have an agreement with the Copyright Clearance Center, where we integrate products and services -- content supply and delivery -- with their world of rights and permissions. We are launching a few new products and are making sure we have the right modules in place for requesting, tracking and logistics.

(Note: Copyright Clearance Center is the world’s largest provider of copyright licensing solutions. They partnered with Reprints Desk to help corporations get the most value from their investments in high value content. The partnership will initially focus on integrating Rightsphere, CCC’s award–winning rights management solution with the STM Document Delivery service from Reprints Desk.)

LG: ReprintsDesk operates behind the scenes, unlike an Amazon. How do you get the word out and to whom?

PD: 10 of our 40 employees here are on our marketing sales force, and we develop relationships with special and corporate libraries and other submarkets: libraries as well as marketing groups and regulatory groups. From this perspective, we pursue different niches -- microniches -- to market and spread the word.

LG: How did you get into the business, and what prepared you to be CEO of a highly specialized reprints company?

PD: I was a student at UCLA and to make ends meet was a library researcher for hire. I would research background information on any subject, if you called me. I started my own consulting business, based on the idea that people had questions. After school and later, I decided to get away from the Q and A side of consulting and more into article supply. If you needed articles, not questions, you called me. That's when I started Infotrieve, which was a document delivery company where I got single articles to people. It was more of an outsourcing company than anything else. We were less concerned with content and logistics. We found the article and we brought it to you. I grew the company and other companies eventually bought in. And in 2003 I sold out. I sold my major shares and took a break.

LG: Nice. What'd you do?

PD: I had four kids. And then I started ReprintsDesk, with the idea that we're more focused on content work flow and helping existing companies improve. A lot of pharma companies now rely on articles -- published literature -- as opposed to advertising and PR to help grow and market their products and companies, and we make it easier for them to get their hands on these stories. Now, we're more corporation and publisher centric. And it's a lot easier for brand managers to do their jobs having these copyright and logistical issues solved from the get-go.

LG: I hear ReprintsDesk has won some accolades recently?

PD: A well-respected information industry analyst called Outsell did a study of document delivery suppliers and we got mentioned in the study -- which was great for such a young company to be competing. There were 4 categories of measure -- breadth of coverage, ease of use, fair pricing and overall satisfaction. We got the top score in all categories.

-Gabe Geltzer