Okay, here I am at home today and away from the firewalled, database-rich environment of my usual medical library setting. That was also the case a few weeks ago when I reviewed the search engine, Infovell.

Now the search world is reacting to the press release, “Infovell Changes Name to DeepDyve, Rolls Out Consumer Search Engine for the Deep Web.”

Some of the reaction has been of the pooh-poohing sort, pointing out that most users already possess such search options through the online offerings of public libraries or free resources such as PubMed or the free parts of ScienceDirect.

But I would argue for the merits of DeepDyve. There is a huge untapped market of unaffiliated knowledge workers, such as independent scholars and consultants, who work out of their homes or travel continually and who need search tools that are not tied to institutions. And yes, ScienceDirect has a wealth of material to explore. But as a search engine? Yeech. Clunky as can be. And much as I love PubMed, I often have to search it and ScienceDirect and Academic Search Premier (and one doesn’t have unlimited time to do all that in every situation). What DeepDyve has going for it is an elegant interface and the capacity to look for a huge chunk of verbiage that ScienceDirect would gag on.

Much of the carping argues that the depth of what DeepDyve searches is still by some lights limited and that what it is touting as results from the deep Web are often little more gleanings from Wikipedia. Point taken—for now. But if sci-tech and business publishers want to reach serious searchers (you know, the kind that might actually shell out $35 for a white paper or $90 for one of Elsevier’s clinics on medical topics) they would do well to enter into talks with DeepDyve to render their stuff findable to such potentially lucrative markets. DeepDyve is good technology. It is not DeepDyve’s fault if the publishers are clueless about partnering with search companies. I am deeply into clinical research searching and find it unfathomable why the medical publishers are so blinkered and act against their own interests when it comes to leveraging the power of search start-ups. Let us hope that some savvy marketers at Elsevier, Springer and the specialized trade publications will come knocking on DeepDyve’s doors.

And who can argue against attempts at innovation in search? DeepDyve charges less than many academic journals—and that is a single subscription to a single journal as opposed to the wealth of data that DeepDyve can search. It is also one of the few search engines that actually provides items “more like this” when asked for just that.

Both DeepDyve and DeepDyve Pro are currently available. DeepDyve is free to all users, while DeepDyve Pro is offered at a rate of $45 per user, per month. Multi-seat licenses, with per-seat discounts, are also available to larger organizations.

Power searchers, check out DeepDyve. Free gets you only so far. You can sign up for a beta version: Give it a spin.