Starting today, Impactstory profiles cost $5 per month.
Why? Because our goal has always been for Impactstory to support a second scientific revolution, transforming how academia finds, shares, understands, and rewards research impact. That’s why we’re a nonprofit, and always will be. But (news flash), that transformation is not going to happen overnight. We need a sustainability model that can grow with us, beyond our next year of Sloan and NSF funding. This is that model.
So what does five bucks a month buy you? It buys you the best place in the world to learn and share your scholarly impact. It buys you a profile not built on selling your personal data, or cramming your page with ads, our ability to hustle up more funding, or a hope that Elsevier buys us (nonprofits don’t get acquired).
Five bucks buys you a profile built on a simple premise: we’ll deliver real, practical value to real researchers, every day. And we’ll do it staying a nonprofit that’s fiercely committed to independence, openness, and transparency. Want to fork our app and build a better one? Awesome, here’s all our code. Want access to the data behind your profile? Of course: it’s one click away, in JSON or CSV, as open as we can make it. And that ain’t changing. It’s who we are.
We’ve talked to a lot of users that feel $5/month is a fair deal. Which is great; we agree. But we know some folks may feel differently, and that’s great too. Because if you’re in that second group, we want to hear from you. We’re passionate about building the online profile you do think is worth $5 a month. In fact, we’re doing a huge round of interviews right now…if you’ve got ideas, drop us a line at team@impactstory.org and we’ll schedule a chat. Let’s change the world, together.
New signups will get a 14-day free trial. If you’re a user now, you’ll also get a 14-day trial; plus if you subscribe you’ll get a cool “Impactstory: Early Adopter” sticker for your laptop. If you’re in a spot where you can’t afford five bucks a month, we understand. We’ve got a no-questions-asked waiver; just drop us a line showing us how you’re linking to your Impactstory profile in your email signature and we’ll send you a coupon for a free account.
We’re nervous about this change in some ways; it’s not exactly what we’d imagined for Impactstory from the beginning. But we’re confident it’s the right call, and we’re excited about the future. We’re changing the world. And we’re delivering concrete value to users. And we’re not gonna stop.
Dear Impactstory team,
for my five bucks, I’d like to add ‘indirect’ tweets to the wishlist. So far, article impact is measured based on tweets sent via the journal website. Other tweets about the article, incl those on news stories don’t seem to get picked up. I’d be great to include tweets that don’t come directly from the publishing journal.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Nikola! Cool idea! I’ve added it to our Feedback forum (which is how we prioritize new features to roll out). Mind voting for it there and sharing your idea with others and encouraging them to vote for it as well?
http://feedback.impactstory.org/forums/166950-general/suggestions/6239658-track-indirect-tweets
Cheers,
Stacy
Wanted to follow up with a clarification: we do already track some of the indirect tweets you mention. Any tweet that links to the paper on the journal website, or pre-print server, or a particular URL where the paper resides. If you’re missing tweets to a paper and those tweets meet these “rules,” we should have a closer look. If that’s the case, mind sending an email with details on the paper and a link to some of the missing tweets to tickets@impactstory.uservoice.com?
That said, we do not currently track tweets to blog posts and news articles mentioning a journal article, unless an Impactstory user adds those links to their profile, too. I’ve clarified the Suggestion on our Feedback Forum to better reflect that.
– stacy
Uh, this makes me really worry. Charging before you have a good market share, or are well known… Thats the tipping point where many companies fall down.
I want ImpactStory to succeed.. I just fear this is going to kill it. Like Faculty of 1000. No one uses it anymore.
Hi Ethan,
Thanks for your support! Don’t worry, we’re going to continue to a) roll out kick-butt, professional-grad features that will be worth paying for and b) build our user base.
Cheers,
Stacy
Dear Sir/ Madam,
Do you have any subscription model for researchers living in developing countries? We cannot pay $60 a year, but $5 year could be OK.
Hello Anup!
We have a no-questions-asked fee waiver for those who need it: http://feedback.impactstory.org/knowledgebase/articles/401643-what-if-i-can-t-afford-10-month-or-60-year
All best,
Stacy