The large American publisher of professional books and journals, John Wiley & Sons Inc., has kept its headquarters in New York since 1807. But its operations are worldwide and decentralized. That's why its newest Web site, DiabetesOneStop.com, comes from its U.K. subsidiary.
This is one site where I liked even the ads
"It fits in very well with Wiley's U.K. publishing program," say Paul Holmes, E-Business Development Director, and Austen Yapp, Web Community Manager for DiabetesOneStop.com. I spoke with both of them on the phone together at their office in Chichester, West Sussex, England, which they say is down by the sea about 40 miles from London. Their new site has been on-line only since March 26.
They call it a OneStop service because the site targets the four major diabetes audiences. Their initial focus is on health care professionals.
"We want to get it right with health care professionals first," Holmes and Yapp say. "The idea is to get health care endorsement of the site, which will then enable those people living with diabetes to trust its content."
Early traffic statistics confirm the success of their targeting. In the first month the site had just under 11,000 visitors and about 1,000 registrations, about 90 percent of which were health care professionals.
The other three target audiences are people working for the pharmaceutical industry, scientists and researchers, and those living with diabetes. While some of the site's content is common to all visitors, Wiley has tailored some of it to meet the needs of specific groups.
People with diabetes have access to the section for those living with diabetes and to the science and researcher section. But the health care and pharmaceutical areas are off limits.
"That is a quirk of the European codes of practice in that we can't advertise prescription medications to patients," Holmes and Yapp say. "Direct consumer advertising is fine in the U.S., but it is not legal in the U.K."
The site contains a broad range of clinical and scientific articles relating to diabetes and associated conditions—both published and commissioned—as well as conference abstracts and reports. Other features include directories of useful services, a conference calendar, and educational material for both health care professionals and people living with diabetes.
This is one site where I liked even the ads. That's because they were mostly for Wiley's books, about 20 of which deal with diabetes.
The best parts of the site, Holmes and Yapp say, are the on-line journals that Wiley publishes. The two key diabetes journals are Practical Diabetes International, a controlled circulation title with about 20,000 subscribers, and Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, by subscription for the research market.
Click on "Library & Bookshop," then on "Periodicals," and then on the name of each journal. This will take you to the full text of Practical Diabetes International articles since January 2000 and selected articles from Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, also since January 2000. While DMRR articles are more technical, many people with diabetes would benefit from articles in either publication.
"We are quite proud that we have a workable model of putting up content from subscription journals as we are doing with DMRR," Holmes and Yapp say. "We want to take that forward and approach other publishers who are running subscription journals and get other publishers to come in with us and put their content—or limited content—within our site as well. Ideally, it would be nice to list the contents of each journal and have one or two full text articles, like we do for DMRR. But if the publisher is only able to give us abstracts, that is good enough. The idea is that although we are brought to you by Wiley, it is not just about Wiley content."
The American Diabetes Association originally published this article on its Web site as one of my “About the Internet” columns.
Go back to Home Page
Go back to Diabetes Directory