Notice of Intent o Award Sole Source Justification to Digital Science & Research Solutions, Inc

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intends to issue a sole source firm fixed priced purchase order award to procure Altmetric Explorer for Institutions and three (3) Altmetric Publisher Badges from Digital Science & Research Solutions, Inc (DSRSI). The Stephen B. Thacker CDC Library has been subscribing to an altmetrics product on behalf of all CDC users since 2015. This product allows the library to provide information to CDC scientists and leadership about the social media impact of scientific publications authored by CDC users, as well as being able to follow the social media activity for any article that is being tracked by the altmetrics product, whether or not it is a CDC author. This information provides valuable feedback to CDC scientists and leaders about who is talking about CDC research in the online media. Types of online media tracked by the current altmetrics product includes Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, selected blogs, diverse news sources, Google+, Wikipedia and a number of other social media products and sources. The altmetrics product provides a search interface for the altmetrics data with many search and filtering options which allow users to explore the data in a number of different ways. The CDC library regularly supplies a list of CDC publications and authors to the vendor which provides CDC users with the ability to search a CDC specific subset of the altmetrics database. This requirement will consist of a continuation of the currently subscribed altmetrics services. It will also include provision for three altmetrics “Publisher Badges” for the three CDC journals – Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Reports (MMWR), Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) and Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD). The publisher badges provide both the ability to use the altmetrics graphical badge on the publication’s website, but also additional services customized for the use of journal publishers. This requirement will provide continued access to altmetrics software and altmetrics data as provided by our current vendor. These services will include access to a CDC-specific, customized instance of the altmetrics database, including regular updating of the CDC-specific data on an at least weekly basis, and programmatic access via an API that meets Federal data-in-transit requirements. The vendor will provide user support for the product in a timely manner, including advice, training and assistance in implementation. The altmetrics product provided should include article-level data for all published journal articles for which social media mentions have been identified for at least the last seven years (starting by 2012 or earlier). This means that any article, published at any date, if it was mentioned in a publicly available social media outlet within the last seven years would be included in the dataset. Altmetrics data for scholarly articles are not limited to CDC-authored articles, but include any published scholarly work with social media mentions. CDC believes that this requirement is met by only one provider. This procurement will be processed under the authority of FAR 6.302-1 and 6.302-2. Only one responsible source and no other sources will satisfy agency requirements. However, interested parties who believe they can offer an identical product that is also compatible may send an expression for our consideration. Any response should be emailed to contract specialist Paula Taylor at [email protected] within fifteen (7) days of the issuance of this notice Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. A determination by the government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the government.