HighBeam Research is an online, paid search engine for newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines and encyclopedias. The site has access to over 80 million articles from 6,500 publications, most of which are not available for free elsewhere on the internet. Thousands of new articles are added daily, archives date back over 25 years including trade journal, newspaper articles, and peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of subjects and industries; and there are tools for finding, saving, organizing, and sharing information as documents. Aside from a free 7-day trial (credit card required), access to HighBeam costs $30 per month or $200 per year for the first year and $300 for subsequent years.
As of March 13, 2012 HighBeam has generouslly agreed to give free, full-access 1-year accounts for Wikipedia editors to use, at the discretion of the community. HighBeam is excited about this and does not expect there to be a shortage of these free, 1-year accounts; however, editors will have to have a 1 year-old account and 1000 edits in order to qualify for one. At the end of 1 year, editors who found the resource useful can simply re-apply.
The current plan, although up for discussion, is for sign-ups for the accounts to begin on Monday April 2 at 10am EST and remain open until the following Monday; if there are more editors than accounts, to assign them randomly; if a surplus of accounts remain available, to re-open the sign-up page for regular additions.