Research Solutions Inc (NASDAQ: RSSS) is a vertical software-as-a-service and AI company that helps research-intensive organizations access and manage published scientific, technical, and medical content. It makes money through two streams: recurring Platform subscription fees and per-article Transaction fees for STM content delivery. Platform revenue reached $19.0M in FY2025 (year ended June 30, 2025), up 35.8% year over year, while Transaction revenue was $30.1M, down 1.8%, for total revenue of $49.1M. The Platform segment carries substantially higher gross margins, $16.6M gross profit on $19.0M revenue versus $7.6M on $30.1M for Transactions. Core platform products include Scite.ai, a full-text STM search and AI assistant tool, and Resolute.ai, a discovery solution. The company sells primarily to corporate, academic, and government researchers, with particular emphasis on pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device customers. Research Solutions does not pay dividends and has never declared one, as of the FY2025 10-K filed September 19, 2025.

Revenue model

Two revenue streams: (1) Platform: recurring SaaS subscription fees under annual or multi-year auto-renewing license agreements, sold per seat, enterprise, or individual license; (2) Transactions: per-article fees for individual STM content delivery, billed monthly or by credit card. Platform revenue was $19.0M and Transaction revenue was $30.1M in FY2025 (year ended June 30, 2025).

Products and services

Scite.ai: full-text STM search engine with AI assistant, citation context (supporting or contrasting), and literature discovery. Resolute.ai: STM and adjacent dataset discovery tool covering clinical trials, patents, life science and MedTech regulatory data, competitor and technology insights, and internal customer datasets. STM single-article delivery: electronic and paper-based fulfillment of individual journal articles sourced from hundreds of content publisher arrangements. Rights and permissions facilitation for content reuse, copyright compliance, and AI model training use cases.

Customers and end markets

Corporate, academic, and government researchers, as well as individual researchers. Primary vertical emphasis on pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device customers. Additional markets include academic institutions, aerospace, automotive, electronics, chemicals, and food and agriculture. No single customer accounted for more than 10% of accounts receivable as of June 30, 2025. Traditional buyers include corporate libraries; growth targets include non-library buyers in R&D functions and small and medium-sized businesses.

Value-chain role

Intermediary and software layer between STM content publishers and research-intensive end users. Aggregates content from hundreds of publishers under non-exclusive distribution arrangements, approximately 45% of content cost in FY2025 derived from three largest suppliers. Provides proprietary technology for ordering, authentication, reporting, and workflow integration via web interfaces and APIs. Also facilitates copyright compliance and rights management between content users and publishers.

Geographic exposure

The filing does not provide a geographic revenue breakdown. Paper-based article delivery relies on library relationships built worldwide, and platform access is cloud-based, but no country or regional revenue split is disclosed in the excerpts.

Competitors

Copyright Clearance Center, OCLC (regional interlibrary loan networks), National libraries outside the United States, Large publishers with in-house single-article delivery capabilities, Reference management application vendors, Piracy (identified explicitly in the filing as a primary competitor)

Source: SEC 10-K, filed 2025-09-19

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