Moving forward in e-business - Distribution of scientific content via intermediaries

The role of the traditional subscription agent focusing on the trade with scientific periodicals between publishers and academic and corporate libraries has nowadays been called in question. Quite a lot of big STM publishers are offering journals both in print and online versions. At the same time some of them make efforts to disintermediate , i.e. to bypass agents and intermediaries in selling electronic content. Meanwhile a growing number of publishers and librarians recognize, that administrative issues of selling and purchasing electronic media turn out to be even more complex and time consuming than in the print environment. Subscription agents, such as one of the leading companies in this branch Swets Blackwell, can therefore define two major areas where innovative services can be developed. Firstly, the process of purchasing and selling subscriptions as well as individual articles should be transferred to an electronic platform. Already now many different types of data can be exchanged electronically between the industry partners by special interfaces. In the near future more and more aspects of the business will be handled by means of web-based systems and tailor made e-commerce solutions. Secondly, electronic periodicals are offered by agents via aggregator systems serving as single access points. The increasing volume of electronic information makes it necessary to categorize the content and create subject-based portals. These portals contain both bibliographic and fulltext information as well as links to subject-related information sources. Through their long term relationship to primary and secondary publishers world-wide, the former subscription agents are in a good position to offer this new type of service and to turn to information providers in a more general sense