The Serials AgentToday & Tomorrow

Richard SteedenEBSCO Information Services

Topics to be covered

• Complexity of the Supply Chain• Business Characteristics of Supply Chain• Why Agents/Intermediaries Will Continue to

Exist• The evolving marketplace• ‘Agent’ Initiatives in the electronic

environment• Ensuring the future of Agents. Who pays?• Meeting the needs of the community

The information chain

• Author• Publisher• Subscription Agent• Library• Reader

The information chain

Author

Reader

? Publisher

? Subscription agent

? Library

The ‘Open Access’ publishing model does just this!

Supply Chain Complexity

Publishersover 60,000+

Titles285,000+

Libraries000’s

Users 000,000’s

Select & Evaluate options

Catalogue records

Ensure delivered

Serials resource life cycle

Order & pay

Bibliographic changes

Missing issues/no service

Management

Information

Renewal criteria/decisi

on

The subscription

agent as intermediar

y

Acquire

Evaluate &Monitor

ProvideAccess

Electronic resource life cycle

The subscription

agent as intermediar

y

Links etc.

Add to lists/portals

etc

Administer

ProvideSupport

Usage stats

Business Characteristics of Serials Supply

Awareness Acquisition ManagementPayment

Multi Transactional & Low Margins & High Volume

Alerting/SDI.Catalogues.Database.Specimen CopiesQuotationsInflation Forecasts

New Orders.Transition.Renewals.Cancellations.Customer Needs.Publisher Needs.Licensing.Access.Consolidation.

In-Advance.Prompt.Methods.Currency.Invoicing.

Claims.Title/Frequency &URL Changes.Management Information.Quality Assurance.Archiving.Authentication.Usage Stats.

So Why do ‘Agents’ Exist?

USERS

LIBRARIES

Simplify

Agent

Add Value

PUBLISHERS

AUTHORS

Simplify & Add Value

• Economies of Scale • Reduced Overheads through eased administration.

• Rights Management• Currency Management

• Outsourcing/consolidation• Licensing & Authentication

• Awareness/Alerting• ILS Interfaces

• Abstract & Full-text Databases• Electronic Linking

• Industry Knowledge & Expertise

A Changing Marketplace….an age of uncertainty….

The role of Intermediaries in the electronic world

• Declining budgets• Price increases• New technology• eJournal Management• Linking & Open URL

• Access v Holdings• Outsourcing• ILS integration • Consortia• Distance learning

‘Agent’ Initiatives in the Supply the Electronic Serials Information

• Aggregation Services • Model Licenses

• Agents as negotiators• EDI & E-commerce

• ‘Software’ services & tools

Aggregation Services(Simple Uncluttered Access Through

a Single Entry Point)

Identification

Acquisition

Access

Management

Linking

Traditional Text Aggregators

• Full text plus A&I– Potential one stop shop for user– Extra revenue stream for publisher

• Business model– Low entry cost for pubs– Aggregator does the work & takes risk– Recent volumes embargoed to protect

subscription revenue?– Library widen content base & electronic

availability

EBSCOhost ‘databases’, Ovid, ProQuest & Gale

‘Contracted out’ Hosting Aggregators

• Hosts full text in place of publisher – Restricted to contracted publishers

• Business model- publisher outsourcing service– charge to publisher– Publisher retains subscription revenue

(existing model)

MetaPress, Extenza, Highwire & Ingenta

Gateway & Hosting aggregators

• Point and hosts full text – Potential one stop shop for user

(headers/abstracts & full-text)– High usage– Avoids data ‘silos’

• Business model– Low /No charge to Agents customers– Publisher retains subscription revenue

(existing model)– Library widens content base &

electronic availability– Pay for view– Linking

EBSCOhost EJS & SwetsWise

Model Licences

WWW.licensingmodels.com

Agents as Negotiators

• NESLI (now replaced by non agent NESLi2)

• EBSCO & California State University (Journal Access Core Collection)

EDI & E-commerce• EDIFACT & X12

– orders, claims, check-in, financial, & management information.

• B2B business transactions – standards & protocols – integration with e-commerce platforms– ( Ariba and Commerce One etc).

• Pay per View

Software services & tools

• Think of the ‘traditional role’ of the agent as an intermediary

• Apply that thinking to the electronic field

• Look to agent provide support in– License negotiation– Title management – A to Z listing– Link resolver services (such as SFX type)

• Group purchasing brings the opportunity for economies of scale

• Electronic delivery can mean the sharing of resources

• Tendering improves the ‘transparency’ of the process– Providing the tender is framed

‘properly!’

Consortia purchasing:the tender process

The emergence of ‘The Big Deal’

• ‘Bundling’ by publishers locking libraries into multi-year, no cancellation agreements

• Increasing proportion of library budget ‘ring-fenced’

• Increased availability of electronic content

• ‘Off the shelf’ (one size fits all) license• Role of agent?

• (Some) libraries resistance to renewing TBD

• Fragmentation of bundles• ‘Bespoke’ (tailored) license• Role of agent?

– Managing ‘bytes’ of information

‘The Big Deal’ (phase two)

The ‘Big Deal’ ?

• “The University of… and other research libraries are holding out, convinced that the Big Deal serves only the big publishers. Many other university and college libraries are also investigating their options, recognising – as we all do – that the push to build an all-electronic collection can’t be undertaken at the risk of; 1)weakening that collection with titles we neither need or want, and 2) increasing our dependence on publishers who have already shown their determination to monopolise the information marketplace.”

• Kenneth Frazier – Director of libraries U of Wisconsin. D-Lib magazine March 2001

– http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier.html

• “…I was surprised to hear speaker after speaker declare that they thought that the ‘Big Deal’ was unsustainable and likely to go sooner rather than later

• Comment on the launce of the Ingenta Institute report “The Consortium Site Licence – is it a sustainable model?” September 2002

Ensuring the future of Agents? Who pays?

• Agent (and all intermediaries) need resources to develop and deliver service(s).

• Traditionally the agent’s income derived from a combination of publisher discount and library ‘service’ charge.

• The changes we are witnessing are forcing a revision to this traditional model.

Who pays?

• Cost to organisation of placing an order…

• Cost to organisation of raising/paying an invoice…

• The need for profit– To ensure stability– To invest in new service developments– To deliver quality service

Publisher discounts

• The high value title– Sub price (say) £1000– Publisher discount to agent 10%– Income for agent £100

• The low value title– Sub price (say) £50– Publisher discount to agent (unlikely!) 10%– Income to agent £5

• The importance of the ‘mix’ of titles

Publisher discounts

• Does it cost the agent (or the library for that matter) any less to process the ‘low value’ title?

• Result is that the high value titles subsidise the low value ones (or the departments that subscribe to the high value titles subsidise the departments that subscribe to the low value titles)

Publisher discounts

• If a library decides to place such high value subscriptions direct with the publisher, then the subsidy is removed.

• The ‘mix’ is disturbed• The consequence (in the long term)

could be higher (agent) charges for libraries for the titles that remain via an agent.

Alternative pricing models

• The need for transparency…and to be able to determine ‘value for money’

• Cost plus models– Where the discounted price has an agreed mark-up

added

• Low/no discount– Where those titles that do not generate enough

revenue for the agent are marked up to an agreed level prior to terms being applied

In a fragmented world of change

…the value the agent/infomediary brings to both publisher and user will

multiply as the complexity of the information chain

grows…..

Meeting the needs of the community

• single point of access for E-journals• single authentication per user

session• linking to fulltext• ensuring user can locate resource• integration of EJournals, databases &

library catalogue• single intermediary library/publisher• licensing• ‘customisable’ access profiles -

flexibility• library ‘branding’• publication information

• usage statistics• financial security• value for money• quality assurance• stability• order generation & checking• claim generation & processing• ‘named’ contact for customer

service• management reporting• ‘outsourcing’ journal receipt

(consolidation)• innovative technology partnership• invoicing flexibility• ‘validated’ links

Questions?

rsteeden@ebsco.com