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This article was downloaded by: [University of Utah]On: 09 October 2014, At: 15:59Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
The Serials Librarian: From thePrinted Page to the Digital AgePublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wser20
Helping Manage the E-JournalForestPhilip Wallas aa Online Relations at EBSCO Information ServicesPublished online: 08 Oct 2008.
To cite this article: Philip Wallas (2004) Helping Manage the E-Journal Forest, TheSerials Librarian: From the Printed Page to the Digital Age, 46:1-2, 173-177, DOI:10.1300/J123v46n01_18
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J123v46n01_18
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Helping Manage the E-Journal Forest:Do You Need an Agent Any More?
Part 1
Philip Wallas
Presenter
SUMMARY. The complexity of e-journal subscription manage-ment is requiring subscription agents to re-invent themselves tomeet new demands. E-journal subscriptions have many more compo-nents, including licensing, registration, access, usage statistics, and archiv-ing. By consolidating information and providing one-to-many and many-to-one flows of information, agents can provide efficiencies in operationaltasks as well as simplifying the financial transactions. Agents also can addvalue in negotiations and in aggregating access to e-journals. Agents aremaking changes in processes such as speeding communications topublishers, partnering with third party content hosting services, andentering into discussions about standards for communication of elec-tronic subscription information. This paper was presented as partof a panel that included presentations by Steve Bosch and SeldenLamoureux. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document De-livery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>]
© 2004 by the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Helping Manage the E-Journal Forest: Do You Need an Agent AnyMore? Part 1.” Wallas, Philip. Co-published simultaneously in The Serials Librarian (The Haworth InformationPress, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 46, No. 1/2, 2004, pp. 173-177; and: Serials in the Park (ed: Pa-tricia S. French, and Richard Worthing) The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.,2004, pp. 173-177. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth DocumentDelivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: [email protected]].
http://www.haworthpress.com/web/SERDigital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J123v46n01_18 173
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At the 2002 NASIG conference, one of the plenary speakers warnedsubscription agents that they had better have some other line of busi-ness, implying that their existing business was going to disappear due tochanges in scholarly publishing. That remark spurred me to propose apanel for this year’s conference to explain some of the ways agents arereinventing themselves and to hear librarians discuss how they are andare not using agents.
WHY DO AGENTS EXIST?
Since I work for an agent my bias is obvious, so I’ll keep my part ofthe presentation short. I offer my remarks as a reflection of the role ofagents in general, not any particular agent. Agents exist to create effi-ciencies by managing one-to-many and many-to-one relationships. Ag-gregation and consolidation are our prime principles. The agent’s corebusiness has been to relieve the library and the publisher of certain backoffice operations. Working with an agent ought to cost less than doing ityourself.
All parties are coming to understand how e-journal subscriptions aredifferent from print subscriptions: they are more complex; more a rela-tionship, not just a transaction. What starts as a single event requiresmaintenance on both sides. Here’s a generalized task cycle for e-journalsubscriptions, with similarities to the print cycle but with additional re-quirements. Libraries need to identify, select, negotiate for, license, or-der, pay for, register, access, integrate, administer, resolve problems,evaluate usage, may need to archive, and need to renew their e-journalsubscriptions.
Agents (and publishers, for that matter) are scrambling to meet thehigh expectations that libraries have for e-journals. How are we han-dling the cycle of tasks? I’ll focus on a few areas where agents havemade the most changes or provide the greatest value.
Identify. Agents have long maintained title databases to track titlechanges, price changes, ownership transfers and so forth. These data-bases have been expanded to list e-journals as well as publisher pack-ages and even custom collections. Agents monitor when journalsbecome available online and notify print subscribers.
Negotiate and license. Agents offer negotiation facilitation to stream-line the request and offer process because they understand the demands oflicensing and consortia deals. I have worked with dozens of publishersas they form their online pricing and packaging strategies, and draft li-
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censes. Because agents have experience with the whole market, we canhelp publishers (and libraries) understand which approaches work andwhich are not well received.
Order. Agents have developed new e-journal order processing sys-tems. What worked for print is too slow for online. When everythinggoes right, new e-journal orders go to the publisher and to the pub-lisher’s content host at the same time, often with expedited payment al-lowing access to be turned on in days instead of weeks. We now captureand include the customer contact name, e-mail address and, if we canget it, the publisher’s customer subscriber ID in e-orders. Of course, ev-erything does not always go right, but we’re learning and participatingin development of standards for the exchange of subscription informa-tion.
Payment. Agents consolidate financial transactions. Their invoicingexperience and understanding of library needs have always been astrength, along with foreign currency capabilities and global offices.
Registration. Many publishers and content hosts describe the prob-lem of subscribers who do not register for the online access they are en-titled to, so online access goes unrealized. Agents have developed “backdoor” partnerships with content hosts so they can help libraries registerfor access, then help maintain any changes (in IP addresses, contact in-formation etc.)
Access and integration. Many agents offer consolidated e-journalgateways–a single user interface to e-journal content from any source.These interfaces are not just searchable collections of metadata andlinks, but are “subscription-aware,” so users know which content theyown and which they can purchase by the article. Agents have also devel-oped dozens of ILS interfaces and are able to provide durable URLs forOPACs. Agents understand and supply MARC records. Agents are alsobeginning to provide comprehensive A-to-Z services and OpenURLcompliant link servers.
WHY LIBRARIES AND PUBLISHERS GO DIRECT
Why are some libraries and some publishers playing what someonehas called “disintermediate thy neighbor” and bypassing agents? Thereare several reasons. Perhaps most common is the idea that the publishercan save the cost of the agent’s commission. Yet publishers have fre-quently underestimated the costs and complexity of providing an e-journal service, beginning by making them available “free” with a print
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subscription (“it’s so simple, we don’t need an agent”). Now publishersfind there really is no free lunch as they are challenged to provide de-tailed invoices, round the clock customer service, ILS and MARC rec-ord feeds and persistent e-journal links. Their systems are inadequate tomeet these demands and their responses are, by nature, piecemeal.Should each of them develop the necessary systems? At what costs?Also, publishers are concerned that the involvement of a middlemanmight obscure important market signals as they experiment with terms,packaging and pricing for online journals. Libraries bypass agents be-cause publishers encouraged it and agents didn’t respond particularlywell to licensing and consortia needs at first. Last year, an Ingenta Re-search Institute report quoted one librarian as saying agents had missedthe boat on consortia e-journal licensing. I can personally testify that,whether we missed the boat or not, we are swimming very hard now.
JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD
Publishers are asking themselves what functions are truly a part oftheir core business. Many are deciding that they are not technology or-ganizations, and are outsourcing their content hosting. Even some pub-lishers who at first excluded agents from handling financial aspects oftheir online licenses have decided that the invoicing and collectionroles, too, are best handled by a third party with economies of scale. Forboth publishers and libraries, thinking about core roles can lead to therecognition that just because the library or publisher can go direct, thatis not necessarily the best course. What is the best use of your profes-sional staff resources?
WHAT WE MUST DO BETTER
The new e-journal processes we have developed have to evolve fromspecial projects to become an integral part of our operations, efficientlyautomated and with rich status communications back to libraries andcustomers. We must continue to support standards for licensing, link-ing, usage reporting, and exchange of subscription information. Moregenerally, agents have not done a good enough job explaining the valuethey add and have not done a good enough job of explaining to librariesand publishers how agents make money. In light of the RoweCom col-
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lapse, the latter point takes on increased significance. We have to do arenewed job of explaining ourselves.
WHY LIBRARIES BENEFIT FROM USING AN AGENT
Agents continue to assist libraries in the following ways:
1. No single publisher can provide the overview information fun-damental to making collection development decisions.
2. Focusing on Big Deals cannot meet important needs. Smallerpublishers still publish a very large number of key titles; for ex-ample, the Brandon-Hill core titles for medical libraries arepublished by 61 different publishers, many of whom do nothave the staff to deal directly with libraries.
3. No publisher service or content host is as comprehensive asagent gateways in providing a “subscription-aware” singlepoint of access to your e-journal subscriptions.
4. Consolidating financial transactions continues to have the bene-fits it has always had: reduced administrative costs for the li-brary and publisher and invoicing that meets your needs.
5. Agents are service organizations; publishers are not.
If you are convinced of the value of using an agent, do not assumethat publishers automatically allow agents to be involved in a transac-tion. If you insist, almost all publishers will allow your agent to handlethe financial transaction. Make their inclusion explicit in the agreement.
If you are persuaded that going direct is the best approach, under-stand the work involved to manage post-sale access, integration, admin-istration, and other tasks and be sure who will be responsible for each ofthem.
CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES
Philip Wallas is Director of Online Relations at EBSCO Information Services (E-mail: [email protected]).
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