1. CHICKEN LITTLE WAS WRONG Karen Hunter Senior Vice President, Strategy Elsevier Science IATUL, Kansas City, 3 June 2002

2. Who was Chicken Little? English or American fairy tale or fable she was a chicken walking in the woods KERPLUNK! -- an acorn (a small nut) fell and hit her on the head but Chicken Little was confused she ran and yelled to all her friends “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

3. Fifteen years of Chicken Littles for fifteen years, there have been Chicken Littles crying that the scholarly publishing was in fatal crisis they were (and still are) wrong... but the cries did serve a purpose everyone had to reconsider what they were doing and healthy changes have resulted among publishers and libraries

4. Reality check reality: 15 years ago, perhaps 500 copies of any given journal were physically distributed around the world today, journals available on >10 million desktops access to information is much faster, cheaper per use and ubiquitous

5. Scholarly communication is better, not worse this was done by publishers while: –moderating price increases –reducing profits –investing heavily in innovation –increasing user satisfaction and efficiency many times over credit to all involved: librarians and publishers

6. My point... it is easy to cry “the sky is falling” and look for people to blame for what were admittedly difficult situations -- but it is not that black and white and never has been there is plenty of credit and blame to share on all sides, both past and present and, frankly, it is time to get past the finger- pointing & to acknowledge positive changes

7. Issues of today and tomorrow 1. continued innovation 2. next round of initiatives 3. reliable permanent digital archiving 4. sustainable business models

8. 1. Continued innovation e-journals are just the start of the trans- formation in scholarly communication –need more innovation –innovation takes patience and persistence role of commercial publishers in the early experimentation with universities –TULIP & PEAK –Red Sage

9. Continued innovation (2) co-operation is essential in an electronic world commercial publishers funded the development of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and CrossRef CrossRef now 122 publishers (2/3 non- profit), >6,300 journals and nearly 5 million articles

10. Continued innovation (3) must resist the temptation to consolidate and reduce investment some things done on faith, for example digitization of backfiles –believe important to make this conversion –responsibility to community to do it must be realistic about recovery of investments as well

11. 2. Next initiatives: books e-journals are the “low-hanging fruit” recent problems with e-books need to be reviewed and lessons learned –“book dumps” not the answer need to unlock information in books, particularly references and texts –reconfigure some types of scholarly book information to use e-opportunities

12. Next initiatives: search & navigation improve navigational tools –linking has been a major value-add phenomenon of the past five+ years –now need to add significant sophistication to links and ability to navigate large bodies of heterogeneous information (different types, different quality) useful full-text cross journal searching?

13. 3. Digital archiving Elsevier Science takes digital archiving seriously –responsibility to authors –responsibility for maintaining “the minutes of science” –importance to library community –interest in maintaining an asset

14. Digital archiving (2) formal commitment in our ScienceDirect license to assure permanent availability of those e-journals on SD just completed year-long planning project with Yale University Library on building a permanent digital archive

15. Yale project assumptions digital archive > 100 years archiving content, not format or functionality archive responsible for migration archive not competing with the publisher archive should not be totally “dark” -- i.e., need some use archive not a mirror of the publisher’s site archive does not create content not in e-edition highly desirable for publisher to provide needed metadata standards are key archive is not a “hot backup” for disasters

16. Official archives close to agreement with two major national libraries to hold official digital archives of all Elsevier Science journals offered via ScienceDirect these institutions would accept responsibility for maintaining digital files forever looking for 1-2 more institutions

17. 4. New business models goal of all to get the right information to the right user at the right time maximum access remains a target criticism (and misrepresentation) of so- called “big deals” does not help want to increase use; is this in conflict with any usage-based pricing model? “free” means someone else is paying

18. New business models part of the process is finding new, non- traditional markets for growth –in Elsevier Science case, medical information offers some of these opportunities also modification of growth expectations emphasis on controlling and reducing costs

19. To partner and to lead we acknowledge the responsibility that comes with being the largest international scientific, technical and medical publisher we want to partner with our customers and to be the leader in new services

20. In summary goal should be to work together we have tried to extend our hand many times over, with mixed results our Strategic Partners Program permits us to move forward with those interested in developing solutions we welcome all who are ready to retire Chicken Little and deal with the future