INTERVIEW: MARK STORM

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Change, and the management of change, has been one unchanging aspect of Mark Storm's career. Now director of publisher relations and marketing, and member of the management team for the world's biggest subscription agent, Swets Blackwell - he has spent most of his working life on the other side of the fence, helping publishers cope with changing economics and changing technology. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that he foresees radical changes still to come in the relations between publishers, subscription agents, librarians, and end-readers.

Publishers in the academic, and particularly science, technology, and medicine (STM), sectors are unique in terms of the investment they have made in new information technologies, and in their success in making electronic publishing financially and commercially viable. Part of the reason lies in the very special nature of the information handled in STM publishing: it is 'must have' or 'need to know' information. Scientists need to publish not only in order to communicate their results to their peers, but also to secure the kudos and prestige of having their work accepted by high-impact journals. Publishing is communication, but it is also reward. Equally scientists need to read journals in order to check on their rivals and to pick up good ideas that are ripe for development.

Business-to-business publishing is a rather different game. Although real-time information, such as share prices, is valuable, very little else is anything other than 'nice to know': it is seldom the case that anyone feels they really must make an effort to read an issue of, say, the Financial Times that they happened to miss last month. Consequently, although huge investments have been made in putting share-price information online, there has been comparatively little take-up of online business publishing more generally. In contrast, STM publishers were able to make the investments they have done in new technology to publish online, because their readers needed to know the information and were willing to pay much higher subscription rates. Business publications, on the other hand, almost always depend on advertising income.

Although he concedes that paper will never disappear entirely from our STM libraries, Mark Storm believes that the pace to an almost exclusively electronic library will quicken. The principal remaining technical obstacle, he believes, is retrievability - essentially the issue of ensuring that scientific papers published in the past can still be accessed today. It is an issue that was discussed in the last Research Information ('Great data, but will it last?' by Vanessa Spedding, Spring 2003, page 16). Once these technological issues have been resolved, we might see libraries with only two or three print subscriptions, he believes.

That, however, merely serves to accentuate the more serious commercial obstacle to the new world of electronic STM publishing. Not even scientific publishing can escape the traditional pressures of a market economy such as ours: if a scientific paper is to be published, someone needs to make money out of that transaction. Even though the STM sector has been more successful than business-to-business publishers, it remains the case that STM publishers have had difficultly coming up with a pricing scheme that fits their needs, and those of their customers (principally librarians acting as a proxy for the end-reader). Customers will want to pay only for what they read, with possibly a small access fee on top. But this is a tricky matter for publishers, for whom the traditional model of a journal's fixed annual subscription is financially rather easier and more predictable than the variable revenues that will come from 'pay on demand'. Here, then, is one significant area of change facing STM publishing.

Publishers will need to redefine their role and how they 'add value' to the process of scientific communication, Storm believes, for they will get paid for the value that they add. Pricing hitherto has been based on print models relating to the number of pages delivered into a library - a scientific journal really represented a bulk shipment of scientific information and was paid for by the metre of shelf space, regardless of how many pages readers subsequently read (or 'accessed' as one might nowadays say). But publishers do not add value merely by managing the bulk printing of the scientific literature: the process involves (or should involve) selecting the right papers to publish out of the mass that are less worthy, editing and preparing them for the readership. Selection will also be done, to some extent, by the ultimate consumers, as they choose a still more limited set of papers to read. But if information supply is more selective, then the price of each bit of information will rise as the volume goes down. 'Why should you pay less for fewer pages when publishers do even more customer- and subject-specific selection, and not just printing?' Storm asked. 'The future will not be volume-driven but service-driven.'

Because subscription agents count both publishers and librarians as their customers, they can take a broader perspective of what pricing schemes work and so they can offer help to both sides. 'We have this overview and people could take advantage of that,' he remarked.

The suggestion that subscription agents, currently the intermediary between librarian and publisher, could almost become consultants to the two groups is one indicator of Storm's view that agents too will have to focus on where they add value to the communication process. One thing is clear to him: that just as publishers can no longer rely on the volume of information they produce, so the future for subscription agents too does not lie in the bulk shipment of information. He noted that his company's mission statement refers to its role as a distribution channel and warns against interpreting that from the perspective of the print world, where success is founded upon volume distribution. Swets Blackwell maintains large warehouses and ships journals out around the world, but as customers replace print with electronic, new roles must and have been found. Instead of bulk distribution, subscription agents too will need to find new ways of adding value: 'Still a distribution channel, but through new and more proactive means, such as Swets Blackwell's consortia and multi site activities. The Greek consortium HEAL-link is a good example of how Swets Blackwell can play an important intermediary role by bringing the customer, in this case a consortium, and publishers together.'

Agents can help librarians with managing their catalogue and making decisions on what journal to buy, although he conceded this is probably more acceptable in the corporate than the academic STM library. 'The tools we have in this company can make life easier for librarians,' he said, although he conceded that no one has yet fully achieved the sort of 'library outsourcing' he is talking about.

As for relations with publishers, he recalls his own experience in publishing when he sometimes found subscription agents an obstacle: 'They fenced off my customers. It can be annoying to find an agent in between'. Some publishers are now forging more direct links with their customers, he notes, because they want to be high up the value chain. In response, he points to the model of Extenza, a sister company to Swets Blackwell within the overall ownership of the private Dutch company Royal Swets & Zeitlinger. Extenza brings industry knowledge and experience to help publishers achieve efficiencies with their back office, internal operations and electronic offerings. Its services are designed to support publishers who currently outsource, or who are planning to outsource, functions such as order fulfilment, physical distribution, electronic publishing and marketing and promotion. 'They have telesales agents who call customers on behalf of publishers to take a proposal forward. This is just one of the many ways in which Swets can actively help bring publishers directly to the customer.

As well as a distribution channel for publishers, agents could also become a marketing channel for them, he believes. 'We have local market knowledge and experience in 23 countries, and can promote new titles for publishers as well as find new markets for them,' he suggested. The company has developed its own electronic portal and management software, SwetsWise. This offers one platform with two modules: SwetsWise online content and SwetsWise subscriptions.

The online content module offers users a single point of access to full text content from the world's leading publishers, with more than 12 million searchable references and links to full-text articles available from publishers such as Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, OECD, Blackwell Publishing, John Wiley, Springer and Taylor & Francis. The subscription module gives librarians full control over all steps of the subscription management process. 'We also develop this into an effective marketing tool for publishers - a gateway to actively promote new titles,' he said.

He concedes that such a development might raise conflicts of interest. Librarians, after all, pay subscription agents to be their agents and expect them to be impartial - a one-stop shop for journal procurement. 'There must be ways to help publishers while maintaining this objective role, although it's tricky to resolve.' Librarians could see benefits in terms of finding out what's new more easily, both in terms of new titles but also in terms of alternative pricing packages - a reference to one of the core strengths of the agent as having knowledge of both sides of the publishing business. One other service that subscription agents could offer librarians, but that they currently do not, is in the area of digital rights management.

In some respects, Storm noted, subscription agents have moved more slowly than their customers, both librarians and publishers, in terms of seeing the need to change in the face of digital distribution of information. 'Agents have been too focused on volume distribution of printed material. This traditional focus is now rapidly shifting towards a more service-driven role in an electronic environment, with a tangible value proposition for our customers.'

A further shift in the electronic age, he predicts, will be away from a focus on individual titles towards 'subject packages' - the whole concept of a journal and of a subject package will be different in the future. The initiative with ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) clearly shows this trend. They represent a cross-publisher venture that is enhanced by the appointment of both Swets Blackwell and Extenza as business partners, providing a global marketing and sales channel as well as a complete journal hosting service for those participating publishers who require it.

The electronic future then is rich in possibility and opportunity. Change will not stop but will continue and even accelerate. In the face of this, Storm has no grand design, no overarching vision of the company in 10 years' time, other than that it must take advantage of the opportunities and play to its strengths. 'It all changes so rapidly that strategic plans with a 10-year scope are almost pointless. It's far more beneficial to keep one's eyes and ears open and to be in close contact with both customer groups: libraries and publishers alike. Only companies that are flexible and quick enough to adapt will survive.'

One thing about the future is certain, however. By the end of the year, the company will no longer be called Swets Blackwell. It was originally created through a merger between Swets Subscription Service, a division of Swets & Zeitlinger, and Blackwell's Information Services, a division of Blackwell Ltd. But Blackwell sold its stake to its partner and withdrew. As a result, there was a legal time limit on the use of the Blackwell name and the company is legally bound to drop it before 1 January 2004.

Just before his interview with Research Information, Mark Storm had been to the meeting to decide the new name, but alas he declined to say what it will be. For that particular change, we will have to wait until a bit later this year.

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