The biggest threat comes from the telecoms 25. The future will be hybrid. There will be a large variety of content, varying from raw material up to validated documents with multimedia supplements We need document or information identifiers. We also need intelligent agents to find the information for us. In some countries libraries are not funded by central agencies, but have to acquire funding themselves.
Publishers are part of the science community.
They invest a lot in staff, training and infrastructure and employ many scientists. Publishers have always been an active part of the scientific information system. STM, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, registered in The Netherlands, represents some 80 percent of all activities in this area. STM publishers are not media, broadcasting, software or telecom companies. We feel that a clarification of the publishing process is needed.