And they were instrumental in helping us create a system that does more than we originally spec'd out, one that serves today's needs and can adapt easily to future needs. What Atypon brings to the table has been invaluable. They might log on as an individual, as a member of university department, and as a member of two or three professional societies. Administering the site can be a challenge, because each journal has a different publishing group that wants to maintain control over its product. Perhaps most significantly, the way publishers conduct business over the Internet today will almost surely be different tomorrow.
Individual journals create special offers.
Publishers may create tiered levels of accessibility. Alliances might be formed where one set of journals can be linked to journals from other publishers. Some may want to set up a pay per article system for users without subscriptions. It cannot incur the types of time and money expenses that today's systems do whenever a change becomes necessary. And because the system can isolate bugs within a single agent, it protects against one bug bringing the entire system down.