Elsevier MD focuses on workflow

Science giant wants better relationships with academia and government

Elsevier has moved to boost relationships with users and provide more
workflow-based solutions by appointing Roy Jakobs as its managing director
for academic and government sales and customer marketing.

Jakobs will lead the global sales and marketing organisation working
directly with universities and government institutions to provide research
information solutions, including ScienceDirect and Scopus, and bibliographic
databases such as CrossFire Beilstein.

Jakobs said information professionals would remain key to supporting
researchers. “The information professional is an important partner in supporting
researchers with the information they need. Elsevier and information
professionals have in many ways the same agenda and objectives – to
select and provide the best quality information in the easiest way on the
desktop of the researcher when they need it.

“That’s why we closely collaborate and have intense customer relationships
with information professionals across the world.”

Jakobs said he wanted to expand Elsevier’s research workflow services.
“We are looking into providing broader datasets and tools, but also into different
intelligence beyond scientific data such as networks and grants.”

He added that an end-user focus was crucial. “It’s not the product itself
that results in satisfied customers, but what the product does for the user.
And this value is different for each of the customers we serve: better
research output for an institute, more and higher quality articles published
for a researcher, and broad and easy access to our information sets and
solutions for information professionals, for example.”