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FIZ Karlsruhe successfully implements strategy for a new positioning
Added: (Mon Aug 29 2005)
Annual Report 2004 published / new projects and partnerships for the future/ FIZ Karlsruhe satisfied with business year 2004
Karlsruhe, August 2005 – “FIZ Karlsruhe has made further steps towards its principle goals: to sustainably strengthen science and business in Germany and to become a leading address for sci-tech information and services in Germany and Europe“, states Dr. Wolf-Dieter Lukas, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of FIZ Karlsruhe, in his preface to the Annual Report 2004 which was recently published. According to Lukas, FIZ Karlsruhe has established itself as a firm factor in international information business and has gained a worldwide reputation as a competent and reliable partner. However, the intensified competition in the global market for scientific online information must not be underestimated.
Management and Supervisory Board respond to this challenge with a new strategic positioning, the implementation of which started in 2004. "Within the scope of this new strategy, we position ourselves more strongly as a provider of scientific services and as a service partner with an international profile. We also enhance our offer in the field of knowledge management," explains Sabine Brünger-Weilandt, Managing Director and CEO of FIZ Karlsruhe. For this, the management places high emphasis on partnerships, both long-established ones like the online service STN International, and new ones like the partnership with the Max-Planck-Society (MPS) and the intensified co-operation with FIZ CHEMIE Berlin.
Sabine Brünger-Weiland considers the strategic alliance with the MPS, started in 2004, a milestone. In their joint project „eSciDoc", FIZ Karlsruhe and the MPS build up an integrated information, communication and publication platform for web based scientific work. eSciDoc plays an important role in the eScience-Initiative, funded by the German Federal Government. At a later stage, the results may also be made available to other scientific organizations.
One of the aims of the co-operation with FIZ CHEMIE Berlin is to bundle the existing technical resources in order to render the development of innovative products and services more efficient and to speed up their introduction in the market. The first joint development projects are already underway.
FIZ Karlsruhe‘s most important business area, the world’s leading online service STN International, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2004. It is jointly operated by the three partners FIZ Karlsruhe/Germany, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)/USA, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)/Tokyo. In 2004, the usage of the databases implemented at the STN Service Center Karlsruhe could be slightly increased compared to 2003, despite the difficult economic situation. At the end of 2004, STN International provided 24/7 online access to a total of 235 databases containing more than 496 million records. Of these databases, 119 files containing almost 183 million records were hosted with the STN Service Center Karlsruhe, the others with CAS.
In 2004, the turnover registered at FIZ Karlsruhe for the usage of STN databases was 50.8 million Euro (2003: 50.7), including collection services for other STN partners.
Like in the previous year, the regional distribution of database usage in almost equal shares fell to the German-speaking countries, the other European countries (not including Eastern Europe) as well as the USA and Canada; a smaller share fell to Japan.
STN International’s competitiveness is continuously improved. To this end, FIZ Karlsruhe and CAS have developed a new software tool for strategic information management. STN AnaVist allows for the analysis and visualization of search results in tables, diagrams and images. Thus scientific knowledge can be presented in an entirely new way, current research and market trends can easily be viewed - resulting in value-add and competitive advantage to users. STN AnaVist was launched on the market in the summer of 2005.
In 2004, FIZ Karlsruhe’s automatic full-text document delivery broker service FIZ AutoDoc has again been extremely successful. About 122,000 orders were processed through FIZ AutoDoc, i.e. the order volume increased by more than 10% compared to the previous year.
The total revenues of FIZ Karlsruhe amounted to 20 (19.5) million Euro, the expenses to 26.1 (25.9) million Euro. The share of own revenues amounted to 77% (74%) of the total expenditure. The number of employees (340 in 2003) slightly dropped to 328, the number of trainees remained the same (17).
Printed copies of the Annual Report 2004 (German only) can be ordered with:
FIZ Karlsruhe, Rüdiger Mack
Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1
76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen/Germany
Phone: +49-7247-808-513, Fax: +49-7247-808-136
E-Mail: Ruediger.Mack@fiz-karlsruhe.de
The online version (PDF format) of the Annual Report 2004 (English and German) is available at:
http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/about_fiz/gb_2004_en.pdf
This press release can be viewed online at:
http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/news/whatsnew.html#pr
An international scientific service institution, FIZ Karlsruhe is dedicated to providing information services and solutions for both information management and scholarly communication. For almost three decades, FIZ Karlsruhe has been offering its high-quality, value-added information services to scientists from all over the world involved in academic and industrial R&D, as well as to decision makers in business and administration. In cooperation with national and international institutions, FIZ Karlsruhe produces and provides databases in various fields of science and technology, including patent information. Its main business area is STN International (The Scientific & Technical Information Network), jointly operated by FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany; Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), Columbus, OH, USA; and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Tokyo.
FIZ Karlsruhe is a member of the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, an association of non-academic scientific research and service institutions sponsored by the German Federal Government and the Federal States.