In June 2005, industry leaders in the life sciences gathered to provide input on future strategic developments within their field. At the meeting — the first of Elsevier’s newly formed Life Sciences Corporate Advisory Board — senior directors from top pharmaceutical companies met with Elsevier senior managers to lay out what they want to see from the publisher. Pharmaceutical directors emphasized their desire to see flexibility and customer choice in content use. They stressed that Elsevier should work with other publishers to produce open standards and further enable integration of licensed content with proprietary resources.

“Corporate customers have been asking for some time for a forum to enable their views to be represented correctly to Elsevier’s senior management,” said Dr. Steve Swain, Director of Published Information at GlaxoSmithKline. “This first meeting of the new board was a great step forward.”

The meeting represented an increased effort by Elsevier to listen to and work in partnership with its customers through advisory boards, several of which have recently been set up.

Recognized experts and leaders from industry and academia also have been brought together to have their say on Scirus and MDL, as well as library and scientific issues.