Editor's view - Preparing Swets for battle.(interview with Arie Jongejan )(Brief Article)(Interview)

In his first interview with IWR since leaving Reed Elsevier, Swets' new CEO Arie Jongejan tells me that his biggest challenge is "positioning the company as a premier service provider in the electronic era".

After the travails of recent years at Swets, that is a tall order, especially with the recent sales of the Extenza and Farrington operations.

With little family silver left to sell off, Jongejan is putting a brave face on the potential of the remaining core business. "These divestments were minimal," he says. "If anything they signal the strengthening of our core business."

He adds: "We have much better ideas now about where we can add value to the customer chain and most of this can happen within the scope of our current organisation."

If anyone can pull this off, Jongejan can. After all, he has some considerable credits to his name - being a driving force behind Elsevier's ScienceDirect and Scopus.

Tellingly, he suggests we watch the open access movement in the next few months, because "I wouldn't be surprised that, after the ...