Journals and money at risk

Librarians at dozens of colleges have been scrambling to reorganise their subscriptions to academic journals after a company that manages subscriptions abruptly filed for bankruptcy this fall, writes Kaitlin Mulhere for Inside Higher Ed.

The Netherlands-based company Swets Information Services BV declared bankruptcy in September in Amsterdam. The company’s North American branch filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in New Jersey at the end of November. That means recent orders and payments made to Swets from libraries may not reach publishers, who will likely lose money, and libraries that had money tied up in Swets accounts are likely to see only part of it returned, possibly without the subscriptions they paid for.

Swets' bankruptcy filing lists more than 100 colleges among its creditors. That number doesn’t include large state systems with multiple contracts among their campuses, such as the State University of New York and California State University. Several Canadian colleges are also listed among the creditors.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site