From: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:58:24 +0200 Swets' customers ought to be pleased that the insolvency of Swets was announced before a large part of the advance payments for journal license and subscription costs for the year 2015 had been transferred to Swets by the libraries. Many of our colleagues on this mailing list will remember the shock wave which hit many libraries when the bankruptcy of RoweCom and its Faxon Library Services division was made public in 2002/2003: http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9017931/rowecom-faxon-collapse-enron-library-world Faxon had already received a large share of the advance payments from libraries at that time. Today we have to ask whether libraries should still pay for a whole year's subscription to journals in advance at all. The old reason for making advance payments is growing less and less convincing with the decreasing print run of journals. Why should libraries make advance payments for online-only licenses to access journals for a whole year? The risk of library payments being lost if an agency goes insolvent can thus be reduced. To this end, the joint library community should agree at a global level to a new payment method which is adjusted to licensing journals and set this up with the agencies and publishers. The accounting departments of the agencies and publishers could then process their work more evenly over a year, instead of being overloaded at the turn of the year as has been the case to date. Greetings Joachim Meier ____________________________________________________ Joachim E. Meier, Dr.-Ing. Head of Libray Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) (http://www.ptb.de) PF 3345 Tel. +49-531-592-8131 38023 Braunschweig Fax. +49-531-592-8137 GERMANY E-mail: [log in to unmask] ____________________________________________________