A changing role in a changing market - Subscription Agents - Research Information

"When Swets filed for bankruptcy in 2014, the 113-year old company clearly illustrated the difficulties faced by traditional intermediaries in a rapidly changing information ecosystem. The web has revolutionised many-to-many transactions and all intermediaries – whether library, publisher or subscription agent – have needed to transform the nature of their services. Failure to transform successfully will inevitably lead to the failure of individual companies, but the failure of such a high-profile subscription agent raised fundamental questions about the future of the industry itself: How could this have happened? How can it be stopped from happening again? And, most importantly, is there a long-term future for subscription agents?..."