Category Archives: oa.proquest

The Conquest of ProQuest and Knowledge Unlatched: How recent mergers are bad for research and the public

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“We wish we could say that these types of corporate consolidations were unusual for the information services industry, but we can’t. Clarivate-ProQuest and Wiley-KU follow in a long line of library vendors that have merged or consolidated, particularly in recent years. Librarians and researchers have watched dozens of academic journal publishers dwindle to a small, powerful publishing oligopoly that controls the research market. We’ve also seen our library services management products—including catalogs, digital lending services, and collection development management tools—get consumed, piece-by-piece, by ProQuest, the same library platform monopolist that Clarivate purchased in a $5.3 billion deal. Library workers are well aware of the shrinking options that librarians have under the growing control of just a few companies….

This means that companies like RELX and Clarivate aren’t traditional library services providers and information publishers—they’re data analytics companies. In the research space, these analytics companies are particularly insidious….”

The New Clarivate Science: A Second-Order Consequence of Open Access – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Open access (OA) is in the process of transforming STEM publishing, even if today the progress towards open access is unevenly distributed by geography. STEM publishing is shifting rapidly beyond a content licensing business. Beyond the Gold OA businesses that many are developing, several major publishers are seeing the opportunity to develop a services business of one sort or another.  

A number of major firms, not all of them primary publishers, are working to develop user workflow and research management and analytics services. These categories of platform services are far simpler to offer in an open environment than was previously the case. Some such services are offered to individual scholars, labs, or departments. Others are provided through the library, the university research office, or the information division. These university-wide channels suggest the opportunity for enterprise sales. …

On its own, Clarivate’s Science business has had an extraordinarily strong brand with Journal Impact Factor and Web of Science, but it has not had enterprise level reach within most universities, not least because of its comparative weakness in the humanities. 

 

ProQuest brings two major businesses, one that provides enterprise software principally, but not exclusively, to academic libraries, which operates under the Ex Libris brand, and one that provides principally humanities and social sciences (HSS) and primary source content to academic libraries, operating as ProQuest. It also has a set of businesses focused on public and K12 libraries, which are less relevant to the acquisition. ProQuest faces stronger competition in the academic content business (especially through EBSCO) than in the enterprise software business, where it has established an extremely robust foundation through its Alma library systems platform, overseen by a best in class technology product organization….

Observers have noted that, post-acquisition, Clarivate still does not have a primary publishing business, nor does it directly provide STEM content. But in an environment increasingly characterized by open access and syndication, especially for STEM, this will matter far less. Indeed, it might even come to be a financial benefit not to be saddled with a STEM publishing division….

For the past decade, Elsevier has been amassing a tools and analytics business that competes directly with major elements of Clarivate’s portfolio, building Scopus and associated impact metrics, acquiring and developing Pure and Mendeley, and more recently acquiring Aries, to take a few key examples. With its enlarged portfolio, Clarivate is positioned to compete effectively with Elsevier — minus the STEM primary publishing….”

Opposing the Merger Between Clarivate PLC and ProQuest LLC

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“The proposed merger between Clarivate and ProQuest is likely to produce adverse competitive effects described in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines and result in foreseeable harm to consumers related to product quality, price, choice, and privacy. The merger would significantly decrease competition across key markets, resulting in a research enterprise increasingly dominated by a very small number of firms with extraordinary market power, relative to both their competitors and customers. Blocking this merger is a necessary step in pulling the research enterprise back from the brink of a future in which it is controlled by platform monopolies.”

Take action to stop the lock up of research and learning

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“We, IOI, ask the community to join us as we coordinate an effort to:

Audit Clarivate and ProQuests’ data resale and surveillance practices and policies.
Organize a community consultation on data governance for institutional customers of Clarivate and ProQuest services.
Review Clarivate and ProQuest’s pricing, terms of use, lock-in policies, & contract details.
Call for institutions to commit to anti-surveillance practices, first by signing below, and then by working together to improve terms of use to support this aim….”

Clarivate to Acquire ProQuest – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Yesterday’s news that Clarivate will acquire ProQuest, valued at $5.3 billion, is the largest transaction in recent memory in the scholarly information sector. Both companies are intermediaries — they each work extensively with publishers and libraries — and each has extensive interests in discovery, a lynchpin service in the research ecosystem. Will this transaction result in dramatically strengthened products and improved services for researchers, as its proponents foresee? Or will it result in information enclosure, lock-in, service deterioration, and price increases, as detractors forewarn? One thing is for certain: In Clarivate CEO Jerre Stead’s proclamation that “enterprise software is the fastest growing library market,” we can see the monetization of Lorcan Dempsey’s wry observation that “workflow is the new content.” …”

Pilot Program Offers NYU Students and Faculty Instant Access to 150,000 Ebooks Via App

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“NYU Libraries and ProQuest have launched a pilot project that will make over 150,000 scholarly titles available to students and faculty via their mobile devices. NYU users can access coursebooks, ebooks, and reference works from major publishers through an e-reader app called SimplyE….”

Boost your University’s theses research impact and be part of the text and data mining movement

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“Discover how other universities are amplifying their research at no cost and no additional effort. Two university leaders will share how they are supporting thesis authors to be a part of global research by broadening the impact of their university’s research. Through a free partnership with ProQuest that supports institutional goals and values, you will learn how to easily contribute to intensive text and data mining projects as well as how to see usage results that can improve institutional repository access.

Hear from industry leaders Fiona Greig, Director of Library & IT Services, University of Winchester, UK and Bruce Weinberg, Professor, Department of Economics, Ohio State University, U.S.A, on their experiences….”

Blog 2020 – Coronavirus-Impacted Libraries Get Unlimited Access to Ebook Central Holdings

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“The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is having an unprecedented effect on higher-education institutions across the globe. Many libraries have found they suddenly need to support a new level of distance learning and research – and access to electronic resources is imperative.

To support this urgent need, ProQuest has partnered with more than 50 publishers to support libraries in providing unlimited access to Ebook Central holdings for all patrons – at no extra charge.

Starting next week, ProQuest Ebook Central customers impacted by COVID-19 will get unlimited access to all owned titles from these publishers through mid-June. This means that all licenses – including single-user and three-user models – will automatically convert to unlimited access during that period, helping librarians bridge the gap for their patrons in this rapidly changing environment. The unlimited access also applies to additional titles purchased through mid-June.

No action is required by librarians to switch on unlimited access – this will be done automatically, and the transition will be seamless for users….”

Open Access Dissertations in University Repositories: The Shift to NoQuest or Proquest-optional Policies among American Institutions | Authorea

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“An increasing proportion of American universities now require submission of doctoral dissertations to open access repositories, eschewing outdated policies that required microfilming and resale by the third party, commercial distributor UMI/ProQuest (Clement 2013). This significant movement away from mandatory paywalls for American graduate scholarship highlights that the obsolete practice of dissertation microfilming and reselling — established in the pre-digital era of the the early-mid 1900’s — is no longer the “best” technology for effectively copying, preserving, and widely disseminating academic manuscripts. Moreover, housing electronic theses and dissertations in scholarly repositories affords more flexible and responsive curation of multimedia, executable, and dynamic research outputs not optimally containerized in a PDF file with static supplements. Distribution via open access networks exposes the graduate students’ works to broad audiences without the barriers of commercial paywalls, corporate copyright warnings, and outdated, one-size-fits-all file management and metadata options designed for bound paper volumes.

The ubiquity of academic scholarship on the Internet and the ready availability of rich online digital media provide superior methods to broadly disseminate and responsibly preserve dissertations. Management and discovery of dissertations via Open Access repositories, combined with unfettered global distribution via scholarly sharing networks offer much greater exposure, access to, and the potential for reuse of electronic theses and dissertations. Institution decision makers interested in reviewing the many benefits of open ETDs in Open Access repositories may find the associated reading list of interest.”

American ETD dissemination in the age of open access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or allowing student choice

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“ProQuest mandates for ETDs no doubt come from well-intended university administrators. But student reactions to these policies appear to be mixed. Some want to market their works through an established dissertation reseller, attracted by the prospect of revenue from sales. This view was recently reflected by Ed.D. recipient Will Deyamport, tweeting his appreciation for possible royalties earned.

Other recent graduates tweet their pleasure at seeing their works “published,” evidently accepting ProQuest’s claim that assigning an ISBN to the ETD equals publication.

Yet other students strongly oppose university policies mandating ProQuest submission, seeing a glaring contradiction to the values of the open access movement, where scholarly literature is expected to be “online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” …

In light of student objections, some universities are reconsidering ETD policies to allow for student choice….”