Category Archives: oa.clarivate

Fast-growing open-access journals stripped of coveted impact factors | Science | AAAS

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“Nearly two dozen journals from two of the fastest growing open-access publishers, including one of the world’s largest journals by volume, will no longer receive a key scholarly imprimatur. On 20 March, the Web of Science database said it delisted the journals along with dozens of others, stripping them of an impact factor, the citation-based measure of quality that, although controversial, carries weight with authors and institutions. The move highlights continuing debate about a business model marked by high volumes of articles, ostensibly chosen for scientific soundness rather than novelty, and the practice by some open-access publishers of recruiting large numbers of articles for guest-edited special issues.

The Web of Science Master Journal List, run by the analytics company Clarivate, lists journals based on 24 measures of quality, including effective peer review and adherence to ethical publishing practices, and periodically checks that listed journals meet the standards. Clarivate calculates impact factors for a select subset of journals on the list. The company expanded quality checks this year because of “increasing threats to the integrity of the scholarly record,” Web of Science’s Editor-in-Chief Nandita Quaderi says. The company removed 50 journals from the list, an unusually large number for a single year, and Clarivate said it is continuing to review 450 more, assisted by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool….”

Fast-growing open-access journals stripped of coveted impact factors | Science | AAAS

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“Nearly two dozen journals from two of the fastest growing open-access publishers, including one of the world’s largest journals by volume, will no longer receive a key scholarly imprimatur. On 20 March, the Web of Science database said it delisted the journals along with dozens of others, stripping them of an impact factor, the citation-based measure of quality that, although controversial, carries weight with authors and institutions. The move highlights continuing debate about a business model marked by high volumes of articles, ostensibly chosen for scientific soundness rather than novelty, and the practice by some open-access publishers of recruiting large numbers of articles for guest-edited special issues.

The Web of Science Master Journal List, run by the analytics company Clarivate, lists journals based on 24 measures of quality, including effective peer review and adherence to ethical publishing practices, and periodically checks that listed journals meet the standards. Clarivate calculates impact factors for a select subset of journals on the list. The company expanded quality checks this year because of “increasing threats to the integrity of the scholarly record,” Web of Science’s Editor-in-Chief Nandita Quaderi says. The company removed 50 journals from the list, an unusually large number for a single year, and Clarivate said it is continuing to review 450 more, assisted by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool….”

Escaping ‘bibliometric coloniality’, ‘epistemic inequality’

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“Africa’s scholarly journals compete on an unequal playing field because of a lack of funding and the struggle to sustain academic credibility.

“These inequalities are exacerbated by the growing influence of the major citation indexes, leading to what we have called bibliometric coloniality,” say the authors of the book, Who Counts? Ghanaian academic publishing and global science, published by African Minds at the start of 2023.

“The rules of the game continue to be defined outside the continent. We hope that, in some small way, this book contributes to the renaissance and renewal of African-centred research and publishing infrastructures,” the authors say….”

Clarivate and OCLC Settle Lawsuit

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“Clarivate Plc…today announced that it has signed a settlement agreement and release with OCLC.

Clarivate continues to deny OCLCs allegations of wrong-doing and maintains that the issue lay between OCLC and its customers, who sought to co-create an efficient community platform for sharing of bibliographic records. Clarivate will not develop a record exchange system of MARC records that include records which OCLC has claimed are subject to its policy and contractual limitations. Clarivate will bear its own fees and costs….”

Clarivate’s former publisher relations expert joins Frontiers | Research Information

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“Research publisher Frontiers appoints Tom Ciavarella as head of public affairs and advocacy for North America to strategise and execute advocacy initiatives to support Frontiers’ mission and accelerate transition to open science.

Tom has 20 years’ experience in relationship management, business development, and content strategy. After an early career in copy-editing and writing, he worked at F.A. Davis Company, an independent medical publisher in the US, where he acquired and developed new medical textbooks and helped bring print-only resources into the digital world. In 2015, Tom joined Clarivate Analytics (now Clarivate) as a publisher relations manager for Web of Science Group with a focus on content and communication strategy. 

Most recently, Tom managed large strategic accounts for the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), a non-profit that helps publishers and other copyright holders coordinate content delivery, licensing, and open access workflows. Tom also served as a liaison to CCC’s government relations team, which works to guide policymakers on copyright modernisation and related topics. …”

The End of Journal Impact Factor Purgatory (and Numbers to the Thousandths) – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Clarivate Analytics announced today that they are granting all journals in the Web of Science Core Collection an Impact Factor with the 2023 release….

In 2015, Clarivate launched the ESCI. It was initially described as an index of journals that are up-and-coming — meaning new journals, or established journals in niche areas that are growing in impact. At the time of launch, publishers were told that a journal selected for ESCI will likely get an Impact Factor within a few years.

The model for ESCI seemed to shift a few years later and there are many journals in ESCI that have been there since 2015 that still don’t have Impact Factors. In fact, Clarivate includes content for indexed journals back to 2005 so there clearly were journals older than 10 years in the database when it launched.

Clarivate reports that ESCI has over 7800 journals with 3 million records. A little over a third of those records are open access records.

The inclusion criteria for all four indices include 24 quality measures and four “impact” measures. Those journals that meet all 28 criteria are included in SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI. Those that only meet the 24 quality measures were relegated to the ESCI….

The second big announcement today is that with the 2023 release, Clarivate will “display” Impact Factors with only one decimal place instead of three! …”

 

This change announced today indicates that the four impact measures are no longer required in order to get an Impact Factor….”

Coyle’s InFormation: The OCLC v Clarivate Dilemma

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“OCLC has filed suit against the company Clarivate which owns Proquest and ExLibris. The suit focuses on a metadata service proposed by Ex Libris called “MetaDoor.” MetaDoor isn’t a bibliographic database à la WorldCat, it is a peer-to-peer service that allows its users to find quality records in the catalog systems of other libraries. (“MetaDoor” is a terrible name for a product, by the way.)

What seems to specifically have OCLC’s dander up is that Ex Libris states that it will allow any and all libraries, not just its Alma customers, to use this service for free. As the service does not yet exist it is unknown how it could affect the library metadata sharing environment. It may succeed, it may fail. If it succeeds, the technology that Ex Libris develops will be a logical next step in bibliographic data sharing, but its effect on OCLC is hard to predict….”

Let the Metadata Wars Begin – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“In 1967, before most even knew what a computer was or how [The Ohio College Library Center organization, which eventually grew to become OCLC] might positively affect our lives, its team based in Dublin, Ohio was making great progress in the electronic management of bibliographic information. In August of 1971, the cooperative helped the Alden Library at Ohio University launch the first online catalog of any library in the world. OCLC continued to be a pioneer in many of the moves to digitize and interconnect library catalog data, all the while improving the services and making libraries more efficient. It also began to generate significant surpluses, with which it continued to expand the services it could provide to the library community and serve a worldwide network. What was once a regional network of libraries has today become a massive institution serving a global community of more than 30,000 libraries, while also becoming one of the leading employers in the state of Ohio….

Earlier this year, Clarivate quietly announced a new product, MetaDoor, which is described as an open platform for sharing cataloging records. Possibly building upon data gathered by a company earlier acquired by Innovative Interfaces (which eventually was folded into Clarivate), this new product is being positioned as an alternative, free structure to share catalog data in the community. In trying to recruit members to use the new service and be early adopters, Clarivate has caught the attention of OCLC, who views this new product as an obvious competitor to its flagship WorldCat service. Challenging both the source of the data in MetaDoor and its efforts to recruit participants in this data-sharing ecosystem — in breach of their agreements with OCLC — last week OCLC filed a lawsuit in Ohio courts against Clarivate and its operating units claiming predatory market behavior and tortious interference in OCLC’s contracts with its member organizations. Clarivate has strenuously objected to the claims….

 last year, ICOLC produced an internal report that, among other things, criticized OCLC for the costs and interoperability concerns of the records WorldCat aggregates, including limitations on what libraries and other vendors in this space can do with that data. OCLC responded privately, but based on the FAQ that accompanied the legal filing, one can surmise what its response was. 

 

OCLC’s position is that it is working in the best interests of all libraries and does a tremendous service through its aggregation, enhancements, dissemination, and distribution of bibliographic records. Furthermore, it takes the surpluses that this business generates and invests heavily in other library services, tools, and research projects. Many have argued that OCLC is a positive force for libraries and library technology. Others have been more critical, particularly commercial players in this space….

Clarivate might also argue that less interoperability would be needed in the world of library services if all of the technology was handled by a single provider. But this sole-source provision of all services, while appealing at first glance, would also put the community troublingly at the whims of that one provider….”

 

Clarivate statement on OCLC lawsuit – Clarivate

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“Clarivate is disappointed to report that the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) has filed a lawsuit against Clarivate PLC and subsidiaries, including Ex Libris, and ProQuest in connection with our development plans to create a free and open community peer-to-peer sharing platform for metadata created and owned by libraries.

Together with development partner libraries, Clarivate is developing a community-based platform to allow librarians and information experts at museums, educational establishments, cultural and scholarly organizations and more, to freely and easily collaborate to enrich and share metadata to surface and expose their own bibliographic resources and content to a global audience. It will be open to any organization of all sizes and type. All records shared will be available under an appropriate open licence, to allow records to be copied and used in original or modified form. The initiative supports library commitments to open up access to metadata via sharing and supports library strategy to seek operational efficiencies as it makes workflows simpler, more efficient and more effective….”

Stoning Goliath | Gavia Libraria

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As soon as the Loon heard about Clarivate/ExLibris’s “MetaDoor” initiative, she knew OCLC would not be pleased. She placed a good many mental quatloos on a lawsuit, which has now materialized.

The Loon’s read of the lawsuit materials so far is “fishing expedition.” If OCLC had proof that WorldCat records had ended up in MetaDoor, it would gleefully have exhibited that proof to the court. It doesn’t. It’s fishing for the slightest shreds of evidence that Clarivate/ExLibris might have wink-wink-nudge-nudge hinted to its MetaDoor beta participants that copying over WorldCat records would be acceptable, or that MetaDoor does not make any effort to keep WorldCat records out. Lacking those, OCLC wants to make extraordinarily clear that WorldCat records just better not end up in MetaDoor.

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OCLC Files Lawsuit Against Clarivate Analytics | LJ infoDOCKET

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“OCLC, Inc., (“OCLC”), by and through counsel, files this Complaint for a temporary restraining order, injunctive relief, and damages against Clarivate, Plc, Clarivate Analytics (US) LLC, ProQuest LLC, and Ex Libris (USA), Inc., (“Defendants”)

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8. In March 2022, OCLC became aware that Defendants are working on a platform called MetaDoor, which Defendants have publicly acknowledged will directly compete with  OCLC’s WorldCat®. Instead of devoting the time and other substantial resources that OCLC has invested to create its industry-leading WorldCat®, Defendants have chosen to take shortcuts by using the MetaDoor platform to misappropriate catalog records and metadata created by OCLC, its members, and others.

9. Defendants have been contacting OCLC customers and encouraging them to contribute the bibliographic records from WorldCat®, and provide access to those records from the MetaDoor platform, all of which is in direct breach of those customers’ contractual obligations to OCLC. In addition to tortiously interfering with OCLC’s contractual relationships with its customers, Defendants are also tortiously interfering with OCLC’s prospective business relationships by providing OCLC’s WorldCat® records to MetaDoor users without requiring those users to subscribe to use WorldCat® or otherwise pay OCLC for those records

10. Defendants have also conspired with each other to tortiously interfere with OCLC’s contractual relationships and prospective business relationships.

11. Defendants have publicly stated that they plan to offer MetaDoor to current and future customers for free, which would include access and use of the WorldCat® bibliographic records that are being uploaded, linked to, and/or otherwise transferred into MetaDoor. Defendants’ actions are not purely altruistic, however. Instead, this is just Defendants’ latest attempt to further consolidate their dominant position in the ILS/LSP market. Defendants are engaging in profit-sacrificing behavior to ultimately drive OCLC (and potentially its other competitors) from the ILS/LSP market. And given the importance of WorldCat® to OCLC’s continued operations, Defendants are likely to succeed unless they are stopped from pursuing their current course of wrongful actions.

12. Defendants know that without being able to steal valuable WorldCat® records, MetaDoor will not survive. MetaDoor’s entire structure is built on the back of WorldCat® and the more than five decades worth of work and hundreds of millions of dollars invested by OCLC to create it….”

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….”