Early Reaction from Info Community to Clarivate Announcement
Tweets from across the Information Community
Twitter caught fire with community reaction to the Clarivate announcement of its acquisition news:
And you thought the information industry couldn’t consolidate any further?
— Todd Carpenter (@TAC_NISO) May 17, 2021
From Karin Wulf, professor of history at William & Mary and a publisher in her own right:
For scholars of #VastEarlyAmerica, ProQuest means databases...EEBO, Colonial State Papers, American Periodicals and lots lots more... it's good to understand the businesses that hold these materials. https://t.co/7znekvnwKI
— Dr. Karin Wulf (@kawulf) May 17, 2021
To which another academic responded with:
It also means all of our dissertations, which we "published" years ago with UMI and which got sold to ProQuest without our permission or any subsequent payment of royalties
— The Bills make Dr. Jennifer Sessions want to shout (@Laprofmme) May 17, 2021
Roger Schonfeld, director of Ithaka S+R's Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums program, live tweeted the shareholders call:
I'm sitting in on the conference call discussing the Clarivate acquisition of ProQuest. CEOs of both companies as well as several others are participating. I will tweet any notable items threaded to this tweet.
— Roger C. Schonfeld (@rschon) May 17, 2021
Now questions. Q Barclay's: Help us appreciate the complementary nature of your product offerings. How does that create revenue synergies? Mukhtar Ahmed, head of Clarivate Science biz: We can serve the entire research value chain, early stage and K12 setting, thru postgrad.
— Roger C. Schonfeld (@rschon) May 17, 2021
Our content business makes up 62% of revenue. Leading aggregator. All formats. Software solutions business is 34% of revenue. Innovative workflow solutions. Academia is the biggest customer. We have all fifty of the top 50 universities in the world as customers.
— Roger C. Schonfeld (@rschon) May 17, 2021
Q B Reilly Securities: Give us more of a sense of the customer overlap. Cross selling opportunity? A: We can touch every student in K through doctoral degrees everywhere. There is no product overlap.
— Roger C. Schonfeld (@rschon) May 17, 2021
Ahmed: PQ: 1. Alma represents info mgmt & workflow. Distribution infrastructure for right info to right user. 2. Search/research/discovery - Esploro, Pivot. 3. Learning journey, knowledge acquisition. Clarivate: Data, analytics, expertise also. Deeper into core markets.
— Roger C. Schonfeld (@rschon) May 17, 2021
From Aaron Tay, librarian at Singapore Management University, came this response
I think Clarivate+Proquest is really going to be a powerhouse. Besides Proquest services it also owns Exlibris which itself has acquired a lot of companies including III. Elsevier has competition I think... https://t.co/gFOei8mj4n
— Aaron Tay (@aarontay) May 17, 2021
From Curtis Brundy, Associate University Librarian at Iowa State University:
I see little to cheer with this. I've found Clarivate a challenge to negotiate with. Ex Libris Alma, the #Monopoly ILS, is also getting gobbled up here. Not a great start to the week. https://t.co/aJz3X8NmdT
— Curtis Brundy (@curtisbrundy) May 17, 2021
Domination continues with all California libraries having decided to move to #Monopoly Alma https://t.co/59z6yEhJgv
— Curtis Brundy (@curtisbrundy) May 17, 2021
From Scott Walter, Dean of the University Library at San Diego State:
There will be other news today, but there will also be many reflections on how the information singularity was allowed to form and gain sentience (along w/significant profit potential for its shareholders) while we all watched https://t.co/HCmdbBtEwR
— Scott Walter (@slwalter123) May 17, 2021
Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC may have summed it up with his tweet:
Workflow is the new content ... https://t.co/qMdOWnPYkq
— lorcan dempsey (@lorcanD) May 17, 2021
