ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene Power.
ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for libraries,[1] providing access to dissertations, theses, ebooks, newspapers, periodicals, historical collections, governmental archives, cultural archives,[2] and other aggregated databases. This content was estimated to be around 125 billion digital pages.
The company began operations as a producer of microfilm products, subsequently shifting to electronic publishing,[3] and later grew through acquisitions.[1] On December 1, 2021, Clarivate bought ProQuest from Cambridge Information Group for $5.3 billion in what was described as "huge deal in the library and information publishing world". Clarivate said that the operational concept behind the acquisition was integrating ProQuest's products and applications with Web of Science.[4][5]
Businesses
ProQuest was founded as a microfilm publisher.[6] It began publishing doctoral dissertations in 1939,[7] has published more than 3 million searchable dissertations and theses,[8][non-primary source needed] and is designated as an offsite digital archive for the United States Library of Congress.[9][non-primary source needed] The company's scholarly content includes dissertations and theses, primary source material, ebooks, scholarly journals,[10] historical and current newspapers and periodicals, data sources, and other content of interest to researchers.[11][non-primary source needed] ProQuest Video Preservation and Discovery Service, allows libraries to preserve and provide access to their proprietary audio and video collections.[12]
In May 2014, ProQuest LLC also operated businesses under the following names:[2]
Bowker provides bibliographic information management solutions to publishers, libraries and booksellers,[13] and is the ISBN Agency for the United States.[14]
Dialog is an online information service with more than 1.4 billion unique records[15] curated for corporate, business and government researchers, with a focus on pharmaceutical, engineering and patent research.[16]
EBL (Ebook Library), an ebook aggregator with a catalog of titles from academic publishers, serves academic, corporate and research libraries[17] while supporting emerging collection development models such as patron-driven acquisition.[18]
ebrary offers access to ebook collections, by subscription or a perpetual archive model, in subject packages tailored for academic, corporate, government, public and high school libraries.[19]
History
2008 conference booth
Eugene Power, a 1927 BA and 1930 MBA graduate of the University of Michigan, founded the company as University Microfilms in 1938, preserving works from the British Museum on microfilm. By June 1938, Power worked in two rented rooms from a downtown Ann Arbor funeral parlor, specializing in microphotography to preserve library collections. In his autobiography Edition of One, Power details the development of the company, including how University Microfilms assisted the OSS during World War II.[20] This work mainly involved filming maps and European newspapers so they could be shipped back and forth overseas more cheaply and discreetly.
Power also noticed a niche market in dissertations publishing. Students were often forced to publish their own works in order to finish their doctoral degree. Dissertations could be published more cheaply as microfilm than as books. ProQuest still publishes so many dissertations that its Dissertations and Theses collection (formerly called Digital Dissertations) has been declared the official U.S. off-site repository of the Library of Congress.[21]
The idea of universal adoption of microfilm publication of doctoral dissertations was furthered considerably by two articles researched and written by a then recent recipient of the doctorate in history at Stanford University. Vaughn Davis Bornet seized on the idea and published "Doctoral Dissertations and the Stream of Scholarship"[22] and "Microfilm Publication of Doctoral Dissertations".[23]
As the dissertations market grew, the company expanded into filming newspapers and periodicals. The company's main newspaper database is ProQuest Newsstand.
In 1962, Xerox acquired the company for 51,750 shares of Xerox common stock, worth about $7.9 million.[24] Under Xerox's ownership, the name of the company changed several times, from University Microfilms to Xerox University Microfilms, to University Microfilms International, then shortened to UMI. In 1985, it was purchased from Xerox by Bell & Howell.[25] In 1986, UMI acquired Data Courier, owner of ABI/INFORM, from the Bingham family.[26]
In the 1980s, UMI began producing CD-ROMs that stored databases of periodicals abstracts and indexes. At a time when modem connections were slow and expensive, it was more efficient to mail database CD-ROMs regularly to subscribing libraries, who installed the discs on dedicated PCs. The ProQuest brand name was first used for databases on CD-ROM. An online service called ProQuest Direct was launched in 1995; its name was later shortened to just ProQuest.[27] The bibliographic databases are mainly sold to schools, universities and libraries.
In 1998, the company announced the "Digital Vault Initiative", purported to include 5.5 billion images digitized from UMI microfilm, including some of the best existing copies of major newspapers dating back 100 to 150 years, and Early English books dating back to the 15th century. While work continues to digitize the contents of the microfilm vault, ProQuest is already providing navigation of 125 billion digital pages, including nearly 20 million pages of newspaper content dating from pre-Revolutionary War America.
In 1999, the company name changed to Bell & Howell Information and Learning, and then in 2001 to ProQuest Information and Learning; Bell & Howell renamed itself the ProQuest Company.[28]
Also in 1999, the company acquired Chadwyck-Healey, a one-time microfilm publishing company that was one of the first to produce full-text CD-ROM databases. This acquisition gave Proquest ownership of a 100+ person publishing operation based in Cambridge, England and became the basis for a substantial overseas expansion.
During the 2000–2004 fiscal years, as well as the first three quarters of the 2005 fiscal year, ProQuest systematically overstated its net income. Cumulatively, pre-tax profits were overstated by 129.9 million dollars (or about 31 percent).[29] In 2008, Voyager Learning Company and ProQuest's CFO (from the time of the earnings overstatements) settled SEC "charges without admitting or denying the allegations of the SEC's complaint".[30]
In 2001 ProQuest acquired Norman Ross Publishing, a small New York based microfilm publisher.[31]
In 2002 ProQuest acquired bigchalk.com, a company founded in 1999 with the combined assets of ProQuest's K-12 division and Infonautics Inc.'s K-12 business.[32]
In 2004, ProQuest Information and Learning acquired Seattle start-up Serials Solutions, a venture providing access management and search services for content hosted by other companies.
Also in 2004, the company acquired Copley Publishing Group.[33]
In 2005 three ProQuest executives formed a distribution company called National Archive Publishing Co, of XanEdu, UMI, and Digital Service Operations.[34] The building that would house this new company stood at 300 Zeeb Road in Scio, home to nearly 6 billion pages of information.[35]
In 2006, ProQuest Company, then the parent company of ProQuest Information and Learning, sold it to Cambridge Information Group, owner of R. R. Bowker.[36] From the time of this sale, this article follows the history of ProQuest Information and Learning, not ProQuest Company. (ProQuest Company subsequently renamed itself to Voyager Learning Company, and later became part of Cambium Learning Group.[37])
In 2007, ProQuest Information and Learning was merged with CSA to form ProQuest CSA. Later that year it was renamed ProQuest LLC.
In 2008, ProQuest LLC acquired complete ownership of RefWorks, a web-based citation manager of which it had been part owner since 2001. RefWorks was merged with ProQuest's existing COS business to form RefWorks/COS.[38]
In 2010, ProQuest acquired two properties from LexisNexis, the Congressional Information Service (CIS) and University Publications of America (UPA). CIS produced one of the world's most exhaustive online collections of legislative content and highly respected statistical works, while UPA included deep historical content sets. The acquisition included digital products and an expansive microfilm vault that would leverage ProQuest's strength in conversion from film to searchable electronic formats.[41]
In 2011, ProQuest acquired Ebrary, an online digital library of full texts of over 170,000 scholarly e-books.[42] In 2013, ProQuest acquired Ebook Library (EBL), with plans to combine ebrary and EBL into a single e-book platform.[43]
In 2014, ProQuest acquired Pi2 Solutions, a privately owned company specializing in Drug Safety Triager (DST) & Product Literature Database (PLD) systems for the biopharmaceutical industry. The company aligned Pi2 Solutions with its ProQuest Dialog corporate information service.[44]
In 2015, ProQuest acquired SiPX[45] and Coutts Information Services, including the MyiLibrary platform and the Online Acquisitions and Selection Information System (OASIS).[46]
In October 2015, ProQuest acquired Ex Libris. It was to merge the Workflow Solutions division of ProQuest, which included the former Serials Solutions, into Ex Libris, with the enlarged entity to be named "Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company".[47]
In January 2020, ProQuest acquired Innovative Interfaces, Inc., a provider of technology solutions to academic and public libraries.[49]
On 17 May 2021, it was announced that Clarivate would acquire ProQuest.[50] On July 28, 2021, Clarivate announced that the acquisition was delayed due to a Federal Trade Commission antitrust probe.[51] On December 1, 2021, Clarivate successfully completed the acquisition of ProQuest.[5]
The Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), also known as Arts and Humanities Search, is a citation index, with abstracting and indexing for more than 1,700 arts and humanities academic journals, and coverage of disciplines that includes social and natural science journals. Part of this database is derived from Current Contents.
Dialog is an online information service owned by ProQuest, who acquired it from Thomson Reuters in mid-2008.
The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of information science published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Association for Information Science and Technology. The journal publishes original research and rapid communications, as well as book reviews and announcements of the association. Occasional special issues appear with contents focused on a single topic area.
Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, United States, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007.
American Psychologist is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. The journal publishes articles of broad interest to psychologists, including empirical reports and scholarly reviews covering science, practice, education, and policy, and occasionally publishes special issues on relevant topics in the field of psychology. The editor-in-chief is Harris Cooper.
Serials Solutions was a division of ProQuest that provided e-resource access and management services (ERAMS) to libraries. These products enabled librarians to more easily manage electronic resources that serve the needs of their users. Serials Solutions became part of ProQuest Workflow Solutions in 2011 and the "Serials Solutions" name was retired in 2014. In 2015, Proquest acquired Ex Libris Group, a library automation company with many similar products to those of ProQuest Workflow Solutions. The Workflow Solutions division was to be merged with Ex Libris into a new business group called "Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company".
Alexander Street is an electronic academic database publisher. It was founded in May 2000 in Alexandria, Virginia, by Stephen Rhind-Tutt (President), Janice Cronin (CFO), and Eileen Lawrence. As of January 2016, the company had grown to more than 100 employees with offices in the United States, Australia, Brazil, China, and the United Kingdom. In June 2016, it was acquired by ProQuest.
R. R. Bowker LLC is an American limited liability company domiciled under Delaware Limited Liability Company Law and based in Chatham, New Jersey. Among other things, Bowker provides bibliographic information on published works to the book trade, including publishers, booksellers, libraries, and individuals; its roots in the industry trace back to 1868. Bowker is the exclusive U.S. agent for issuing International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs). Bowker is the publisher of Books in Print and other compilations of information about books and periodical titles. It provides supply chain services and analytical tools to the book publishing industry. Bowker is headquartered in Chatham, New Jersey, with additional operational offices in England and Australia. It is now owned by Cambridge Information Group.
InfoTrac is a family of full-text databases of content from academic journals and general magazines, of which the majority are targeted to the English-speaking North American market. As is typical of online proprietary databases, various forms of authentication are used to verify affiliation with subscribing academic, public, and school libraries. InfoTrac databases are published by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning.
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts was a division of Cambridge Information Group and provider of online databases, based in Bethesda, Maryland, before merging with ProQuest of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2007. CSA hosted databases of abstracts and developed taxonomic indexing of scholarly articles. These databases were hosted on the CSA Illumina platform and were available alongside add-on products like CSA Illustrata. The company produced numerous bibliographic databases in different fields of the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, and technology. Thus, coverage included materials science, environmental sciences and pollution management, biological sciences, aquatic sciences and fisheries, biotechnology, engineering, computer science, sociology, linguistics, and other areas.
Cambridge Information Group (CIG) is a privately held global investment firm focusing on information services, education and technology. It began as a firm providing services to academic publishers. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland.
The Explicator is a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal of literary criticism. It began publication in October 1942 and is now both printed and available in an electronic version. Routledge acquired the journal from Heldref Publications in 2009, and now it is owned by Taylor & Francis. Issues often include between 25 and 30 articles on works of literature, "ranging from ancient Greek and Roman times to our own, from throughout the world." According to a library guide, "As the title of the journal suggests, the focus is on explication, or close readings, of the works. As such, the articles tend to use less jargon and are easier to understand than some other articles in literature studies."
Africa is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute. The journal covers the study of African societies and culture. The journal was established in 1928 and the editors-in-chief are Julie Archambault and Joost Fontein.
BIOSIS Previews is an English-language, bibliographic database service, with abstracts and citation indexing. It is part of Clarivate Analytics Web of Science suite. BIOSIS Previews indexes data from 1926 to the present.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) is an online database that indexes, abstracts, and provides full-text access to dissertations and theses. The database includes over 2.4 million records and covers 1637 to the present. It is produced by ProQuest and was formerly known as ProQuest Digital Dissertations. The bibliographic database is known as Dissertation Abstracts or Dissertation Abstracts International.
ebrary was an online digital library which held over 100,000 scholarly e-books in 2014. It was available in many academic libraries and provided a set of online database collections that combined scholarly books from over 435 academic, trade, and professional publishers. It also included sheet music and government documents. Additionally, ebrary offered a service called "DASH!" for customers to distribute their own PDF content online.
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering basic and applied research relating to individuals who are deaf, including developmental, cultural, educational, and linguistic topics. It is published by Oxford University Press four times per year since the first volume and issue, which was published in 1996. The journal publishes original academic research, scoping and literature reviews, meta-analyses, family and practitioner briefs, book reviews, and signed media.
The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering both child and adolescent psychology and psychiatry providing an interdisciplinary perspective to the multidisciplinary field of child and adolescent mental health, though publication of high-quality empirical research, clinically-relevant studies and highly cited research reviews and practitioner review articles.
Library Literature and Information Science is a bibliographic database that indexes over 410 library and information science periodicals published internationally. It also covers books, chapters within books, library school theses, and pamphlets. In 2011, the H. W. Wilson Company, the firm that created the index, sold it to EBSCO Publishing along with other H.W. Wilson indexes and databases.
Clarivate Plc is a British-American publicly traded analytics company that operates a collection of subscription-based services, in the areas of bibliometrics and scientometrics; business / market intelligence, and competitive profiling for pharmacy and biotech, patents, and regulatory compliance; trademark protection, and domain and brand protection. In the academy and the scientific community, Clarivate is known for being the company which calculates the impact factor, using data from its Web of Science product family, that also includes services/applications such as Publons, EndNote, EndNote Click, and ScholarOne. Its other product families are Cortellis, DRG, CPA Global, Derwent, MarkMonitor, CompuMark, and Darts-ip, and also the various ProQuest products and services.
↑ Thistlethwaite, Polly, "Publish. Perish?: The academic author and open access publishing", Media Authorship (edited by Cynthia Chris, David A. Gerstner). Routledge, 2013, p. 274
↑ Bornet, Vaughn Davis (October 1952). "Doctoral Dissertations and the Stream of Scholarship". College and University. 28: 17–30. ISSN0010-0889. OCLC6168802.
↑ Mary H. Munroe (2004). "Cambridge Information Group Timeline". The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition. Archived from the original on October 20, 2014 – via Northern Illinois University.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
