Open Password – Friday May 21, 2021
#925
Merger & Acquisitions – Clarivate – ProQuest – Cambridge Information Group – Atairos – End-to-end Research Intelligence Solutions – Jerre Stead – Andy Snyder – Strategic Benefits – Financially Compelling Transaction – FinTech, Data and Analytics World – Time to Sell? – Joachim C. Bartels – BIIA – ISI 2021 – Knowledge Graphs – Disco – FaBiO – RDF – Stefan Hauff-Hartig – Knowledge Representation – Magnus Pfeffer – Senan Kiryakos – University of Media – Japanese Visual Media Graph – Communities – Digital Humanities – RDF – OWL – Open Source – Luise Borek – TU Darmstadt – Canan Hastik – DIPF – TaDiRAH – SKOS – Research data – FRBR – Ingo Frank – Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research – DCAT – Disco – Semantic technologies and ontologies – New work – Mobile working – Self-determination – Sustainability – Ole Wintermann – Digital change – MACRONOM – Pandemic – Digital Taylorism – Turbo capitalism – Compass of values – Greenpeace – Online trade – Peripheral regions – City – Frithjof Bergmann – Structural change in the auto industry – Detroit
I
Clarivate acquires ProQuest
for $4.0 billion in cash and $1.3 billion of equity
FinTech, Data and Analytics World: Is it Time to Sell?
II.
Cover story: Knowledge presentation through RDF: Three applied research examples
III.
Outside the box: Mobile working brings self-determination and sustainability
Mergers & Acquisitions (1)
Clarivate acquires ProQuest
for $4.0 billion in cash and $1.3 billion of equity
Creating a world-leading software and information provider for research-focused organizations
(Clarivate) Clarivate plc (NYSE: CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire ProQuest, a leading global software, data and analytics provider to academic, research and national institutions, from Cambridge Information Group, a family-owned investment firm, and other partners including Atairos, for $5.3 billion, including refinancing of ProQuest debt. The consideration for the acquisition is approximately $4.0 billion in cash and $1.3 billion of equity. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to close during the third quarter of 2021.
With a mission to accelerate and improve education, research and innovation, ProQuest delivers content and technology solutions to over 25,000 academic, corporate and research organizations in more than 150 countries. The acquisition will establish Clarivate as a premier provider of end-to-end research intelligence solutions and significantly expand its content and data offerings as the addition of ProQuest will materially complement the Clarivate Research Intelligence Cloud™.
By bringing together these two customer-focused businesses with a purpose to accelerate innovation at their core, we will create a world-leading software and information provider for research-focused organizations to fuel scientific discovery and innovation into the future.
Jerre Stead, Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate, said: “Clarivate and ProQuest are highly complementary businesses, each with a rich and storied heritage. We share the goal to accelerate innovation through research and knowledge sharing and together we will enable our customers to solve the world’s most complex challenges with content dating back centuries, and technologies that address the needs of 21st century customers.”
Andy Snyder, Chairman of ProQuest and CEO of Cambridge Information Group, said: “I have seen ProQuest evolve to meet our customers’ ever-changing needs over the last several decades and fully understand that the challenges and opportunities they face have never been greater. I am confident that the company will continue to have the resources required to maintain the impressive track record of innovation that our customers count on – to create a world leading organization in research and innovation.”
Upon completion of the transaction, two members of the ProQuest Board will join the Clarivate Board, including Andy Snyder, who will have the position of Vice Chairman of the Clarivate Board, and Michael Angelakis, Chairman and CEO of Atairos.
Compelling strategic benefits to drive future growth
- Creates a world-leading software and content information provider for academia, governments, public libraries and corporations: Content aggregation, along with software solutions to connect and filter disparate information, is critical in today’s world of information overload. The combination of these two gold-standard organizations will provide a gateway to the world’s largest collection of interoperable, expertly curated content, including journal content, primary sources, dissertations, news, streaming video and more across multiple academic disciplines. Clarivate will continue to expand its market-leading software to enhance its discovery, sharing and management capabilities.
- Opens new sales opportunities to drive growth in existing and complementary markets: Enterprise software is the fastest growing library market segment and has high customer loyalty due to workflows integrated in core library operations. This acquisition will provide Clarivate with access to complementary markets and varied users, including public libraries, research libraries, school districts and community colleges, with the opportunity to deliver new campus-wide platforms to provide a unified source of knowledge discovery.
- Broadens our analytical offerings: The addition of ProQuest moves the academic analytical capabilities of Clarivate beyond its traditional realm of journal publication data and citations into a much wider range of information sources. There will be long-term predictive and prescriptive analytics opportunities from the enhanced combination of ProQuest’s data cloud with the billions of harmonized data points in the Clarivate Research Intelligence Cloud.
Financially compelling transaction: Accretive to Clarivate earnings per share: For 2020, ProQuest generated $876 million of revenue, 4% from organic growth, and $250 million of Adjusted EBITDA. The acquisition is expected to provide significant cost synergies, which, in addition to revenue synergies, is expected to drive both ProQuest and Clarivate Adjusted EBITDA growth and expand ProQuest’s Adjusted EBITDA margin. Clarivate expects to benefit from more than $100 million of cost synergies across the organization within the 15 – 18 months after the close of the transaction. Clarivate also expects to benefit from approximately $65 million in annual cash tax savings from the transaction structure. The acquisition is expected to generate strong cash flow that will enable Clarivate to reduce its debt, continue investing in product development and pursue additional business development opportunities. For the year ending December 31, 2021, excluding the combination with ProQuest, Clarivate continues to expect: Adjusted Revenues in a range of $1.79 billion to $1.84 billion – Adjusted EBITDA in a range of $790 million to $825 million – Adjusted EBITDA margins in a range of 44% to 45% – Adjusted Free Cash Flow in a range of $450 million to $500 million.
Clarivate will provide an updated 2021 outlook to include the acquisition of ProQuest after closing of the transaction, which is expected to occur in the third quarter of 2021.
Mergers & Acquisitions (2)
FinTech, Data and Analytics World:
Is it Time to Sell?
Is it time to sell? … It’s true that there is strong demand and strong values for FinTech, Data and Analytic firms with unique capabilities and strong growth. If that’s you, then you are lucky. If not, don’t panic. Yes, taxes are on the rise. So be it. Liquidity and desire among buyers and investors remain high; economies are recovering at rates faster than most expected. Demand for technology-driven products and services shows no signs of slowing. Most experts note there is little risk of significantly higher interest rates soon. Marlin & Associates see little reason for diminished appetite by buyers or investors for strong FinTech, Data and Analytic companies any time soon. The things in short supply are good companies to invest in.
Joachim C. Bartels, in: BIIA News, May 2021 – BIIA is the international partner of Open Password
Stefan Hauff-Hartig
SI 2021:
Knowledge Representation
Quite diverse, please: How knowledge graphs, disco and FaBiO bring structure to manga and the humanities
Knowledge representation through RDF:
Three applied research examples
By Stefan Hauff-Hartig
In the “Knowledge Representation” session at ISI 2021, moderated by Jürgen Reischer (University of Regensburg), three projects were presented in which knowledge representation is implemented with RDF. The domains are pleasingly different, but the common thread is the intention to improve access to research data.
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Japanese Visual Media Graph
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It started with Magnus Pfeffer and Senan Kiryakos, who are structuring very heterogeneous metadata on the visual media of Japanese comics, manga and videos at the Stuttgart Media University in the DFG project “Japanese Visual Media Graph”. As expected, there are a lot of communities in this domain that have often not only brought together large collections, but also explore them formally and semantically with astonishing depth. It was obvious that this aroused the interest of the digital humanities in making this metadata the starting point for a wide range of research. However, the size of the database already illustrates the challenges: the analysis of three such databases showed that over 100,000 “characters” were recorded in them alone. Added to this are the diverse communities and forums in which information is disseminated – with the resulting heterogeneity.
An initial approach to create a data model through (meta)data integration via (meta)data analysis and definition as well as appropriate attribute assignment was rejected because the complexity of the metadata was considered too high and there would be later use cases for it must be known. Instead, the Resource Description Framework (RDF) became the conceptual basis, which was extended by the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Specifically, this means that data models were created for individual sources and then formalized as an OWL ontology. The various levels were thus “RDF-ized”. In the next phase, the data models developed from other individual sources were matched and clustered and then merged.
A key finding was that it made sense to start pragmatically with individual sources and then integrate the data models from other sources. The front end developed in this context has been very well received. The desire for the greatest possible transparency regarding data and its provenance as well as the use of open source software contribute to the great user-friendliness and acceptance.
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Taxonomy of Digital Research Activities in the Humanities.
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Representing five project participants, Luise Borek (TU Darmstadt) and Canan Hastik (German Institute for Pedagogical Research) presented the project “TaDiRAH” – Taxonomy of Digital Research Activities in the Humanities. The aim of this project is to use a taxonomy to categorize, “organize” and make visible the resources, goals and activities of projects from as many disciplines in the digital humanities as possible. One visual-graphical result, among others, is the representation of a “research circle”.
The problems that became apparent during the course of the project, for example in the assignment of keywords and in the conceptualization, led to TaDiRAH 2.0. This is primarily characterized by the fact that the taxonomy has now been incorporated into SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), so that it is RDF-based. In addition, multilingualism and expandability are now the focus. The aim is to improve access, interoperability and use of research data from the digital humanities.
The following “lessons learned” were mentioned, among others: the experiences regarding the possibilities and limitations of SKOS, the need for a pragmatic research approach and interoperability, as well as the potential that can be achieved by involving the communities with a view to their commitment, their involvement and their responsibility arises.
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Research data in the conceptual model of FRBR
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Ingo Frank from the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research spoke on the topic “From data catalog to knowledge graph – research data in the conceptual model of FRBR”. The initial problem he described was that metadata for research data is often characterized by being inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete or not consistently curated. This of course leads to more difficult access to the research data.
The preferred solution approach is to use the FRBR concept (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), which is well known in the LIS world. FRBR is based on the entity relationship model and is at the same time the basis of current library and bibliographic regulations, especially RDA (Resource Description and Access). This is why FRBR is particularly suitable as a basis because it allows the potential of metadata from library catalogs and other sources such as research information systems to be used to create knowledge graphs. These knowledge graphs were in turn generated using the FRBR-based data model FaBiO. The metadata schema is based on DCAT (Data Catalog Vocabulary) and Disco (DDI-RDF Discovery Vocabulary).
In the project, FRBR proved to be very suitable for integrating data and creating knowledge graphs. Further advantages include version control of data sets, the establishment of provenance data for research data and the improvement of data citation. Overall, these are all factors that benefit the retrieval of research data. Future challenges lie in the integration of metadata and statistical data into data sets.
As the three project reports showed, semantic technologies and ontologies are anything but obsolete. In practice, concepts based on RDF in particular have shown that they are highly suitable for making heterogeneous information from a wide variety of domains more accessible and usable.
Outside the box (50)
Mobile working brings
self-determination and sustainability
Understand the “city” as a meeting place close to people and life
Ole Wintermann, World of Work: How digital change can lead to more sustainability, in: MAKRONOM. The corona pandemic is strengthening and accelerating trends in the world of work that have already been measurable. Depending on the point of view, “a digital Taylorism, a digital “turbo-capitalism” or, on the contrary, even more self-determination is expected.” Studies that provide evidence for the latter view also believe that it will lead to a modification of the “values compass” in work -, living and consumer world come.
Can digital transformation advance the green transition? “Currently, the discussion focuses too much on institutions and companies, without sufficiently taking into account the findings that have emerged in recent years from the digital transformation of work and work culture and seeing this as an opportunity for people and not only to address the institutions. … But how can these people be addressed?”
Mobile working, especially working from home, promotes self-determination and sustainability: According to a Greenpeace study, 5.4 million tons of CO2 emissions are saved if 40% of employees spend two days in the home office. 45% of those working at home see home office as a source of higher quality of life. Workers can avoid the problem of rising rents in larger cities by moving to regions where the cost of living is lower. This means that “regions that have both a rural quality of life and a certain proximity to larger cities are likely to become significantly more attractive.” The pandemic and the widespread switch to online trading increase the chances that “city” is not just a remote collection of office space, but to be defined as a meeting space close to people and life.”
Wintermann refers to the American work philosopher Frithjof Bergmann, who, based on the structural change in the auto industry in Detroit in the 1970s, pointed to important new values in the new world of work: appreciation of employees by employers – freedom of hierarchy in the new work – the question of what each individual is for actually stands – the values of the company. Bergmann: “The New Work has the task of helping people to no longer avoid the question of what they really, really want.”
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