A Charlottesville-based publishing platform for scholarly works plans to acquire another local company that provides editorial services for those seeking to get published.
Silverchair announced late last month its plans to acquire ScholarOne from parent company Clarivate, a British-American business which assists organizations in protecting their intellectual property and enables the publication of more than half of the total annual work of the global scholarly community.
The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
The deal will further establish Silverchair as a leader in the scholarship community, creating a comprehensive array of resources for customers, according to company leaders.
“For over than 30 years, Silverchair has served the needs of publishers as an independent technology partner,” Silverchair CEO Will Schweitzer said in a statement. “We believe that innovation and technology can help fulfill the promise of scholarship, and we will make substantial investments in ScholarOne to meet the needs of publishers, editors, and authors.”
Schweitzer said his company has long had an eye on the growth of ScholarOne and the acquisition was part of the “long-term vision” of Silverchair founder Thane Kerner.
Kerner founded Silverchair in Charlottesville in 1993 alongside Elizabeth Willingham. What began as a packager of medical textbooks evolved with the advent of the internet into an online platform managing and distributing scientific, technical and other scholarly content. The name of the business was lifted from Kerner’s favorite literary series, C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
In 2022, Silverchair received a “major growth investment” from Thompson Street Capital Partners, a St. Louis-based private equity firm that focuses on technological, health and engineered products services. The partnership has allowed Silverchair to expand its capabilities in regard to offering professional education content and recruiting new publishers, according to the two companies.
Today, Silverchair products are used by more than 400 publishers all over the world.
Founded seven years after Silverchair, ScholarOne came online as a “leading provider of manuscript submission, peer review, and editorial management software and services to scholarly publishers and societies,” according to the company. The submission platform is one of the many assets in the Clarivate portfolio.
“The ScholarOne team is excited to continue serving the scholarly publishing community, now as an independent, end-to-end partner,” Josh Dahl, senior director of product management for ScholarOne, said in a statement. “We look forward to collaborating with our expanded community to amplify the impact of scholarship by developing these leading technology platforms to meet the needs of publishers, editors, and authors.”
Thompson Street Capital Partners echoed that sentiment.
“Silverchair’s acquisition of ScholarOne presents an opportunity to leverage both companies’ powerful technology platforms to enable new products and services and deliver more value to customers across the scholarly publishing lifecycle,” Craig Albrecht, managing director of Thompson Street Capital Partners, said in a statement.
The acquisition is set to close by the end of 2024.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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