This is part of a series of profiles on institutions that have discontinued subscriptions to proprietary citation databases, such as Web of Science and Scopus. The aim is to provide insights, lessons learned, and inspiration to libraries that might consider a similar move.
Summary
In 2024, Sorbonne University discontinued its subscription to Clarivate’s bibliometric tools, including Web of Science. The university now uses open, free, and community-driven tools such as OpenAlex for these needs and does not use any proprietary products.
The Paris institution has also exited several big deals with publishers in recent years. These moves were possible because librarians worked collaboratively to lay the groundwork by having a campus-wide conversation about the value of open research and the costs of the current system.
Background
Open Science has been a main pillar of Sorbonne University’s strategic plan since 2018. This has allowed the library to adopt very strong negotiating positions with commercial publishers. In the following years, Sorbonne requested price decreases from major publishers, renewing with those that agreed and exiting big deals of those that would not. The university did this not because of a lack of money but on principle, said Anne-Catherine Fritzinger, who leads open science at Sorbonne University.
Exiting big deals with Nature, Springer, IEEE, Royal Society of Chemistry, and others was easier than expected – in part because both library and university governance had prepared the community.
“All of these decisions are the result of significant preparation,” said Fritzinger. “Training researchers, explaining open science, what was wrong with the publication system – all that has helped the community to understand the decisions made by the university.”
For example, in the biomedical sciences, a discipline where the library expected to receive significant push back, they found a vocal champion in a senior faculty member who publicly supported the decision to leave these deals before moving forward. Overall, the continuous commitment of the University’s governance, and especially its President Nathalie Drach-Temam, to open science helped the library to consider further changes in reviewing and ultimately cutting their subscription to Clarivate’s Web of Science product.
Decision/Outcomes/Campus Response
Sorbonne University decided to discontinue its Web of Science subscription at the end of 2023. It made this move in parallel with becoming a signatory to the Barcelona Declaration, joining many other institutions in calling for a transformation in the way research information is used and produced. The university does not subscribe to similar products from other companies, such as Elsevier’s Scopus.
Across the many ways Web of Science was used on campus, viable alternatives emerged for each. As a discovery tool, researchers used other library services or simply Google Scholar. For systematic reviews, users were encouraged to switch to Matilda, a publicly funded tool developed by French research funders. For research analytics and output tracking, the institution switched to OpenAlex.
The university’s prior use of Web of Science to track metrics related to university rankings required significant amounts of labor from Sorbonne to correct data and add records from missed outputs, most frequently in the social sciences and humanities.
With the role Web of Science plays in institutional rankings and comparative research analytics, some may view Sorbonne’s cancellation as easier given its prominence. However, many of those at the institution see it differently.
“Some people would say, ‘You can [leave Web of Science] because you’re Sorbonne University. You don’t have to prove anything,’” said Fritzinger of the decision to walk away from proprietary databases. “We could also say the opposite, ‘Because we are Sorbonne (and one of the best ranked university in France), we have a lot to lose.’”
The university has since decided not to participate in the rankings. In making the switch to OpenAlex, Sorbonne has found better coverage across disciplines, particularly those outside of STEM, according to Amelie Church, co-director of Sorbonne University’s Archives, Library and Museum Collections Services. When the university does make corrections or additions, the metadata is contributed back to an open-source resource that others can build on—rather than serving as uncompensated labor for the proprietary product of a commercial vendor.
The library sees numerous parallels in cancelling Web of Science with leaving big deal journal packages. In both cases, users turned to other avenues to access the research they needed. Usage had already started to shift outside of library portals, and this trend has continued without a negative impact on faculty or students. Some readers are going to an author directly to request a copy, often getting a response within hours, and others are turning to Interlibrary Loan (ILL), though this hasn’t resulted in a significant uptick in ILL requests.
“When unsubscribing from a resource, we communicate the reasoning and cost,” Church said. “It’s very well understood by the community.”
Neither the university’s research activity nor its rankings (in the more values-aligned Leiden University Rankings) have seen a negative impact from these decisions to move away from proprietary research infrastructure.
Advice/Next Steps
Prior to its cancellation, Web of Science was a heavily used resource, and after cancellation, that usage was transitioned to alternative tools effectively. The lesson: just because a resource sees heavy usage does not mean it is indispensable.
Both leaving Web of Science and exiting big deals were made possible by broad support across campus and from university leaders and governance bodies.“Open science is not a library subject. It is a university issue,” Fritzinger said. “You have to support it as such and build a strong trust relationship with the [university] governance.”
The job of the library is to educate all parties on the open practices, the Sorbonne librarians said; and it’s a constant task. The decision to unsubscribe from Web of Science aligned with the university’s values and was an opportunity that presented itself because of the work the library had put in over the years.
Moving ahead, Church said the university does not have to deal with the restrictions of Clarivate. When there are fixes needed to metadata, librarians can do it themselves.
“Metadata is not proprietary. We should not have to rely on private companies,” she said. “With an open database like OpenAlex, we can iterate and make improvements… We at Sorbonne are the best people to know what we publish and how to describe it.”
Since making the move away from Web of Science, many librarians have contacted Sorbonne for guidance. Fritzinger and Church both expect to see this trend continue, as the Barcelona Declaration continues to build momentum and more institutions see that leaving proprietary products like Web of Science is not just possible but can actually serve them better in the short and long term.