Partnering with libraries and publishers to build impactful ebook subscriptions

Twenty years ago, ProQuest, from Clarivate, began a tradition of curated ebook subscriptions that have become foundational to library collections worldwide. From the launch of our flagship Academic Complete, to specialized offerings like the University Press Ebook Subscription and Sustainability Ebook Subscription, our growing suite of solutions—including the newest ProQuest Ebooks—provides libraries with unlimited access to broad, authoritative scholarly content, while reducing restrictive costs and access barriers.

The higher education landscape continues to evolve—and so do our ebook subscriptions. We update our collections quarterly, adding new content at no additional cost to ensure they remain current and relevant. Our team of in-house librarians and subject matter experts closely monitor curricula, degree trends, emerging research areas, usage patterns, and career insights to align our content with institutional priorities. We’ve added over 17,000 titles to our subscriptions in 2025 thus far, aiming to include content that supports academic success and delivers societal impact.

As a standard practice across the academic industry, there are times when publishers remove content from subscriptions. ProQuest has worked closely with publishers over the years to optimize the title removals frequency, implementing a bi-annual schedule of removals to minimize disruption as much as possible.

With the help of our publishing partners, and informed by feedback from the library community, we are pleased to take a step forward in this space. ProQuest will now move to once-a-year title removals from ebook subscriptions, an improvement over our previous schedule of twice-a-year removals. These removals will continue to be communicated in advance, and we will provide libraries with a list of titles to be removed, which can be purchased from other publishers or aggregators if desired. There may be occasional off-cycle removals due to legal reasons or loss of publisher rights, for example. We will continue to explore ways to communicate these changes to libraries to reduce disruption to access and workflow.

Through Customer Advisory Board meetings, consultations and direct customer suggestions, we will continue to gather important feedback on the title removals program, as well as our content additions. Most recently, we launched a librarian advisory committee focusing on content curation to provide strategic guidance into the development of our subscriptions, helping ensure selections are data-informed, relevant and inclusive.

Our content curation group is focused on five key objectives:

• • Guide curation strategy: Prioritize trending and high-impact topics such as AI, sustainability and area studies
  • Promote biblio-variety: Enhance discovery of impactful content from small and specialized publishers
  • Serve as an open forum: Shape best practices for subscription development
  • Build wide-ranging, comprehensive collections: Meet varied academic needs and drive strong value and usage for libraries
  • Foster robust dialogue: Encourage meaningful exchange between librarians and publisher partners

Natasha Edmonds, Senior Director, Product Management at Clarivate, said: “Our content curation strategy has always been guided by librarian feedback. Over the years, we’ve had countless conversations with librarians, gathering their suggestions and revisiting their wish lists to make every attempt to secure the content they need. We’re thrilled to now have an established forum to collaborate more deeply and ensure our subscriptions continue to drive academic success and societal impact.”