Thompson Street Portfolio Company Silverchair Announces Agreement to Acquire Scholarone

ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Silverchair, a portfolio company of Thompson Street Capital Partners (TSCP), announced today that is has entered into a definitive agreement with Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT) to acquire ScholarOne, a leading provider of software and services to scholarly publishers and societies. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1993 and based in Charlottesville, VA, Silverchair provides a suite of software and services to leading global publishers of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) content. The company has leveraged its feature-rich and extensible content management system (CMS), the Silverchair Platform, to build new products that help more than 400 publishers manage, distribute and monetize STM content.

Founded in 2000 and also based in Charlottesville, VA, ScholarOne is a leading provider of manuscript submission, peer review, and editorial management software and services to scholarly publishers and societies. ScholarOne’s submission platforms serve more than 600 publishers and enable more than three million manuscripts and conference abstracts each year, representing more than half of the total output of the scholarly community.

“For more than 30 years, Silverchair has served the needs of publishers as an independent technology partner,” said Silverchair CEO Will Schweitzer. “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. This acquisition was part of founder Thane Kerner’s long-term vision for Silverchair, and I’m pleased to bring it to fruition with the strong support of Thompson Street Capital Partners.”

“The ScholarOne team is excited to continue serving the scholarly publishing community, now as an independent, end-to-end partner,” said Josh Dahl, Senior Director of Product Management for ScholarOne. “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.”

Craig Albrecht, Managing Director, TSCP said, “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.”

Joe St. Geme, Managing Director, TSCP added, “We couldn’t be more excited about bringing together these two industry leaders to create a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for our publisher and association customers.”

The acquisition is expected to close within the fourth quarter of 2024 subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.