Plum Analytics Becomes Part of EBSCO Information Services

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Today EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) announced that PlumTM Analytics has become a wholly-owned subsidiary. We are excited about this big change because it will help us have the resources to realize the bright future we have for Plum Analytics, PlumXTM, and other products we envision.

We started Plum Analytics two years ago with a small investment from friends and family and a lot of big ideas, hopes and dreams (see our blog posting about the last two years). We’ve accomplished a lot in that time – we developed PlumX, won the Library Journal Most Ambitious Database of 2013 award,  acquired many customers, and significantly contributed to the conversation about altmetrics and research impact. Now, we are at the point where we need to grow and build the complete measure of research impact. We want to continue to develop and improve how we look at altmetrics via social media mentions and captures, but we want to go far beyond that humble beginning. We have big plans to continue expanding how we assess research impact including looking at usage and citations.

As a wholly-owned subsidiary, Plum Analytics will continue to operate as we have. That is, Mike Buschman and Andrea Michalek will still be at the helm guiding the direction of the company and the development of the products. The current engineering team will stay in place and will grow as well.

We want to express our gratitude to everyone who helped get us to this point. This includes our early funders who allowed us to start Plum Analytics before there was anything but our dreams. This includes our early employees who sacrificed a lot to work with us. This includes our early customers who took a chance that we would deliver on our promises and be around to support them (we did and we are!). This includes numerous unpaid advisors that helped us create and stick with plans. Without the support of all of these people we would not now be poised to accelerate our growth and break new ground for research impact.

We are excited about being associated with EBSCO for a number of reasons, but chiefly among them is that fact they too are grounded in libraries. As the wingman to researchers, measuring research impact has always been a part of the librarian’s charter. Given our mutual background in libraries and librarianship we know that this expertise will make our ability to deliver on products that help assess research impact stronger. Our library background is what created Plum Analytics and PlumX in the first place. It was important to us to find an acquisition partner that not only understood this, but shared the same background.

Another reason we are excited about our relationship with EBSCO is their relationship with the academic publishing world. As a company that is a trusted aggregator and is therefore publisher-neutral, it is a perfect pairing for us as we look forward to expanding our role in helping publishers with research impact.

We hope our supporters are excited about this new change for Plum Analytics. If you have any questions please email us or come visit us at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia where we will be at booth 1871. We will continue to tweet, blog and send newsletters as before, so you can keep following us as you always have.

UPDATE:

Below are some links related to this announcement that you might find interesting:

EBSCO Acquires Altmetrics Provider Plum Analytics  – TheDigitalShift by Matt Enis, January 15, 2014

Plum Analytics Acquired by EBSCO – Blog post by Joel Gehman, January 15, 2014