Notice of Intent to Sole Source - Renewal of Web of Science Subscriptions

The Department of Energy (DOE) intends to issue a Firm Fixed Price award to a single source under the authority of FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(i)(ii), Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services will Satisfy Agency Requirements, Clarivate Analytics.

The incumbent contractor shall provide a Web of Science bundle subscription to the DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). This bundle provides access to the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Journal and Highly Cited Data (Journal Citation Reports + Essential Science Indicators) research tools. The period of performance for the services described herein is anticipated to be from April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2030, for a one (1) one-year base period and four (4) one-year option year periods.

This is a Notice of Proposed Contract Action Synopsis. There is no solicitation available at this time. Requests for a solicitation will receive no response. This Proposed Contract Action is published to notify potential sources that the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information intends to award a sole source firm-fixed price contract to Clarivate Analytics for the Web of Science Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) subscription and Journal and Highly Cited Data (Journal Citation Reports + Essential Science Indicators) subscription.

The Web of Science is a proprietary database that is owned and hosted exclusively by Clarivate Analytics. Web of Science is only sold directly from Clarivate Analytics LLC. There are no re-sellers and it is not available through any federal acquisition vehicle. Web of Science is an online subscription-based scientific citation indexing service that provides a comprehensive citation search. It gives access to multiple databases that reference cross-disciplinary research. The Web of Science platform connects the Web of Science Core Collection to regional citation indexes, patent data, specialized subject indexes, and an index of research data sets, all in all totaling over 34,000 journals. The Web of Science Core Collection is the only resource that provides consistent controlled indexing for all authors, addresses, funding acknowledgements, and cited references, providing users with a complete view of the scholarly record.

The proposed contract action is for services for which the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of FAR 6.302. Interested persons may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 519290 - Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services. The Size Standard is 1,000 employees.

The responses to this Notice of Intent will be used to confirm that this is a sole source requirement. This notice is not a Request for Proposals (RFP); it is a market research tool being utilized to determine the availability and adequacy of potential sources prior to awarding the contract. Any information submitted by respondents to this synopsis is strictly voluntary. The Government will not pay for any information that is submitted by respondents to this notice of proposed contract action. Contractors who believe they possess the expertise and experience shall submit a technical capabilities statement and proposal for the period of performance identified above, in writing to Tammy Payne electronically to: paynet@osti.gov. Responses must be received no later than January 28, 2025, 5:00 pm EST. All documentation shall become the property of the Government. Contractors responding must indicate the following information: business size: small/large, disadvantaged business, veteran owned small business or HUB Zone certified; the appropriate NAICS code, and UEI #. This synopsis neither constitutes a Request for Proposal, nor does it restrict the Government to a particular acquisition approach. This notice of intent should not be construed as commitment by the Government for any purpose other than market research. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed effort on a full and open competition basis, based upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the government. Please note that any prospective offeror must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) at www.sam.gov prior to award in accordance with FAR part 4.11.

All technical capability statements should demonstrate how the following requirements can be accomplished:

• Must be able to provide cover to cover indexing of all citing and cited references, including full papers, editorials, and book reviews.


• Must support searching by subject, keyword, cited reference, author and author affiliation (including author address and identification of corresponding author), Digital Object Identifier (DOI), unique record identifier, Funder/Funding Organization (including award/grant numbers where applicable), journal title (including open access status), and must support searching capabilities for records dated back to the 1900’s.


• Must be able to provide access to the articles' cited references - the bibliographies or reference lists of the indexed articles (fully cited).


• Must provide citations that are compiled by hand, with quality control and consistent metadata, and which are publisher-independent.


• Must be able to provide customized analyses of search results, including capability to create customized reports and visualizations based on selected search results.


• Must have the ability to refine search results, and must support complex Boolean search syntax, including combining results sets from previous searches


• Must be able to support search queries to identify specific publications, authors/researchers, or publications funded by a designated funder/funding organization.


• Search syntax must be compatible with existing DOE systems and must support all queries already developed and in use by DOE, building on previous work to assess the impact of DOE research.


• Must include links to full text.


• Must offer alert services and the ability to save prior searches.


• Must be able to provide subscription access for all authorized employees via unlimited simultaneous internet access using IP authentication.


• Must be able to provide citation exporting options, including the capability to download full records or customized, specific fields.


• Must be able to provide a visualization citation mapping tool that allows users to map citations by author, institution, country, subject, funder/funding organization, and more to visualize connections at a glance, discover wider relationships and to change map appearance to emphasize important relationships.


• Must allow user to easily create a visual representation of citation relations, thus allowing the user to “See” the full research picture.


• Must be able to provide data that can be used to prevent duplication of prior research, by identifying the body of work on a particular topic, and by tracking and assessing the subsequent impact the DOE's research has had on others by identifying who has cited the research.


• Must be able to provide author cited references for all full journal articles indexed from 1900-present.


• Must be able to use the dataset for performance metrics which will help to demonstrate the relevance, quality, performance, and efficiency of the DOE Research & Development's work.


• Must be able to provide metrics that can be used to estimate the scientific use of publications authored by DOE scientists and clearly identify High Impact Papers and Influential Papers within the discipline/field.


• Must be able to provide distinctive author affiliation for all authors that includes author-specific details used for researcher disambiguation and impact assessment, such as organizational information, address fields, unique author ID (such as ORCID), with advanced search options for each, in order to identify DOE-affiliated authors.


• Must be able to provide an easy mechanism for reporting data errors and provide quick response time to correcting errors.


• Must be able to provide results with funding agency and grant number searching, with advanced Boolean searching capabilities. These all are necessary in order to identify DOE-funded publications. Data must be in formats consistent with DOE award numbers and with DOE-specified funding acknowledgements language.


• All Open Access articles must be identified at the individual article level.


• Must provide APIs via the POST HTTP request method that support query searches of at least 21KB of text, with option to expand.


• Must provide APIs that support between 30,000-120,000 calls per day, and 50 connection sessions every 5 minutes with 20 API calls per second.


• API must provide all metadata that is available through the search user interface including the ability to parameterize API queries for tailored API searches.


• Must be able to provide bulk download options for citation data and author cited references for all full journal articles indexed from 1900-present.


• All citation, metrics, and bibliographic record data must be provided in data formats that can easily be integrated into existing DOE information systems.

Contracting Office Address:

US Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information

P.O. Box 62

Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Government Point of Contact: Tammy Payne

Phone: (865) 576-0247

Email: paynet@osti.gov