Here’s a deep cut for you: Microsoft Academic was an academic search engine once touted as an alternative to Google scholar. But unlike scholar, it made its dataset of authors, organisations, keywords, and journals available as open data. This made it a very useful resource that supported many research tools including VOSviewer, Unsub, Litmaps, and Semantic Scholar. Microsoft killed it anyway in 2021.

The academic community response revealed systemic unpreparedness. Despite Microsoft Academic being the second-largest academic search engine, no adequate backup systems existed. OpenAlex and The Lens emerged as replacements, but experts warned it would take years to match the quality and comprehensiveness of the discontinued service. The disruption affected commercial enterprises and academic tools globally. The lesson? Even successful, widely-used academic infrastructure gets the axe when companies decide it’s not strategically important anymore.