Another publishing takeover

We are becoming used to the idea of scientific publishing as big business, all about shareholders, profits and market share. A few years back Elsevier were buying up everything that moved (Cell Press, Lancet, Harcourt, including Academic Press) and became a medical/scientific publishing behemoth with about 2,000 journal titles. Taylor and Francis bought up a host of smaller publishers and now have over 1,000 titles. More recently Kluwer and Springer merged to form another huge publishing entity with about 1,150 titles.

The next two juicy publishing morsels on most people's lists were Blackwell publishing and John Wileys. Taylor & Francis tried and failed to acquire Blackwells a couple of years ago. Now Wileys have succeeded where they failed. They announced on Friday that they had agreed to purchase Blackwell publishing for 570 million pounds. This will create probably the number two scholarly publisher, with a total of 1,250 journal titles.

No great changes are expected in the short term, but it will be interesting to see how the merger turns out over the next year or two.