De Gruyter is proud to announce the acquisition of two academic publishers with a long and rich tradition: Akademie Verlag, based in Berlin, and Oldenburg Wissenschaftsverlag, based in Munich. Both companies were acquired retroactively as of 1 January 2013 from Franz Cornelsen Bildungsgruppe, which is seeking to streamline its business.
“The acquisition of Akademie and Oldenbourg will considerably strengthen De Gruyter’s publishing portfolio in numerous areas,” said Sven Fund, CEO of De Gruyter. Both of the newly acquired publishing houses enjoy a strong professional reputation in the fields of history, philosophy, business science, and several areas of the natural sciences.
Together, Akademie and Oldenbourg published 44 professional journals and some 400 books in 2012, including the Complete Works of Marx and Engels, the Collected Letters of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, several recognized classics in business economics, and the renowned Tusculum Collection. The entire backlist of both publishing houses comprises some 4,000 titles.
“De Gruyter will invest in digitalizing the acquired publications and in strengthening international distribution,” Dr. Fund added. De Gruyter has traditionally placed a special focus on close cooperation with scientific academies, professional associations, and authors. “The high quality of the scientific contributions that appear in the journals and books published by Akademie and Oldenbourg was the key reason for our purchase,” Dr. Fund explained.
De Gruyter will preserve the offices of the acquired companies in Berlin and Munich, as well as the group representatives in Basel, Boston, and Peking.
