Wiley-Blackwell

Wiley-Blackwell
John Wiley & Sons · Public domain · source
Name	Wiley-Blackwell
Parent	John Wiley & Sons
Founded	2007
Country	United States
Headquarters	Hoboken, New Jersey
Key people	Brian Napack (President & CEO, Wiley)
Industry	Academic publishing
Products	Academic journals, books, online databases
Website	https://www.wiley.com

Wiley-Blackwell is the international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed in 2007 through the merger of John Wiley & Sons' scientific, technical, and medical division with the Blackwell Publishing Ltd. business acquired from the Blackwell family. The company publishes over 1,500 peer-reviewed academic journals and thousands of books, encyclopedias, and online products annually, serving researchers, professionals, and institutions worldwide.

History

The foundation of Wiley-Blackwell traces back to the 1807 establishment of John Wiley & Sons in Manhattan and the 1879 founding of Blackwell Publishing in Oxford by Benjamin Henry Blackwell. For over a century, both firms grew independently, with John Wiley & Sons expanding its scientific publishing and Blackwell Publishing becoming a major force in academic journal publishing, particularly in the United Kingdom. In February 2007, John Wiley & Sons completed the acquisition of Blackwell Publishing Ltd. for approximately £572 million, merging it with its own STM publishing division to create Wiley-Blackwell. This merger combined the extensive journal portfolios and global sales networks of both historic entities, creating one of the world's largest academic publishers.

Imprints and publications

Wiley-Blackwell operates numerous specialized imprints catering to distinct academic and professional fields. Key imprints include Wiley-VCH, which focuses on chemistry and materials science publications in Germany, and Blackwell Science, which continues to publish works in the life sciences. Other notable imprints are Wiley-Blackwell (Asia), Wiley-IEEE Press in partnership with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and Wiley-Blackwell (Clinical). The division publishes a vast array of formats, including major reference works like the *Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology*, prestigious book series, and digital library platforms such as Wiley Online Library.

Business operations

Headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, Wiley-Blackwell maintains major operational and editorial offices in Oxford, Berlin, Singapore, and Melbourne. Its business model primarily involves subscription-based access to journal portfolios and book sales to libraries, corporations, and individual researchers. The company is a significant revenue driver for its parent, John Wiley & Sons, contributing substantially to its Professional/Trade segment. Operations are supported by a global network of editorial, marketing, and sales staff who manage relationships with learned societies like the Royal Society of Chemistry and the British Psychological Society.

Notable publications and journals

The company's portfolio includes many high-impact and historically significant journals. Among its most cited publications are *Angewandte Chemie*, *Advanced Materials*, and the *EMBO Journal*. It also publishes flagship society journals such as *The Cochrane Library* for evidence-based medicine, the *Journal of Pathology* for the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and the *American Journal of Agricultural Economics*. Notable book series include the *Dummies (series)* instructional guides and the acclaimed *For Dummies* brand across professional topics.

Open access initiatives

In response to evolving scholarly communication models, Wiley-Blackwell has developed several open access options. It offers hybrid open access publishing through its OnlineOpen program, allowing authors to make individual articles freely available in subscription journals for a fee. The company also publishes fully gold open access journals, such as those under the Wiley Open Access banner, and has established partnerships with initiatives like Project DEAL in Germany and cOAlition S to implement transformative agreements. These agreements aim to shift institutional payments from subscriptions to supporting open access publishing for affiliated researchers.

Criticism and controversies

Like other major academic publishers, Wiley-Blackwell has faced criticism from the open access movement and some within the academic community regarding high subscription and article processing charge fees, which are seen as contributing to the serials crisis in library budgets. The company has been involved in legal disputes, including a 2015 lawsuit with the American Institute of Physics over journal licensing. It has also faced scrutiny for its practices in journal bundling and has been a subject of discussion in debates about academic spring and the dominance of large commercial publishers in scholarly communication.

Category:John Wiley & Sons Category:Academic publishing companies Category:Companies based in Hoboken, New Jersey Category:Publishing companies established in 2007