De Gruyter and Brill have joined forces to form De Gruyter Brill, a leading academic publisher in the humanities and beyond. To mark the occasion, a new corporate website has been launched today at degruyterbrill.com.
With combined pro forma revenues of approximately €140 million and 750 employees, De Gruyter Brill is uniquely positioned to offer outstanding services and technological infrastructure tailored to the needs of academic authors, librarians, and institutions around the world. Together, De Gruyter Brill publishes well over 3,500 books and 800 journals per year, with a particularly strong focus on the humanities and social sciences, while extending to subject areas in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The increased scale not only enables De Gruyter Brill to offer a highly attractive and diverse publishing environment for its authors’ publications across disciplines. It also allows the publisher to accelerate the transition to open access and fund technology investments for the benefit of the scholarly community. Joining forces also makes the business more resilient, allowing more effective sales and marketing operations and increasing the ability to attract and retain talent.
The new name De Gruyter Brill signals the importance of the long heritage of both publishers. The existing individual De Gruyter and Brill brands, as well as their respective imprints and publishing programs, will continue. De Gruyter Brill intends to build on the size, breadth, and depth of the existing publishing programs, offering authors as many opportunities to publish under established De Gruyter Brill imprints, in existing series and journals, and in as many subject areas as before.
As scholarly publishing continues to digitize and move toward open access, operational scale has become an increasingly important factor in remaining competitive, funding future investments, and achieving efficiencies. The strategic rationale is underpinned by shared cultural values. De Gruyter and Brill are deeply rooted in the scholarly community, building on a long tradition of trusted partnerships with academic institutions, serving authors, and publishing research of the highest quality.
“The creation of De Gruyter Brill is an exciting new chapter in the centuries-long history of our two publishing houses,” said Carsten Buhr, Chief Executive Officer of De Gruyter Brill. “I firmly believe that as De Gruyter Brill we will be in an even better position to shape the future of scholarly communication as a trusted partner to the academic community. I look forward to working with our new and existing colleagues to ensure that rigorous scholarly research continues to have a significant impact on the world.”
“As De Gruyter Brill, we will be able to provide better services, technology, and infrastructure to our authors and the academic community at large. In addition, we will accelerate our transition towards open access. The research we publish is crucial in answering today‘s global questions and, as the leading publisher in the humanities, we will be able to increase its impact,” said Jasmin Lange, Chief Publishing Officer, De Gruyter Brill.
“With the creation of De Gruyter Brill we are bringing Brill back into family ownership. Our independence will allow De Gruyter Brill to prioritize long-term investment and economic sustainability. We are committed to ensuring that De Gruyter Brill remains a family-owned, independent publishing house for many more centuries to come,” said Rüdiger Gebauer, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of De Gruyter Brill.
With the closing of the transaction, Brill’s delisting from Euronext will come into effect on 28 March 2024.