History

Our History

To increase English language offerings on its platform, De Gruyter signed a distribution agreement with Harvard University Press in 2011, marking its inaugural Publisher Partner agreement. At the time, Harvard sought to extend its reach into Europe. A surprising result of this partnership was Harvard’s underrepresentation in North America, which laid the groundwork for the subsequent De Gruyter Partner Program.

In 2012, De Gruyter further expanded its publishing capabilities by acquiring the open access publisher Versita, now known as Sciendo. This acquisition aimed to boost its services in open access publishing for academic institutions, societies, and authors. Sciendo now publishes over 500 diamond open access titles and collaborates with 300 scholarly and professional institutions across 40 countries.

De Gruyter continued its strategic expansions by acquiring Ubiquity Press in late 2022, enhancing its journal and book publishing services. This included platform hosting for publishers and repository services for libraries. Ubiquity Press offers gold and diamond open access journals and books and supports 33 independent university presses. Ubiquity recently launched its institutional repositories platform, facilitating green open access and broad dissemination of research outputs, including preprints, theses, and research data. The launch of a new comprehensive platform, openscience.com, is set for 2025 to showcase these services.

In 2023, De Gruyter acquired Brill and restructured its operations by creating two distinct entities: De Gruyter Brill for its publishing business and Paradigm Publishing Services for service provision. Paradigm combines the strengths of the Partner Program, Sciendo, and Ubiquity, focusing on supporting the needs of small and independent publishers.