Taylor and Francis

Overview

The company was founded in 1852 when William Francis joined Richard Taylor in his publishing business. Taylor initially founded his company in 1798. Their subjects covered include agriculture, chemistry, education, engineering, geography, law, mathematics, medicine, and social sciences.

From 1917 to 1930 Francis' son, Richard Taunton Francis (1883–1930) was sole partner in the firm.

In 1965 Taylor & Francis launched Wykeham Publications and began book publishing. In 1988 it acquired Hemisphere Publishing and the company was renamed Taylor & Francis Group to reflect the growing number of imprints. In 1990 Taylor & Francis exited from the printing business to concentrate on publishing. In 1998 Taylor & Francis Group went public on the London Stock Exchange and in the same year the group purchased its academic publishing rival Routledge for £90 million. Acquisitions of other publishers has remained a core part of the group’s business strategy. Taylor & Francis merged with Informa in 2004 to create a new company called T&F Informa, since renamed back to Informa. Following the merger, T&F closed the historic Routledge books office in New Fetter Lane, London and relocated to its current headquarters in Milton Park, Oxfordshire. Taylor & Francis Group is now the academic publishing arm of Informa and accounted for 36.4% of Informa's revenue and 45.0% of its adjusted profit in 2016.

Taylor & Francis publishes more than 2,500 journals, and approximately 6,500 new books each year, with a backlist of over 130,000 titles available in print and digital formats. It uses the Routledge imprint for its publishing in humanities, social sciences, behavioural sciences, law and education and the Taylor & Francis, CRC Press and Garland Science imprints for its publishing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Although generally considered the smallest of the 'Big Four' STEM publishers, its Routledge imprint is claimed to be the largest global academic publisher within humanities and social sciences. The journals and e-books have been delivered through the Taylor & Francis Online website since June 2011. Prior to that they were provided through the Informaworld website. Taylor & Francis operates a number of platforms for its digital content including Routledge Handbooks Online, the Routledge Performance Archive, Secret Intelligence Files and CRC Netbase. Taylor & Francis offers Open Access publishing options in both its books and journals divisions and through its Cogent Open Access journals imprint. Taylor & Francis is a member of several professional publishing bodies including the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers and The Publishers Association.

The group has approximately 1,800 employees located in at least 18 offices worldwide. Its head office is based in Milton Park, Abingdon in the United Kingdom, with other offices in Stockholm, Leiden, New York, Boca Raton, Philadelphia, Kentucky, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Melbourne, Sydney, Cape Town, Tokyo and New Delhi.

The old Taylor and Francis logo depicts a hand pouring oil into a lit lamp, along with the Latin phrase "alere flammam" - to feed the flame (of knowledge). The modern logo is a stylised oil lamp in a circle.

In 2013, the entire board of the Journal of Library Administration resigned in a dispute over author licensing agreements.