Our history
For more than two centuries we have been committed to the highest quality scholarly publishing. This remains our goal today.
Taylor & Francis is one of the world’s leading academic publishers. We are also one of its most enduring.
Our purpose is to foster human progress through knowledge – something we have been doing since the 18th Century. Over the years we have published seminal research in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, ranging from Charles Darwin to Marie Curie, Angela Merkel to Alice Walker.
We are a truly global publisher, with offices in more than 15 countries. Taylor & Francis imprints include Routledge, CRC Press, F1000 Research, Dove Medical Press and PeerJ.We publish over 2,500 journals, and have published over 202,000 book titles. Taylor & Francis Online hosts millions of journal articles, and we are one of the world’s largest publishers of open access research.
But it all started over 200 years ago, with the publication of our first scientific journal.
Key dates in our history
1798
Richard Taylor laid the foundations of our company when he launched the Philosophical Magazine. This was one of the very first scientific journals. It was also the start of our long history of working with scholarly societies. Today we partner with more than 700.
1851
George Routledge and Frederick Warne founded George Routledge & Co. Routledge became the leading English-language publisher of humanities and social sciences. Its authors include Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judith Butler, and Stuart Hall. We acquired Routledge in 1998.
1852
Dr. William Francis, a chemist, joined Richard Taylor. Together they continued to develop close links between the academic community and the company.
1936
Taylor & Francis became a private limited company. The directors and shareholders were all leading scientists.
1965
We started publishing books. The book publishing side of our business goes back to the launch of Wykeham Publications. We now publish over 8,000 books each year.
1988
We acquired Hemisphere Publishing. We also renamed the company Taylor & Francis Group to reflect our growing number of imprints.
1998
We floated on the London Stock Exchange. Two hundred years after our first journal launched, this was a big year for us. We became a public company, following a period of rapid growth. Then, shortly after the flotation, we acquired Routledge. This more than doubled our size. The merged company became one of the top five research publishers globally.
2003
We acquired CRC Press. This is a publishing group that specializes in technical books. Also in this year, Routledge published a history of Taylor & Francis. It was called ‘The Lamp of Learning: Taylor & Francis and Two Centuries of Publishing’. The lamp has always been part of our brand. The old Taylor & Francis logo was a hand pouring oil into a lit lamp, along with the Latin phrase ‘alere flammam’ (‘to feed the flame [of knowledge]’). Our current logo is a stylized oil lamp in a circle.
2004
We merged with Informa. We are proud to be the academic publishing arm of this world leader in business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge, and events.
2005
We consolidated our imprints. This led to imprints such as Carfax, Frank Cass, Marcel Dekker, Spon Press, and Swets & Zeitlinger being incorporated into the CRC Press, Routledge, or Taylor & Francis brands. More acquisitions followed. These included Focal Press, Earthscan, Haworth Press, and Heldref Publications.
2017
We acquired Dove Medical Press. Founded in 2003, this open access publisher specializes in medical journals.
2020
We acquired F1000 Research. Founded in 2000, this provides open research publishing solutions to research organizations, learned societies, institutions, and funders.
2021
We acquired Prufrock Press. This offers resources to teachers and parents to help gifted, advanced, special needs, and twice-exceptional learners succeed.
2023
We expanded our medical publishing with the acquisition of 27 new journals. We also added six new digital hubs. These are online communities for medical and scientific professionals. We expanded the publishing solutions we offer to medical communications agencies, including our Plain Language Summary service.
2024
We acquired PeerJ, an award-winning open access science publisher. PeerJ has seven open access journals in biomedical, life, environmental, physical, and computer sciences.
Our history may go back over 200 years, but we have always looked to the future. Whatever the next 200 years hold, we remain committed to our purpose of fostering human progress through knowledge. We believe our publishing can make a positive impact on the world, and help shape a brighter future for us all.
Want to help us write our next chapter? Find out more about joining us as an author, or working with us.