De Gruyter acquires open research publisher Ubiquity for undisclosed sum

Berlin-based academic publisher De Gruyter has acquired open research publisher Ubiquity for an undisclosed sum. 

The two companies said they will work together to help make academic research globally accessible. The Ubiquity team will retain “a high degree of independence” and c.e.o. and founder Brian Hole will keep working from their London office and remotely. 

Ubiquity was founded in 2012 and publishes gold and diamond Open Access journals and books through its imprint Ubiquity Press, and supports 33 independent university presses with publishing services. Along with these partners, Ubiquity provides more than 800 Open Access journals and more than 2,800 Open Access books. Ubiquity extended its services in 2021 with the launch of its institutional repositories platform, adding capacity to drive green open access and the dissemination of all research outputs, such as preprints and data.

Ubiquity bases its journal, book and repository platforms on open source. Its customer charter says the organisation will always publish in Open Access, base its platforms on open source, and provide unbundled products. De Gruyter has agreed to the continuation of this charter. 

De Gruyter was founded in 1749 and published its first Open Access book in 2010. It launched its first fully gold Open Access journal in 2013. Today, the publisher’s Open Access portfolio comprises more than 2,500 open access books and around 120 fully open access journals. 

In 2012, De Gruyter acquired the Open Access publisher Versita, which now operates as Sciendo, to provide publishing services to academic institutions, societies and authors. Since launching its Publisher Partner Program in 2012 with Harvard University Press, which has since grown to over 20 partners, De Gruyter offers services such as full e-book collection distribution and archive digitisation to many of the most prestigious academic publishing houses in the United States and worldwide. 

Hole said Ubiquity was “thrilled” to join forces with De Gruyter. He said: “De Gruyter’s Publisher Partner Program is a perfect example of where we can together provide a more comprehensive set of solutions to universities. In particular De Gruyter’s status as a family-owned company gives us and our community a strong assurance of a stable, long-term partnership and investment, with which we can continue to advance our mission in all areas of Open Access and open science.” 

Carsten Buhr, managing director of De Gruyter, added: “As a leading publisher of Open Access journals and books, we are excited to welcome Ubiquity to De Gruyter. Ubiquity brings a great team, technology, as well as valuable experience in providing open research publishing services to De Gruyter. Ubiquity’s offering perfectly complements our own Open Access mission and publishing services portfolio – I look forward to working together.”