Informa to Expand Events Footprint, Separate from Academic Publishing Business

NISO Member News

Early last month, Informa, the Cambridge, UK-based live events company and owner of Taylor and Francis (a NISO Voting Member), announced that it would spin off its academic publishing business. The move followed Informa’s acquisition of competitor Clarion in a multibillion-dollar deal and drove many to speculate about the future of the Taylor and Francis, one of the largest publishers of scholarly books and journals. 

Who might purchase Taylor and Francis? Given its sheer size, only a handful of publishers (e.g., Elsevier or Wiley) could make the acquisition. However, Roger Schonfeld, outlining possibilities in The Scholarly Kitchen, points out that Taylor and Francis’s portfolio, which includes a large number of humanities and social sciences titles, is unlikely to attract the largest STEM-focused publishers. He suggests that a more likely buyer would be a financial or private equity firm; others envision a scenario in which multiple purchasers acquire parts of the Taylor and Francis title list. Informa has stated it will share more information about the spinoff in March 2027.