Haworth Press to be acquired by Taylor & Francis.

Taylor & Francis (Philadelphia, PA), a unit of Informa Group (London), has entered into an agreement to acquire The Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), a publisher of 194 scholarly/academic journals and approximately 150 books/ monographs yearly, from company co-founder Bill Cohen and management. No terms of the deal were given. Haworth's trade fiction imprint, Harrington Park Press, is not included in the deal and will be divested separately.

Haworth was established by Cohen and a partner in 1979 and grew steadily in the areas of social work, librarianship, mental health, social work, gender studies, and then the additional fields of pharmaceutical science, business and agriculture/food science. Cohen bought out his partner in 1994.

Haworth's first journal was "Social Work in Health Care" and quickly expanded. The company now also publishes journals in the areas of marketing, economics, education and teaching, history, medicine, sports and recreation, and technology and computing. The company's current journal portfolio includes such titles as "Journal of Agriculture & Food Information," "Journal of Marketing for Higher Education," "Journal of Dual Diagnosis" and "Journal of Agromedicine," among many others.

Most of the journals are published quarterly and all have paid circulations. The company, one of the first publishers to use in-house print-on-demand technology for both books and journals, works primarily with academic/professional membership associations and institutions but only one of its 194 journals is society owned.

Haworth's Online Journal Collections service aggregates journals by subject area and offers the information online for a single subscription price (E-Journals in Addiction, E-Journals in Library & Information Science, E-Journals in Psychology, etc.), with each group comprised of anywhere from five to over 25 journals.

Haworth Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Bill Cohen said that "discussions with Taylor & Francis began modestly ... in relation to possible book distribution in the UK and Europe. Before long, we were talking about 'Why not include the journals?' and then the synergies became apparent." For authors and journal editors, Cohen said the deal brings "the opportunities for increased access to libraries through consortia deals and stronger journal packages (that) foreshadow increased impact, usage and both subscription and intellectual growth."