| Status | Active |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1807, New York City |
| Founder | Charles Wiley |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Hoboken, New Jersey |
| Distribution | Worldwide |
| Nonfiction topics | Science, medicine, travel, business, higher education |
| Imprints | Wiley-Blackwell, Wiley-Liss |
| Revenue | US$1.2 billion ( 18% FY 2006) |
| Official website | www.wiley.com |
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, (NYSE: JWA) is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly fields. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in print and electronically, as well as online products and services, training materials, and educational materials for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students.[1]
Contents |
Wiley was established in 1807 when Charles Wiley opened a print shop in Manhattan. The company was the publisher of such 19th century American literary figures as James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as of legal, religious, and other non-fiction titles. Wiley later shifted its focus to scientific, technical, and engineering subject areas, abandoning its literary interests.[2]
Charles Wiley's son John (born in Flatbush, Long Island, 4 October 1808; died in East Orange, New Jersey, 21 February 1891) took over the business when his father died in 1826. The firm was successively named Wiley, Lane & Co., then Wiley & Putnam, and then John Wiley. The company acquired its present name in 1876, when John’s second son William H. Wiley joined his brother Charles in the business.[2][3]
Through the 20th century, the company expanded its publishing activities business, the sciences, and higher education. Since the establishment of the Nobel Prize in 1901, Wiley and its acquired companies have published the works of more than 450 Nobel Laureates, in every category in which the prize is awarded. [2]
One of the world’s oldest independent publishing companies, Wiley marked its bicentennial in 2007 with a year-long celebration, hosting festivities that spanned four continents and ten countries and included such highlights as ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on May 1. In conjunction with the anniversary, the company published Knowledge for Generations: Wiley and the Global Publishing Industry, 1807-2007, depicting Wiley’s pivotal role in the evolution of publishing against a social, cultural, and economic backdrop. Wiley has also created an online community called Wiley Living History, offering excerpts from Knowledge for Generations and a forum for visitors and Wiley employees to post their comments and anecdotes.
While the company is led by an independent management team and Board of Directors, the involvement of the Wiley family is ongoing, with sixth-generation members (and siblings) Peter Booth Wiley as the non-executive Chairman of the Board; Bradford Wiley II as a Director and past Chairman of the Board; and Deborah Wiley as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications. Seventh-generation member Jesse Wiley is an assistant editor in the company’s Professional/Trade business.
Wiley has been publicly owned since 1962, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1995; its stock is traded under the symbols NYSE: JWA and NYSE: JWB. credits to architects and designers. The initial courses are adapted from Wiley books, extending their reach into the digital space. Wiley is an accredited AIA continuing education provider.
Wiley’s scientific, technical, and medical business was significantly expanded by the acquisition of Blackwell Publishing in February 2007.[4] The combined business, named Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly (also known as Wiley-Blackwell), publishes, in print and online, 1,400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals and an extensive collection of books, major reference works, databases, and laboratory manuals in the life and physical sciences, medicine and allied health, engineering, the humanities, and the social sciences. Through a backfile initiative completed in 2007, 8.2 million pages of journal content have been made available online, a collection dating back to 1799. Wiley-Blackwell also publishes on behalf of about 700 professional and scholarly societies; among them are the American Cancer Society (ACS), for which it publishes Cancer, the flagship ACS journal; the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing; and the American Anthropological Association. Other major journals published include Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials, Hepatology, International Finance and Liver Transplantation.[5]
Launched commercially in 1999, Wiley InterScience provided online access to Wiley journals, major reference works, and books, including backfile content. Journals previously from Blackwell Publishing were available online from Blackwell Synergy until they were integrated into Wiley InterScience on June 30, 2008. In December 2007, Wiley also began distributing its technical titles through the Safari Books Online e-reference service.
Wiley Online Library is the subscription-based, multidisciplinary digital library of John Wiley & Sons that launched on August 7/8, 2010, replacing Wiley InterScience. It is a collection of online resources covering life, health, and physical sciences as well as social science and the humanities. The database is designed for a global base of researchers, students, authors, Wiley society partners, and library customers. Wiley Online Library delivers integrated access to over 4 million articles from 1,500 journals, 9,000 books, and hundreds of reference works, laboratory protocols, and databases from John Wiley & Sons and its key imprints, including Wiley-Blackwell, Wiley-VCH, and Jossey-Bass.
The company has been recognized on several occasions for the quality of its corporate culture. In 2008, Wiley was named for the second consecutive year to Forbes Magazine's annual list of the "400 Best Big Companies in America". In 2007, Book Business magazine cited Wiley as "One of the 20 Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For". For two consecutive years, 2006 and 2005, Fortune magazine named Wiley one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For". Wiley Canada was named to Canadian Business magazine's 2006 list of "Best Workplaces in Canada", and Wiley Australia has received the Australian government's "Employer of Choice for Women" citation every year since its inception in 2001. In 2004, Wiley was named to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Best Workplaces for Commuters" list. Working Mother magazine in 2003 listed Wiley as one of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers", and that same year, the company received the Enterprise Award from the New Jersey Business & Industry Association in recognition of its contribution to the state's economic growth. In 1998, Wiley was selected as one of the "most respected companies," with a "strong and well thought out strategy," by the Financial Times in a global survey of Chief Executive Officers. In August 2009, the company announced a proposed reduction of Wiley-Blackwell staff in content management operations in the U.K. and Australia by approximately 60, in conjunction with an increase of staff in Asia[6] In March 2010, it announced a similar reorganization of its Wiley-Blackwell central marketing operations that would affect approximately 40 employees. The company’s position was that the primary goal of this restructuring was to increase workflow efficiency and that there were no plans for further offshoring at present.
In 2005, Steve Jobs, co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from the Apple retail stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.[7][8] Wiley nonetheless became a provider of apps and eBooks for the Apple iPhone and iPad.
In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad," and was looking forward to improving its e-book sales (only $7 million U.S., less than 2% of overall sales in fiscal 2010).[9]