Reed Elsevier

Reed Elsevier is a global publisher and information provider. It came into being fall 1992 as the result of a merger between Reed International, a British trade book and magazine publisher, and the Dutch science publisher Elsevier NV, forming the Reed Elsevier group, a dual-listed company consisting of Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges.

Reed International
In 1894, Albert E. Reed established a newsprint manufacture at Tovil Mill near Maidstone, Kent. In 1903, Albert E Reed was registered as a public company. In 1970, the company name was changed to Reed International Limited. The company originally grew by merging with other publishers and produced high quality trade journals as IPC Business Press Ltd and women's and other consumer magazines as IPC magazines Ltd. For a time the company published The Daily Mirror. The original family owners the Reeds were Methodists and encouraged good working conditions for their staff in the then dangerous print trade. They became known also for paying their staff well, and avoiding casual labour practices. The company however in modern times took full advantage of changing attitudes in the 1980s and was associated in job cutting exercises throughout its magazine empire, following union de-recognition in the 1990s (union recognition has since been regained in several business units).

Elsevier NV
In 1880, Jacobus George Robbers started a publishing company called NV Uitgeversmaatschappij Elsevier (Elsevier Publishing Company NV) to publish literary classics and the encyclopedia Winkler Prins. Robbers named the company after the old Dutch printers family Elzevir, which, for example, published the works of Erasmus in 1587. Elsevier NV originally was based in Rotterdam but moved to Amsterdam in the late 1880s.

Up to the 1930s, Elsevier remained a small family-owned publisher, with no more than ten employees. After the war it launched the weekly Elseviers Weekblad), which turned out to be very profitable. A rapid expansion followed.  Elsevier Press Inc. started in 1951 in Houston, Texas, and in 1962 publishing offices were opened in London and New York. Multiple mergers in the 1970s led to name changes, settling at Elsevier Scientific Publishers in 1979. Two years before the merger with Reed, Elsevier acquired Pergamon Press in the UK.

Company divisions
Reed Elsevier conducts its business through the following divisions:
 * The science and medical publishing division is Elsevier.
 * The legal publishing division is LexisNexis.
 * The education division, Harcourt Education, is being sold to Houghton Mifflin.
 * The business division is Reed Business Information

Key products
ScienceDirect contains over 25% of the world's science, technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information.

Scopus is the world's largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources. Scopus is updated daily.

Reed Business, Reed Elsevier's global Business division, is a provider of magazines, exhibitions, directories, online media and marketing services across five continents. Its prestige brands serve professionals across a diverse range of industries. These brands include Variety, New Scientist, totaljobs.com, Elsevier, Kellysearch, and the World Travel & Tourism Market.

In February 2007, Reed Elsevier announced its intention to sell Harcourt, its educational publishing division. On 4th May 2007 Pearson, the international education and information company, announced that it had agreed to acquire Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International from Reed Elsevier for $950m in cash. In July 2007, Reed Elsevier announced its agreement to sell the remaining Harcourt Education business, including international imprint Heinemann, to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group for $4b in cash and stock.

Pricing issues
Reed Elsevier has been criticised for the high prices of its journals and services, especially Elsevier and LexisNexis. Members of the scientific community have called for a boycott of Elsevier journals and a move to open access publications such as those of the Public Library of Science or BioMed Central.

Defense Exhibitions
Members of the medical and scientific communities, which purchase and use many journals published by Reed Elsevier, have agitated for the company to cut its links to the arms trade. Two UK academics, Dr. Tom Stafford of Sheffield University and Dr Nick Gill, have launched petitions calling on Reed Elsevier to stop organising arms fairs. . A subsidiary, Spearhead, organizes defence shows, including a recent event where it was reported that cluster bombs and extremely powerful riot control equipment were offered for sale.

In February 2007, Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, published an editorial in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, arguing that Reed Elsevier's involvement in both the arms trade and medical publishing constituted a conflict of interest. He suggested that if academics began to disengage with Reed Elsevier, the company would be likely to end their arms fairs, as arms fairs only comprise a small proportion of their business.

On June 1, 2007, Reed Elsevier announced that they would be exiting the Defense Exhibition business during the second half of 2007.

This means that the company will no longer organise arms fairs around the world. The decision follows a high-profile campaign, coordinated by CAAT, which highlighted the incompatibility of Reed's involvement in the arms trade and their position as the number one publisher of medical and science journals and other publications. CAAT welcomes the decision and applauds the board of Reed Elsevier for recognising the concerns of its stakeholders.

Additional references

 * Guardian Unlimited, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre about Open Access and DSEI arms trade
 * ketupa.net media profile: Reed Elsevier historical overview
 * Double Dutch No Longer in-depth article about the company from 2002 (Forbes.com)