Palgrave Macmillan

• 1. Introduction

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  Palgrave Macmillan carries a name that traces back to a Victorian family. That family became entwined with one of Britain's major publishers long before any corporate entity bore their name. In 1861, Francis Turner Palgrave produced an anthology of English poetry for Macmillan Publishers. The collection, titled Palgrave's Golden Treasury in the English Language, held its place as a standard reference for almost a century. Francis Turner was one of four sons of Sir Francis Palgrave, a classical historian who founded the Public Record Office. Each son left a different kind of imprint on the Macmillan catalogue during the nineteenth century. The publishing company that today carries the family name was not formed until 2000. That year, St. Martin's Press in the United States united with Macmillan Publishers in the United Kingdom to combine their academic publishing operations. For two years the merged entity went by the name Palgrave alone. By 2009, the company had made over 4,500 scholarly ebooks available to libraries.

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• 2. Four Sons, One Publisher

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  Inglis Palgrave, the second of Sir Francis Palgrave's four sons, built his career in finance. He was a banker and served as editor of The Economist. Through Macmillan, he produced The Palgrave Dictionary of Political Economy across three volumes, published in 1894, 1896, and 1899. That dictionary proved influential enough to inspire a successor, The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, published in 1987.

  Francis Turner Palgrave, the eldest brother, served as assistant private secretary to William Ewart Gladstone before Gladstone became Prime Minister.

  Reginald Palgrave's connection to Macmillan ran through parliamentary life. He held the office of Clerk of the House of Commons. His A History of the House of Commons was published by Macmillan in 1869.

  William Gifford Palgrave chose the most singular path of the four. An Arabic scholar, he wrote a two-volume account of his travels. The work was titled Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia and was published by Macmillan in 1865. That book became the most widely read English-language account of the region until T. E. Lawrence's writings appeared.

  Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a German-owned media company, wholly owned the Macmillan Group through the period when Palgrave Macmillan came into being.

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• 3. A Transatlantic Union

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  Until 2015, Palgrave Macmillan operated as part of the Macmillan Group, which Holtzbrinck Publishing Group wholly owned. That year it became a subsidiary of Springer Nature. Holtzbrinck retains a controlling stake in Springer Nature, maintaining an indirect connection to the publisher that carries the Victorian family's name.

  Pan Macmillan, Nature Publishing Group, and Macmillan Education shared a campus with Palgrave Macmillan in London's King's Cross district. The company had previously been headquartered in Basingstoke before moving to King's Cross in 2014.

  From its base in the London Borough of Camden, Palgrave Macmillan operates offices across multiple continents. New York serves as its primary base in North America. Additional offices are located in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Sydney, Delhi, and Johannesburg.

  Among the titles Palgrave Macmillan publishes is The Statesman's Yearbook, an annual survey covering every country in the world.

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• 4. A Catalogue for Scholars

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  The Statesman's Yearbook presents political, economic, and social overviews of the nations it surveys. Among the publisher's other major reference works, a second edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics appeared in 2008. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume served as its editors, adding to a work that had first appeared in the previous century.

  Palgrave Pivot, launched in 2012, is an imprint dedicated to shorter scholarly monographs. It focuses on the humanities and social sciences, with all titles described as 'rigorously peer-reviewed'.

  Critics have argued that Palgrave's pricing structure 'will limit readership to the privileged few'. That charge raises questions about who actually gains access to the catalogue the publisher has built.

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• 5. Distribution and the Access Debate

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  Outside the United States, Canada, Australia, and the Far East, Palgrave Macmillan handles the sales and distribution of other academic publishers. These include W. H. Freeman, Worth Publishers, Sinauer Associates, and University Science Books.

  Palgrave Macmillan previously distributed I.B. Tauris in the United States and Canada. Manchester University Press, Pluto Press, and Zed Books were also formerly distributed by the company within the United States.

  In Australia, the company's distribution work extends to a wide range of academic publishers beyond the Macmillan Group. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Henry Holt, Saqi Books, Seven Stories Press, and Tilde University Press are among those it represents there.

  DOAJ, Unpaywall, and DOAB are among the platforms that critics have held up as alternatives to Palgrave's pricing approach. These services have been described as offering 'open access without tears', in contrast to pricing structures that critics argue restrict access.

  Rowan Williams, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury, is among the authors who have published through Palgrave Macmillan. The broader question of who can access the scholarship that publisher produces remains genuinely open.

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