The buzz at Frankfurt this year was not on the topic that everyone expected. Last Tuesday, Informa issued public guidance that Taylor & Francis (T&F) would separate from its parent company, launching a frenzy of discussion about the possible mechanisms and their likely ramifications. But the more consequential question is whether its next owner will see HSS publishing as a business worth strengthening in its own right, a portfolio to recombine or consolidate, or a collection of intellectual-property assets that can generate value in new markets, especially AI. This is not just any disposition: It is the potential recapitalization, or redistribution, of one of the largest collections of HSS publishing assets at a moment when their economic and strategic uses are changing.

Three years ago, I wrote a piece in these pages asking Will Humanities and Social Sciences Publishing Consolidate? Since then, there have been a number of important acquisitions in the HSS sector. De Gruyter acquired Brill, bringing together two of Europe’s leading commercial humanities publishers, particularly relevant given the importance there of books. And, Wiley acquired Emerald, noted for its strong business and social sciences lists. Notwithstanding different underlying drivers for these two transactions, both suggested the continuing importance of sales and subscription models as strong countervailing winds amid the OA gale. And both reinforce the importance of scale in order to support technology investment, global sales footprint, and now perhaps most urgently AI strategy. 

Informa’s stated rationale for separating T&F appears to arise from the lower growth rate of their scholarly publishing business as compared to their events business. It could be argued that a separated T&F may therefore be valued more highly by others than it is by Informa, if Informa can generate higher returns on capital in other businesses in its portfolio. I do not pretend to be an analyst of undue risk concentration in the events businesses, yet I am old enough to remember when events largely shut down as a result of the pandemic — and Informa booked an enormous resulting revenue decline and market value loss.

I am less interested though in what motivates Informa than in what this means for the scholarly publishing sector. T&F is not like the other major European commercial houses. It has a significant HSS presence and a substantial humanities books business. And HSS publishing has not had the same growth curve as STEM, not least because it has been unable to benefit as much from open access global growth.

T&F has therefore carved a different path through the open access slope than Elsevier or Springer Nature, both of which are positioned overwhelmingly in the STEM fields. I believe it is unlikely that either of these primarily STEM commercial houses will be sufficiently interested in complementing their lists with T&F’s, and, even if they were, market competitiveness issues might limit an outright acquisition by a major direct competitor. James Butcher has reported in a very helpful analysis of Informa’s motivations that Informa does not appear to expect a competitive offer from either. 

Certainly, we may see a financial buyer, either in private equity or perhaps through a public listing. While some might see private equity as leading to a breakup story, it is perhaps more likely to yield the investment and growth pursued by recent or current owners of Emerald and Silverchair. This might lead to organic investments or acquisitions. Would a recapitalized T&F choose to bolster its HSS presence? Or might it follow the diversification approach that OUP and Sage has each taken in recent years, acquiring medical publishers Karger and Mary Ann Liebert, respectively? 

And Frankfurt was buzzing with whispers of less conventional buyers running the gamut from Chinese academic publishing houses to hyperscalers, and it is a delicious exercise to ask ourselves where scholarly publishing fits as a strategic asset outside its traditional boundaries in the present moment. It is difficult to imagine that T&F would be the right fit for a Chinese publisher, even if the editorial relationships, distribution networks, and international brands are attractive, given research security considerations alongside political sensitivities with particular HSS fields. And as for the hyperscalers and frontier labs, my own view is that while AI increases the strategic value of scholarly content, at least in the near term, it remains unsettled whether that value can be adequately captured through licensing, distribution partnerships, and new AI-native products — or whether ownership has a value of its own. 

Given its strengths in HSS, impacts in this part of the market are likely to be felt most acutely. The other commercial publishers with strong HSS lists, which include houses such as Wiley, Sage, and De Gruyter, will be closely scrutinizing this opportunity. Wiley’s recent Emerald acquisition shows a willingness to expand HSS and AI-relevant content, although a full T&F acquisition would be a much larger financial and integration challenge even if it could pass anti-trust scrutiny. Even those that do not have the means on their own to contemplate making an offer could consider doing so in partnership with a private equity investor, resulting in a hybrid ownership structure like the one Springer Nature has had. 

Rob Johnson assesses that “Perhaps the most likely scenario is that Taylor & Francis’ business will be sold off piecemeal to different competitors.” I am particularly interested in the combination of books and journals: Does the journals portfolio become more valuable when separated from T&F’s books, or is the combination itself part of what gives T&F its competitive strength? Could the T&F journals business, on its own, be a more compelling fit for a strategic acquirer like Wiley? By contrast, the scholarly monograph sector has been roiled in recent years, and T&F’s books imprints, particularly Routledge, might fit well with a firm interested in scaling up its presence there, which could include a publisher like De Gruyter or perhaps a distributor trying to transform its offerings like Clarivate. Financing would present formidable challenges for several of these firms. Clarivate has recently been simplifying its portfolio and emphasizing debt reduction, making it possible to imagine it coming back around to an acquisition but difficult to reconcile this one with its current strategic direction, which involves reducing transactional sales in favor of recurring subscriptions. Ultimately, there will be a tension to resolve as to whether scale across books and journals (in terms of institutional licensing channels, technology investments, editorial networks, and the ability to activate AI-related services) can create more value than distinctive specialization in each (due to different business models, editorial workflows, investment requirements, and growth prospects). 

We will learn quite a bit in the coming months, so for now I want to close by coming back to Frankfurt. I had the opportunity to spend time with a number of friends and colleagues who work at T&F. They learned the news about their employer the same day as everyone else, and they handled themselves with remarkable poise and professionalism under complicated circumstances. I wish them well through the transition that is to come.

Ongoing interaction with colleagues, friends, and, more recently in addition, AI services, helps me develop and work through my thinking and expression, including for this piece. I wrote this piece and take full responsibility for its content.