World Scientific Publishing was established in 1981 with only 5 employees in a tiny office. Today, the company employs about 200 staff at its headquarters in Singapore and 450 globally. It has offices in New Jersey, London, Munich, Geneva, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chennai. In about 3 decades, it has established itself as one of the leading scientific publishers in the world, and the largest international scientific publisher in the Asia-Pacific region.
World Scientific publishes about 600 new titles a year and 140 journals in various fields. Many of its books are recommended texts adopted by renowned institutions such as Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Princeton University.
World Scientific broke new ground in 1991 when it signed a memorandum of agreement with the Nobel Foundation to publish the entire series of Nobel Lectures in all subjects - physics and astronomy, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economic sciences and literature. The company had published and distributed the Nobel Lectures series (1901-2005) worldwide, making accessible the scientific, literary and humanitarian achievements of numerous Nobel laureates to a wide audience. Recently World Scientific signed a new memorandum of agreement with Nobel Media (Nobel Foundation) to publish the latest series from 2006 to 2010!
Apart from the Nobel lectures, we have collaborated with many Nobel laureates to produce best-selling books since the 1980s. Many serve as our editorial advisors and book series editors, while others have contributed articles and research papers to our journals.
In 1995, World Scientific co-founded the London-based Imperial College Press with London University's Imperial College. In 2006, the Press became a wholly-owned subsidiary of World Scientific. The Press publishes mainly in the fields in which Imperial College itself is particularly well-known, such as Engineering, Medicine, Information Technology, Environmental Technology, and Management Sciences. Imperial College Press has published about 950 books and 8 journals to date.
From 1st April 2016, World Scientific Publishing Group restructured the brand and consolidated the various imprints under the World Scientific branding. This also applied to the Imperial College imprint. This move enables World Scientific Publishing Group to better serve our authors and customers by streamlining marketing, distribution and production of the Group's titles and products.
World Scientific is also the exclusive distributor for The National Academies Press (based in Washington, D.C.) in Asia-Pacific (except Japan, New Zealand and Australia).