Haworth press to be acquired by Taylor & Francis.

Taylor & Francis (Philadelphia, PA), a unit of Informa Group (London), has entered into an agreement to acquire The Haworth Press (Binghamton, NY), a publisher of 194 scholarly/academic journals, including seven law-related titles, and approximately 150 new books/monographs yearly, from company co-founder Bill Cohen and management. No terms of the deal were given. Haworth's trade fiction imprint, Harrington Park Press, is not included in the deal and will be divested separately.

Haworth was established by Cohen and a partner in 1979 and grew steadily in the areas of social work, librarianship, mental health, law and criminal justice, social work, gender studies, and then the additional fields of pharmaceutical science, business and agriculture/food science. Cohen bought out his partner in 1994.

Haworth's first journal was "Social Work in Health Care" and quickly expanded. The company's eight law-related titles include: "Adoption Quarterly," "Journal of Applied Security Research," "Journal of Child Abuse & the Law," "Journal of Child Custody," "Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice," "Legal Reference Services Quarterly," and "Women & Criminal Justice." Besides "Legal Reference Quarterly," Haworth publishes 31 other journals covering the field of librarianship and information science. Titles include "The Reference Librarian," "Journal of Library Administration," "Journal of Web Librarianship" and "Journal of Library Metadata," Most of the journals are published quarterly and all have paid circulations. The company, one of the first publishers to use in-house print-on-demand technology for both books and journals, works primarily with academic/professional membership associations and institutions but only one of its 194 journals is society owned. The company also has a law book list of 120 titles, including "Assessing Child Maltreatment," "Drug Courts in Operation," "Homosexuality and the Law" and "The Witness Stand," among others.

Haworth Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Bill Cohen said that "discussions with Taylor & Francis began modestly ... in relation to possible book distribution in the UK and Europe. Before long, we were talking about 'Why not include the journals?' and then the synergies became apparent."