De Gruyter Brill is an international academic publisher with a strong tradition in publishing scientific and professional outputs. It was formed by the merger of the German publisher De Gruyter and the Dutch publisher Brill (historically founded in Leiden in 1683). The publisher profiles itself mainly as a leader in humanities and social sciences, with a portfolio including selected areas of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

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Focus and publishing portfolio

De Gruyter Brill publishes more than 3,500 books and 800 professional journals annually, including monographs, proceedings, reference works, and digital resources.

Typical disciplines and thematic domains (selection)

• humanities and social sciences (history, philology, religious studies, area studies, etc.)
• law and international law / human rights (strong Brill lines)
• selected areas of natural and technical sciences according to editorial programs and journals

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Headquarters and global presence

The company is headquartered in Berlin and Leiden (Netherlands) remains one of the key and largest hubs of the publisher even after the merger.

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How the De Gruyter Brill brand was created

The merger of De Gruyter and Brill was announced in October 2023 as a strategic move to create a major player in academic publishing (especially in the humanities) and to accelerate the transformation towards open access. The process of the public offer and acquisition steps was subsequently communicated in the form of official transaction materials. From the perspective of library users and institutions, changes in online access also appeared after the integration – e.g. transition to a platform under the domain degruyterbrill.com (communicated in the library environment).

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Open Access and cooperation with the academic community

De Gruyter Brill actively develops several models of open publishing:

• Diamond Open Access: expanding the program ("free to read & free to publish" journals) also for the years 2025–2026.
• Subscribe to Open (S2O): announced expansion of the program to dozens of other journals in 2026.
• Visibility and services for authors/journals: expanding cooperation like "Journal Home" and activating the "Open Access Agreement Upgrade" model in partnership with ResearchGate.

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Distribution and selected brands/imprints

Well-known brands (especially in art/architecture and professional editions) also appear within the group and its publishing lines. For the UK market, for example, a distribution collaboration was announced for printed titles from the Birkhäuser, JOVIS, and Deutscher Kunstverlag lines.