Who Owns Elsevier?

The modern company was founded in 1880 in Rotterdam by Jacobus George Robbers and Johannes Tiedemann, who named it after the Elzevir family, celebrated Dutch printers of the 16th and 17th centuries whose books bore the famous tree symbol Elsevier still uses.

Through the 20th century Elsevier built its business on English-language scientific journals just as research spending exploded after World War II. Titles it publishes today include The Lancet, founded in 1823 and acquired through journal purchases, and Cell, which joined the portfolio when Elsevier bought the journal's publisher in 1999.

The 1993 merger with Reed International created one of the world's largest publishing groups. Inside Reed Elsevier, the scientific business continued absorbing publishers including Harcourt's journal list in 2001 and later built the platforms that replaced print: ScienceDirect for full-text access, Scopus for citation indexing, and ClinicalKey for point-of-care medical reference.

Under RELX the division shifted from pure publishing toward analytics and software. It bought medical education platform Osmosis in November 2021, expanded AI-assisted tools such as ClinicalKey AI and Scopus AI, and signed large open access agreements with university systems following the 2021 settlement of its two-year standoff with the University of California.

In RELX's FY2025 results the STM division produced about 28% of group revenue and roughly 31% of adjusted operating profit, making it the group's most profitable major division on a margin basis.