NPG and Scientific American merge into a single business

Scientific American is to form the consumer media division of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), marking a major step in the integration of Macmillan Publishers’ two publishing units.

The Scientific American team joins their NPG colleagues in the NPG offices in New York and NPG managing director Steven Inchcoombe will oversee the newly formed single business. The collaboration aims at positioning NPG as the most authoritative and comprehensive science media group to consumers, scholar, high school students and researchers.

Steven Inchcoombe said, “The synergies between NPG and Scientific American are extensive, particularly in the digital space.”

The collaboration is thought to create a powerhouse science media group because it will merge nature.com’s approximate five million monthly unique users and scientificamerican.com’s nearly two million users.

The Scientific American Archive, currently hosted by EBSCO, will move onto nature.com in Q4 of 2009, and be available through NPG’s site license sales teams.

NPG will bring its experience and capability in providing online services for institutions to Scientific American. EBSCO will continue to host Scientific American through May 2010, and the archive will remain available on EBSCOhost.

“Drawing on NPG’s resources will enable Scientific American to maximise its potential in a changing consumer media landscape,” Inchcoombe said. “For NPG, the move brings opportunities to strengthen and diversify its offering.”

Scientific American will continue to be published independently, retain its editorial and continue to serve its target audience and advertisers. But, with the development, Naturejobs advertisers will be able to reach Scientific American’s readers and users in print and online. This collaboration will continue to expand, including into Scientific American’s local language editions and into new fields such as technology and science-related business jobs.

Scientific American’s president Steven Yee and editor-in-chief John Rennie have left to pursue new projects. Mariette DiChristina, Scientific American’s executive editor, has been promoted to acting editor-in-chief.