About Us
About Us
The Nomos Publishing Company introduces itself
Nomos Verlag has existed under this name since 1964 and is one of the leading academic publishers for law, social sciences and the humanities in the German-speaking world. More than 1,100 books and over 80 journals are published annually. Almost the entire publishing programme is also available electronically.
available electronically. Nomos has been part of the Beck Group since 2002, but is independent of the other publishing houses in the group in terms of programme development. There are close cooperations with partner publishers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain and other countries.
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The development of the publishing house
Previous history
Nomos emerged from August Lutzeyer Verlag, which has been based in Baden-Baden since 1953.
which has been based in Baden-Baden since 1953. In the years after the Second World War, this publishing house had established itself as a specialist legal publisher with a particular focus on text editions in loose-leaf form. Of central importance was the collection “Das
German Federal Law”. Since the adoption of the Treaties of Rome in 1957, European law was also documented. In 1963, the August Lutzeyer
publishing house was taken over by the partners of Suhrkamp Verlag, Siegfried Unseld and the
Swiss brothers Reinhardt. Following Suhrkamp’s takeover of Insel Verlag shortly before, the latter were interested in the publishing house’s own printing works, which specialised in thin printing, even of small editions, but also saw the up-and-coming scholarly publishing house as a good capital investment.
Nomos as part of Suhrkamp
About a year after the takeover, the publishing house was renamed Nomos Verlag. The name of the publishing house is derived from the ancient Greek word for “law” (νόμος). From the beginning, however, the loose-leaf collection “Das deutsche Bundesrecht” (German Federal Law) and other text collections such as the “Handbuch des Europäischen Rechts” (Handbook of European Law) also contained numerous explanations, from which the publishing house gradually built up a broad programme of commentaries and handbooks. In addition, an extensive academic programme of dissertations, post-doctoral theses and other monographs as well as anthologies developed. The thematic focus was initially on public law and European and international law on the one hand, and on political science, European politics and international relations on the other. Gradually, other subject areas were added, such as communication and media studies, sociology or economics. By the turn of the millennium, Nomos had established itself as one of the leading academic publishers in the field of law and social sciences.
The acquisition by Beck
At the end of the 1990s, the shareholders at the time decided (probably also against the background of a reform of inheritance tax law) to sell Nomos Verlag. In 1998 Nomos was initially sold to the (scientific) Springer Verlag. Shortly afterwards, Springer in turn was taken over by Bertelsmann – and Bertelsmann immediately sold Nomos to the shareholders of the Munich-based C.H. Beck Verlag, Hans-Dieter and Wolfgang Beck. They still own the publishing house today. Thomas Gottlöber is the managing director.
Expansion since 2009
Since 2009, Nomos Verlag has taken over several smaller academic publishers with a programme focus on the humanities and social sciences: The first was the acquisition of Reinhard Fischer Verlag in 2009, which was integrated into the Nomos Verlag programme as “Edition Reinhard Fischer”. Since 2015, Edition Sigma has belonged to Nomos Verlag, which was also integrated into the main programme. The first publishing house to continue as its own brand and imprint was Tectum Verlag (2017), followed by Ergon Verlag (2017), der Academia Verlag (2018), Rombach Wissenschaft (2020) der Verlag Karl Alber (2022) und der Georg Olms Verlag (2023).
Programme focus
Nomos is one of the few publishers to have a “full range” that allows current topics to be presented in an interdisciplinary manner.
The book programme
The publishing house publishes more than 1,100 books annually. The programme ranges from classical scientific literature to handbooks and commentaries to study literature.
Journals
Nomos publishes more than 80 specialist journals: The offer covers all programme areas and ranges from journals for practitioners to highly specialised academic journals. Many of the journals are leaders in their field (e.g. the ‘Zeitschrift für Urheber- und Medienrecht – ZUM’, the ‘Zeitschrift für Umweltrecht – ZUR’, the ‘Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft – M&K’, the ‘Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege – BdW’, the ‘Zeitschrift für Politik – ZfP’ or the ‘Soziale Welt – SozW’). However, numerous inter- and intra-disciplinary journals such as ‘Leviathan’, ‘Kritische Justiz – KJ’ or ‘Rechtswissenschaft’ should also be mentioned.
Electronic publications
Almost the entire publishing programme is also available electronically. Books and journals primarily aimed at legal practice are published via the beck-online database. Here, Nomos offers modules on the topics of labour law, federal law, inheritance law, child and youth welfare law, family law, product compliance, social work, social law and administrative law, in addition to journal, form and commentary modules, annotated special laws, a municipal lawyer and lawyer module. More information on all online modules can be found in the NomosShop.
The academic programme, the textbooks and the English-language commentaries are accessible via the publisher’s own Nomos eLibrary platform. This bilingual platform, which is primarily geared towards the needs of academic libraries and their users, is also used by numerous other specialist publishers.
Sustainability and the Environment at Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft
Acting sustainably and playing our part in reducing our impact on the planet is important to all of us at the Nomos Publishing Group. To this effect, our environmental council, born from an internal call-to-action, meets regularly to establish shared objectives and priorities and develop strategies to creater a greener Nomos.
![Umwelt- und Klimaschutz in der Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft](https://www.nomos.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/nature-3289812_1280-50x0-c-default.jpg)
Address
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
Waldseestr. 3-5
76530
Baden-Baden