Blackwell Publishing was formed by the 2001 merger of two
Oxford-based
academic publishing companies, Blackwell Science, founded in 1939 as Blackwell Scientific Publishing, and Blackwell Publishers, founded in 1922 as Basil Blackwell & Mott. Blackwell Publishers, founded in 1926, had its origins in the 19th century
Blackwell's family bookshop and publishing business. The merger between the two publishing companies created the world's leading learned society publisher. The group then acquired BMJ Books from the
BMJ Publishing Group, publisher of
The BMJ, a British medical journal, in 2004. Blackwell published over 805 journals and 650 text and reference books in 2006, across a wide range of academic, medical, and professional subjects. On November 17, 2006,
John Wiley & Sons announced it had "entered into a definitive agreement to acquire" Blackwell Publishing. The acquisition was completed in February 2007, at a purchase price of £572 million. Blackwell Publishing was merged into Wiley's Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to create Wiley-Blackwell. From June 30, 2008, the journals previously on Blackwell Synergy were delivered through
Wiley InterScience. ==Controversy==