The Publishing House – Who we are (1906 - 2011)

The History of AKA

The ‘Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft’ (Academic Publishing Company) was founded originally in 1906 in Leipzig by Leo Jolowicz and Gustav Rotschild. Very soon AKA was one of the worldwide leading science publishers. Svante Arrhenius, Marie Curie-Sklodowska, Wilhelm Ostwald and hundreds of other wellknown scientists published their works with AKA. In 1938 the owners Kurt Jacoby and (son of the founder) Walter Jolowicz were forced to emigrate and they started Academic Press in 1942 in the USA. Walter Jolowicz changed his name in Walter Johnson and for many more years he was a very active publisher.

Since then AKA lead a shadowy existence (WWII and German Democratic Republic). After the German Unity, the company was temporarily closed by the German Treuhand (Trust Administration). The ‘new’ AKA was founded in Berlin in 1996 by the Japanese publisher Ohmsha and the Dutch publisher IOS Press.

The Persons

Hans Kruschwitz (previously Akademie Verlag), Einar Fredriksson (IOS Press) and Seiji Sato (Ohmsha) were the first publishers. Ekkehard Hundt (publisher of Infix) joined later. After his death in 2006, the Heidelberg publishing company and agency 'digiprimo' was invited to join ownership. Dr. Einar Fredriksson (IOS Press) and Arnoud de Kemp (digiprimo) have managed AKA-Verlag together until April 2019. After the assignment of shares by digiprimo Dr. Einar Fredriksson is now the only Director and IOS Press Holding B.V. in Amsterdam sole owner of AKA-Verlag.

By tradition AKA is committed to support authors and editors with due care. This diligence is the basis for our publishing service until the final product: your publication. In addition to printed books and journals, electronic books in all current formats can be produced and offered.

The Program

AKA publishes books and journals in the humanities as well as in life sciences and computer science. English language titles are co-published with IOS Press in Amsterdam. New and innovative subject fields are gerontology, medical informatics, nano technology, robotics, e-Health, information science including geographic information science, semantic web, search engines … In cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Informatik (German Computer Science Society) AKA publishes the wellknown dissertation series DISKI (on artificial intelligence and DISDBIS (on database and information systems). New is the GISDISS series in geographic information science. In the fast growing series ‘Studies on the Semantic Web’(SSW) monographs, edited volumes and dissertations are published. From 1998 through 2012 AKA published the ‘Zeitschrift für Medizinische Psychologie’ (Journal of Medical Psychology -Z Med Psychol), which was the official publication of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Psychologie (DGMP). New journals in co-publication with IOS Press are the ‘Semantic Web Journal (SWJ)’ and the ‘International Journal of Developmental Science (IJDS)'.

AKA welcomes proposals for new books and E-Books, new book series and journals and is prepared to produce and publish high quality print products as well as E-Books in many different electronic formats.

The Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft AKA GmbH continues a long publishing tradition in the old spirit with new enthousiasm.

If you wish to know more about the company, about the program or about the persons in AKA, please write to us: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.