Nauka

Its logo depicts an open book with Sputnik 1 above it. The largest scientific publishing house in the USSR, as well as in the world at one time (in 1982). It was also notable for being the publisher of the USSR Academy of Sciences and its branches. In 1972 Nauka published 135 scientific journals, including 31 physical and mathematical, 24 chemical, 29 biological and five popular science journals: Priroda (Nature), Zemlya i Vselennaya (Earth and the Universe), Khimia i zhizn (Chemistry and Life), Kvant (Quantum), and Russkaya rech (Russian speech). The greater part of Nauka's production were monographs. It also published thematic collected works, reference books, textbooks and foreign literature in translation. Structurally it was a complex of publishing institutions, printing and book selling companies. It had two departments (in Leningrad and Novosibirsk) with separate printing works, two main editorial offices (for physical and mathematical literature and oriental literature) and more than 50 thematic editorial offices. Main book selling company Akademkniga ("Academic Book" in English) had some 30 trading centers in all major cities of the country. The English distributor of the Nauka publications is MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica together with Pleiades Publishing and Springer Science+Business Media. Book series published by Nauka have included the Languages of Asia and Africa series.

• Name — Nauka • Status — Active • Founded — April 14, 1923 • Founder — Alexander Fersman • Country — USSR → Russia • Headquarters — 6-1, Shubinsky lane, Moscow, 121099 • Distribution — Worldwide • Keypeople — Nikolay Fedoseenkov (Acting Director) Тatyana Filippova (Chief Editor) • Publications — books, scientific journals • Topics — astronomy, biochemistry, biology, biophysics, chemistry, geological sciences, mathematics, physics • Imprints — Nauka Publishers • Numemployees — 970 (2017) • Url — www.naukapublishers.ru

The predecessor of the publishing house was the Printing House of the Academy of Sciences, where academic publications were printed from 1727. After 1917, it was called the Russian State Academic Printing House. The Publishing House of the Russian Academy of Sciences was founded in the USSR on April 14, 1923 and was initially based in Petrograd, the first director of the publishing house was academician Alexander Fersman, and the first publication released by the publishing house was the next volume of "Izvestiya of the Russian Academy of Sciences" published at the end of 1924. From August 1925, after the renaming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917—1925) to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the publishing house changed its name to the Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (ANI). The Charter of the AS USSR of 1927 determined that the director of the publishing house was elected from academicians by the General Assembly of the AS USSR. In 1930, the governing body of the publishing house became the specially created Editorial and Publishing Council (RISO) of the AS USSR, chaired by the permanent secretary of the AS USSR, this council was elected by the General Assembly of the AS USSR. In 1931, a distribution department was formed at the publishing house, which in 1938 was separated into an independent organization "Akademkniga", engaged in the distribution of literature published by the publishing house of the AS USSR. By the end of the 1980s, "Akademkniga" had branches in many large cities of the country, representing an all-Union network of bookstores distributing literature from the "Nauka" publishing house. In 1934, the publishing house moved to Moscow, and in Leningrad the Leningrad Branch of the Publishing House of the AS USSR was formed. During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the publishing house was evacuated to Kazan.

In 1963, the Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was renamed to the Nauka Publishing House, but in 1963—1964 some books continued to be published under the old name of the publishing house. By 1963, the number of books published per year by the publishing house exceeded, and the total volume — print sheets. In 1964, part of the Publishing House of the AS USSR became Fizmatgiz (now Fizmatlit) and Publishing House of Eastern Literature, they became known as "main editorial offices" of the publishing house, respectively: Main Editorial Office of Physics and Mathematics Literature and Main Editorial Office of Eastern Literature. Another year later, the Siberian Branch of the Nauka Publishing House was created. With the commissioning in 1970 of a printing house in Novosibirsk, the Nauka Publishing House owned four printing houses: two — in Moscow, and one each — in Leningrad and Novosibirsk. In 1972, the publishing house published scientific journals of 135 titles, including 31 physics and mathematics, 24 chemical, 29 biological and 5 popular science journals (Priroda, Earth and Universe, Chemistry and Life, Kvant, Russian Speech). In 1977, 140 journals were published (thousand issues per year). The publishing house also published the journals Doklady of the AS USSR and Vestnik of the AS USSR. In 1973, the Nauka Publishing House, and in 1978 — its Leningrad printing house, were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. In the early 1980s, the Main Editorial Office of Literature in Foreign Languages was created at the Nauka Publishing House, which, in particular, published another popular science journal of the Nauka Publishing House — "Science in the USSR", published in Russian, English, German and Spanish. In the system of the Goskomizdat of the USSR the Nauka Publishing House in the 1980s was part of three editorial offices: the main editorial office of socio-political literature, the main editorial office of scientific and technical literature and the main editorial office of fiction. In total, for all these editorial offices in 1970—1990, the book publishing performance indicators of the publishing house were as follows: • 1972 — 1977 — 1979 — 1980 — 1981 — 1985 — 1987 — 1988 — 1989 — 1990 • Number of books and brochures, printed units — ≈2000 — 1861 — 2175 — 2080 — 2162 — 2277 — 2130 — 2303 — 1894 — 1830 • Circulation, million copies — — — ≈19 — 24,3195 — 20,6268 — 23,2326 — 23,3587 — 22,8782 — 23,8335 — 20,610 — 18,8854 • Print sheet-impressions, million — 50,5 — — — 444,3088 — 349,512 — 403,267 — 407,4824 — 413,0656 — 413,8068 — 408,5399 — 347,1765 In 1992, the Ural Branch of the Nauka Publishing House appeared, based in Yekaterinburg. Soon the branches and editorial offices of the Nauka Publishing House became independent publishing houses included in the Nauka publishing complex, which also includes Akademkniga. Since 1996, the company has been called the State Unitary Enterprise Academic Scientific Publishing, Production-Printing and Book Distribution Center of the RAS "Nauka Publishing House". As of 2012, the center included four printing enterprises located in Makhachkala, Moscow, Novosibirsk and Saint Petersburg, and seven publishing houses. It published 155 journals, 70 percent of which were fully or partially translated into English. In 2019, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. On December 21, 2021, at a court hearing in the Arbitration Court of the City of Moscow, the Federal Tax Service of Russia and the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Nauka Publishing House" reached a settlement agreement, which regulated the procedure and terms for fulfilling obligations on payments, which became the basis for terminating the bankruptcy case. Under the terms of the agreement, the publishing house must repay the entire amount of debt to the Federal Tax Service of Russia in the amount of 834.8 million rubles within 36 calendar months. By July 2023, a significant part of the debts had been repaid, in December the entire debt was paid. In 2024, "Nauka" became the sole supplier of the RAS for the publication of scientific journals and books and became the "largest publisher of Russian scientific periodicals".

Nauka is established in Bibliothèque nationale de France under 15386117g. Established in GND (German National Library) under 1027149-1. Established in Library of Congress under no2024020323. Associated with Soviet Union and Russia.