Sage Growth Points to Future

Book printing may be a shrinking industry, but apparently not for publishers of academic and professional journals. At least, Sage Publications is moving into a bigger building in Thousand Oaks because of its growth – a trajectory the company expects will continue. Employees began moving to the new location at 2400 Conejo Spectrum St. last month. The company is leaving its space at 2560 Teller Road and will no longer occupy the site by September. Roberta Isaeff, vice president of human resources and facilities for Sage, said the move had been planned since last year to coincide with the company’s 50th anniversary. “The move … reflects the growth and new directions we expect in the next 50 years,” Isaeff said in an email. “It is a beautiful building with panoramic views and fully outfitted for the technological needs of a global publisher of both print and born-digital education content.” Sage has two other buildings in Thousand Oaks – its headquarters at 2455 Teller Road and a warehouse at 2590 Conejo Spectrum St. The company has a global workforce of more than 1,500 putting out 950 academic journals and more than 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas including social and behavioral sciences, physical science, technical and medical disciplines. The company also puts together databases, archives, case studies and video for use by scholars. Last year, Sage was ranked No. 1 on the Business Journal’s list of family-owned businesses, having more total employees than No. 2 MGA Entertainment and No. 3 Galpin Motors. Of Sage’s total employees, about 475 are in Thousand Oaks, making it among that city’s 10 largest employers, said Haider Alawami, economic development manager for Thousand Oaks. “It shows they are committed to our community and staying here to have a stronger presence in the city,” Alawami said of Sage’s relocation to the new building. Sage signed a 10-year lease on the Spectrum Street facility from the Cusumano Real Estate Group in Burbank. There were numerous enhancements and changes made to accommodate the 250 employees moving there and to have space for videoconferences and meeting rooms, Isaeff said, adding that the new Conejo Spectrum location has 30,000 square feet more than the previous location. “We currently have space to accommodate at least 100 additional staff members,” she said. Isaeff attributed the growth of the company to its founder Sara Miller McCune and longtime Chief Executive Blaise Simqu fostering an environment that that allows employees to pursue brilliant ideas, a pioneering spirit and an adherence to its vision and mission. Sage never set out to become a leading publisher of journals and books but instead a publisher of new ideas supporting education and scholarship, she said. “We do this by enabling and empowering the work of educators and faculty, researchers and scholars, students and librarians,” Isaeff added. Alawami, who has visited the Sage offices, said that publishing textbooks may not seem like a viable venture but for Sage it is growing. Growth by acquisition Miller founded Sage Publications in 1965 when she was in her mid-20s and invested her life savings of $500. She held a day job as a consultant while working on Sage in the evenings. Its first publication was Urban Affairs Quarterly. The Sage name combined the first two letters of her name with the first two of George McCune, whom she married in 1966 after relocating to California. The company was based in Beverly Hills until moving to Thousand Oaks in 1986. George McCune has died but Sara McCune remains actively involved in the company, Isaeff said, adding, “She has guaranteed that it will remain independent, mission-driven, and committed to her vision of championing education for the indefinite future.” A milestone event came in 1971, when Sage opened its London office and a year later purchased five journals publishing works by social scientists from the United Kingdom and Europe. Expansion to India occurred in 1981 and Singapore in 2006. The company published primarily social science journals and books until the mid-1990s when it added scientific, engineering and medical publications. Sage’s acquisition strategy has followed two paths. One was in buying up entire publishing companies, such as it did with social science and education textbook publisher Paul Chapman Publishing in 1998 and CQ Press in 2008, a textbook and reference publisher in Washington, D.C. The other was in buying journals singly or in groups, such as with “Women’s Health,” bought in April from British publisher Future Science Group, or a portfolio of five titles also acquired in April from IP Publishing Ltd. in London. Sage subsidiaries include academic publisher Adam Matthew Digital, in both the United States and United Kingdom; K-12 educational publisher Corwin; CQ Press, a publisher of American government, public policy and international affairs content; and Learning Matter, publisher in the United Kingdom of academic professional and vocational courses. Sage’s journals showed a strong performance in the recently released Journal Citation Report, an analysis of scholarly publications from the IP & Science division of Thomson Reuters Corp. in New York. More than 500 Sage titles were ranked in the 2016 report, putting the company within the top 10 out of the 5,000 publishers represented in the database, said Chris Burghardt, vice president of content management for the IP & Science division. In ranking the journals, an editorial team in Philadelphia looked at publishing standards, editorial content, how well the journal publishers are operated and citation analysis, Burghardt said. “The uses of the Journal Citation Report are by librarians who use it to make the selections at a research library at a university,” he explained. “Publishers and editors will use it to judge the performance of their journals, of their staff and publishing operations versus the competition. Researchers will look at it as a way to find research.” More than 100 Sage journals received a top 10 category rank and 242 were in the top 30 percent of the rankings. In the social science category, Sage had 386 titles ranked while there were 205 in the science category, a 70 percent increase over five years. The company attributed the increase to acquisitions across the medical, engineering and technology disciplines.