Necessity and invention

As a doctoral student in computer science at NYU, Atypon’s Founder, Georgios Papadopoulos, experienced firsthand the gaps in scholarly publishing technology that made online research difficult. He founded Atypon in 1996, driven by his desire to democratize scholarly research, expand its availability, and accelerate advances in science and medicine.

He knew that would mean giving publishers the software they needed to excel in a new—and often intimidating—digital environment.

The culmination of Georgios’s initial development efforts was Literatum, Atypon’s online publishing and website development platform, first released in 1999. His five-person technology startup, still based in Silicon Valley, is now an influential global organization, with a team of more than 480 in nine offices across the United States, the UK, Jordan, the Czech Republic, and Georgios’s native Greece.

Technology specifically for publishers

Over the 20-plus years that Literatum has been in continuous development, we’ve developed a deep understanding of what it takes to power a successful online publishing business. Our product development is driven in part by our clients’ requirements for their own businesses. New features are regularly added to meet the design, editorial, and marketing needs of our expanding client base.

A fast-growing technology company

Today Atypon has over 200 clients, including some of the world’s largest publishers; several date back to our first years in business. Literatum is home to nearly 100,000 individual publications in over a dozen languages and more than 900 publication websites. The platform logs over 3.2 billion user sessions annually.

We rival larger Silicon Valley companies in our aggressive pursuit of new technologies: engineers comprise more than two-thirds of our staff, and our ongoing, award-winning R&D team is applying machine learning and AI-based technologies that keep our customers at the forefront of online publishing. Atypon’s recent acquisitions include Inera, RedLink, Authorea, and Manuscripts.

Technology in the service of knowledge

Our clients want to promote and distinguish their brands while forging lasting connections with their readers. So we look at publishing through the eyes of readers and authors, because we believe that prioritizing their online experience is the best way to build a loyal customer base.

We’re building new tools to make the workflows of practitioners, clinicians, and researchers more convenient and productive—from discovery and reading to collaborating and authoring.

While we’ve grown and adapted to our clients’ new market challenges by developing new products, services, and technologies, our focus today remains much the same as it was more than 20 years ago: providing superior publishing-specific technology with personal service to help publishers grow their online businesses.