Medknow Publications is an India-based scholarly publishing house that provides editorial, production and online hosting services for peer-reviewed academic journals, primarily in the field of medicine and allied health sciences. The company works on behalf of learned societies, medical associations and academic institutions, publishing their journals in online and print-plus-online formats. It is widely recognised for its early adoption of the open access publishing model and its focus on journals from emerging markets, particularly India and the wider Asia-Pacific region.
| Type | Academic publishing company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Scholarly publishing, medical journals |
| Headquarters | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Country | India |
| Focus area | Peer-reviewed journals in medicine and health sciences |
| Publishing model | Open access; online and print-plus-online |
| Clients | Learned societies, professional associations, academic institutions |
| Parent | Wolters Kluwer Health |
Medknow Publications was established to address a gap in professional journal publishing services for Indian and other emerging-market medical societies, many of which historically self-published their journals with limited international visibility. By offering an end-to-end service that included copy-editing, typesetting, online hosting, indexing support and subscription management, Medknow allowed societies to retain ownership of their titles while improving their reach and discoverability.
The company became one of the earliest large-scale adopters of the open access model in scholarly publishing, making the full text of journals it serviced freely available online while continuing to offer print subscriptions. This approach is credited with significantly increasing readership and citation of several Indian medical journals.
Medknow was acquired by Wolters Kluwer Health, the health division of the global information services company Wolters Kluwer, and became part of its Lippincott portfolio of medical publishing brands. The acquisition integrated Medknow's society-services platform and its catalogue of journals from emerging markets into Wolters Kluwer's broader medical publishing operations, while Medknow continued to operate from India.
Medknow is regarded as a notable example of an Indian company that achieved global visibility in academic publishing. Its work helped a large number of society-owned medical journals from India and neighbouring countries transition to professional online platforms and open access distribution, raising their international profile. The company is frequently cited in discussions of open access publishing, scholarly communication in the Global South, and the role of intermediary publishers serving learned societies.