The story
Annual Review of Biochemistry
The Annual Review of Biochemistry was the creation of Stanford University chemist and professor J. Murray Luck. In designing a course for graduate students in 1930, he saw the need for a resource that condensed the large volume of biochemistry research into review articles. Luck asked about 50 biochemists in the US, United Kingdom, and Canada if an annual volume of critical reviews on biochemistry research would be useful. Response was positive.
Luck formed an initial advisory committee which included Carl L. Alsberg at Stanford, and Dennis Robert Hoagland and Carl Louis August Schmidt from the University of California, Berkeley. Stanford University Press agreed to publish the journal on a three-year contract, with financial assistance from the Chemical Foundation headed by Francis Garvan. Stanford University gave the journal rent-free office space in the Physiology building (Outer Quad) beginning in 1931. The first volume of the Annual Review of Biochemistry was published as of May 3, 1932.
Legal identity
At the completion of the contract with Stanford University Press, the advisory committee of the journal decided to assume a legal identity as the journal's publisher, though keeping Stanford University Press as the printer. On December 12, 1934, they submitted articles of incorporation with the California Secretary of State to create the Annual Review of Biochemistry, Ltd., which was organized as a nonprofit. In February 1938, the name was changed to Annual Reviews, Inc. On March 28, 2008, the California Secretary of State approved an amendment to the Articles of Incorporation to change the name officially to Annual Reviews.
Leadership
J. Murray Luck worked for Annual Reviews from 1932 to 1968 and was the founding editor of its first two journals: the Annual Review of Biochemistry (1932-1965) and the Annual Review of Physiology (1939-1946). As further journals were added, each one had its own editorial committee, whose lead editor took the title "Editor" or "Co-editor", and Luck assumed the role of editor-in-chief. He retired from this position as of 1969, but continued to serve on the board of directors as an emeritus member, as well as on the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Biochemistry.
Robert R. Schultz was the organization's official editor-in-chief from 1970 to 1972. William Kaufmann became editor-in-chief of the organization from 1973 to 1981, followed by Alister Brass from 1981 to 1983. Kaufmann returned from 1983 to 1992. Robert Hall Haynes served as editor-in-chief of the organization from 1992 to 1995. He was succeeded by Samuel Gubins, who held the positions of president and editor-in-chief from 1995 to 2015. The current president and editor-in-chief, Richard B. Gallagher, succeeded Gubins in 2015.
Expansion
In 1938, Annual Reviews and the American Physiological Society agreed to collaborate to create a new journal. The first volume of the Annual Review of Physiology was published in 1939, with the help of Victor E. Hall as assistant editor. Although the original intent was to be international in scope, the first European editors were not included until 1948, following World War II.
A third journal, the Annual Review of Microbiology, was created in 1947 under the editorship of Charles E. Clifton. The increased volume of printing was not feasible for Stanford University Press, so printing of the Annual Review of Physiology, the Annual Review of Microbiology and later volumes of the Annual Review of Biochemistry was contracted out to the George Banta Company of Menasha, Wisconsin.
The Annual Reviews journals were recommended to teachers and librarians as well as scientists. In the 1950s, titles in medicine, psychology, plant physiology, physical chemistry, nuclear and particle science, and entomology were added. Stanford University began to have a serious space shortage, which resulted in Annual Reviews constructing a new office building in nearby Palo Alto, California in 1956. After Santa Clara County used eminent domain to take the property at 231 Grant Avenue, Annual Reviews moved again in 1968, to 4139 El Camino Way, Palo Alto.
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By 1982, 24 titles were being published by Annual Reviews. After becoming editor-in-chief in 1995, Samuel Gubins oversaw both a further expansion of journal titles and the first electronic publishing of AR journals. The Annual Review of Sociology and the Annual Review of Medicine were the first to be published electronically, in 1996. In 2002, the publisher's entire publication history, covering 70 years and approximately 475,000 pages and 5,400 images, was digitized. The thirtieth journal title was published in 2000. Another 22 titles were added between 2005 and 2019. As of 2021, AR has published 52 journals under 64 title variants. Only one, the Annual Review of Computer Science, is no longer in publication.
AR has also released some specialty publications: The Excitement and Fascination of Science (1965, 1978, 1990, 1995), consisting of four volumes of autobiographies and reflections by prominent scientists, and Intelligence and Affectivity (1981), a translated volume of lectures given by psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1950s.
In 2017, AR announced its first online magazine, Knowable Magazine, with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. With Knowable Magazine, AR expanded beyond scholarly publishing into science journalism and science communication, explaining and emphasizing the real-world significance of scholarly work. In 2022, the initiative was expanded to publish a sister publication, Knowable en español, in Spanish.
In 2021, AR moved its physical office to 1875 S Grant St., Suite 700, San Mateo, California, as the organization's staff increasingly worked from home.
As of 2022 AR acquired The Charleston Advisor, a peer-reviewed publication for librarians. As of 2023 AR also acquired the Charleston Hub and its publication Against the Grain. The Charleston Hub organizes the annual Charleston Conference for academic libraries, librarians, and publishers.
A new digital publication called Katina Magazine was launched as of November 12, 2024. It is named after The Charleston Advisor's original founder, Katina Strauch. As of July 2026, AR acquired the event technology provider Underline Science, a platform for research communities and conference organizing.
In 2025, AR signed an agreement with multinational publisher Wiley, bringing the open access (OA) initiative Knowledge Unlatched (KU) under nonprofit management. Knowledge Unlatched was founded in 2012 and introduced a crowdfunding model in which libraries collectively finance open access publication of books and journals. AR's CEO Richard Gallagher credits Knowledge Unlatched as one of the examples that inspired development of AR's Subscribe to Open publishing model.
From Wikipedia’s article on Annual Reviews (publisher), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3