Publishing house founded to publish works for the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin (since 1972 Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic). Since 1976 a department of the academy.
In 1991, after the German reunification, the publishing house was acquired by VCH Verlagsgesellschaft.
VCH was sold to John Wiley & Sons in 1996. The natural scientific section of Akademie Verlag moved to the newly founded Wiley-VCH Verlag, the humanities branch, magazine program, name and logo were sold to R. Oldenbourg Verlag in 1997.
Oldenbourg integrated Akademie Verlag into the publishing group as an independent subsidiary of the Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH. In 2004 the publishing branch of the Oldenbourg group was sold to Cornelsen Verlag.
In February 2013 (with retroactive effect from January 1), Akademie Verlag and Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag were sold to Walter de Gruyter.
Initially de Gruyter used Akademie Verlag as an imprint, but renamed it De Gruyter Akademie Forschung at the end of April / beginning of May 2014 and removed any reference to the previous publisher from their homepage. In March 2020, De Gruyter Akademie Forschung disappeared from the list of imprints, although announcements for new releases can still be found on the website and older publications are still available.
