London (28 May 2015) - SAGE, one of the world's leading independent and academic publishers, has today announced the purchase of Pion Limited, independent publisher of high quality academic journals founded by Adam Gelbtuch and John Ashby in 1959. The sale was announced jointly by Chairman of Pion, David Cohen and Stephen Barr, President SAGE International.

The acquisition (brokered by Bertoli Mitchell LLP) results in Pion's entire publishing portfolio becoming a part of SAGE's journal program. The portfolio comprises of the four journals of the acclaimed 'Environment and Planning' series of journals alongside Perception and the open access i-Perception. The acquisition results in the following journals moving to SAGE:

• Environment and Planning A (EPA) - publishes innovative research at the interface of human geography, environment and regional research.

• Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design (EPB) - introduced to cover the area of method application and spatial problems in built environments, with specialization in new approaches to generating and evaluating plans and policies.

• Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy (EPC) - is a research driven multidisciplinary journal which seeks to advance debates on a wide range of pressing contemporary policy issues arising from attempts made to govern the economy, society, and the environment.

• Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (EPD) - provides a forum for the discussion of the mutually constitutive relation between the social and the spatial. The journal editors are equally committed to the spatial aspects of political action and the abstractions of social theory.

• Perception - is a scholarly journal reporting experimental results and theoretical ideas ranging over the fields of human, animal and machine perception.

• iPerception - OA sister journal to Perception. The journal is focused on the fields of senses and the perceptual process of humans, animals and machines.

Amongst the small books list is also the classic title 'Place and Placelessness' by Edward Relph which will continue publication with SAGE.

Speaking of the acquisition, Stephen Barr, President, SAGE International remarked:

"Pion's publishing portfolio represents exactly what SAGE has always aspired to publish: major journals at the cutting edge of the development of key fields. Since our founding in 1965, SAGE has developed a leading high quality portfolio of journals across the social science disciplines and the Pion journals are a natural addition to SAGE's well established journal portfolio. We are delighted to be the new publisher of the Pion Journals program and we look forward to working with the esteemed editorial boards across this program."

Commenting on the transfer of Pion's publishing program to SAGE, Chairman David Cohen commented:

"Pion and SAGE have had a long established partnership working on shared projects, and through this we have seen the clear synergies both in our commitment to the publication of high quality interdisciplinary research and our approach to fulfilling our publishing goals. When looking for a home for our journal portfolio, SAGE was the natural choice. As one of the leading independent, academic publishers, we are confident that SAGE will nurture the academic and international growth of these journals."

Further information for all titles, including landing page and information for subscribers and packages can be found here.

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SAGE Founded 50 years ago by Sara Miller McCune to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community, SAGE publishes more than 800 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies, conference highlights and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company's continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Boston. http://www.sagepub.com