Our Story

Redefining Scholarly Publishing for the Digital Age

In the late 1990s, our founder, Dr. Gunther Eysenbach, experienced a frustration that remains all too familiar to the global academic and medical communities. As a medical researcher and informatician, he saw firsthand how legacy publishing models were stifling progress. Crucial research at the emerging intersection of health and technology was being trapped behind expensive paywalls and delayed by agonizingly slow publication timelines. The status quo of scholarly communication was failing the very people it was meant to serve: researchers, clinicians, and patients.

A Mission-Driven Vision

Driven by the belief that critical health research should be accessible to all, Dr. Eysenbach founded JMIR Publications in 1999. We began not just as a publisher, but as a pioneer of the Open Access movement and a co-founder of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).Our vision from day one has remained unchanged: to empower people with accessible, vetted health research and technology so they can make informed decisions and live healthier lives. We exist to accelerate the generation and dissemination of knowledge, connecting high-quality scientific output with those who need it most—when they need it most.

We are proudly distinct from the large, traditional commercial publishers. While legacy publishing conglomerates are often driven primarily by shareholder margins, JMIR Publications operates fundamentally as a "for-profit for-good" organization.What does this mean for our community? It means our core motivation is mission over margin. We remain fiercely independent, strongly rooted in academia, and uniquely agile. The revenue we generate is continuously reinvested into improving the scientific ecosystem rather than simply enriching corporate stakeholders.

We believe that a publisher's role isn't just to print research, but to actively improve how science is communicated. For over 25 years, we have continuously challenged what a publisher can offer by: Pushing for the necessity of research protocols, preprints, and rigorous transparency. Implementing constructive, open peer-review models and establishing systems like our Karma Reviewer Rewards Program to fairly recognize the vital work of reviewers. Experimenting with novel metrics, "superjournals", and cutting-edge knowledge translation tools to ensure research doesn't just sit in an archive, but actually reaches its target audience.

Today, JMIR Publications is the leading open-access publisher in digital health, expanding rapidly into broader medical, biological, and psychological sciences. As we look to the future, we remain dedicated to our founding ethos: challenging the status quo, championing the researcher, and bridging the gap between rigorous scientific discovery and global health impact.