[1] Nova is included in Book Citation Index (part of Web of Science Core Collection) and scopus-indexed.

The company was founded in New York by Frank Columbus, former senior editor of Plenum Publishing.

They ranked in the top three in 8 of 14 scientific fields including engineering, clinical medicine, human biology, animal and plant biology, geosciences, social science medicine, health, chemistry, physics, and astronomy),[8] and ranked as the 5th most prolific book publisher from 2009-2013, ranking 3rd in Engineering and Technology and 2nd in Science by numbers of books published.

[12] A 2017 survey of national and international databases of scholarly book publishers, including the Book Citation Index, Scopus, CRIStin, JUFO, VIRTA, and SPI, identified Nova as one of a "core of publishers that are indexed in all five" of the information systems surveyed.

[13] Nova has been criticized by librarians for not always evaluating authors through the academic peer review process and for republishing old public domain book chapters and freely-accessible government reports at high prices.