It was established in 1962 and is pub lished by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Society for Photobiology.

The journal's name was decided in Copenhagen at the 1960 International Congress on Photobiology.

[4] In 1986, the 38th Council of the ASP established a committee to investigate the proposal that the European Society for Photobiology (ESP) would share the operation of the journal with the ASP.

Financial and contractual problems prevented agreement and, instead, ESP contracted with Elsevier leading to the publication of the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology in 1987.

[6] The journal is abstracted and indexed in Academic Search, Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, CAB HEALTH, CABDirect, Chemical Abstracts Service, CSA Biological Sciences Database, Current Contents/Life Sciences, GeoRef, Index Medicus/MEDLINE/PubMed, ProQuest Health & Medical Complete, Proquest Medical Library, and the Science Citation Index.