In 1927 Philip Cohen emigrated to New York to start a job as a clerk in the law school library at Columbia University, where his career in law began. During the late 1920s and 1930s he held a tenure at Columbia University law library, where he developed an interest in law and civil rights. From 1941 to 1945 he served with a “counterintelligence unit of the United States Army Air Forces in the European Theater“ (Steinhauer 1998). In 1945 Cohen founded Oceana Publications Inc. at 500 5th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, across from the Public Library on 42nd Street, in the media and press district, where also other institutions founded by émigrés were located such as the photo laboratories Leco and Pavelle as well as photo agencies as Black Star and Rapho Guillemette. During the 1950s he "compiled reference pamphlets on marriage and divorce and sold them for 50 cents each at the library. This modest publishing venture would eventually lead to the founding of the Legal Almanac Series, which still exists“ (Steinhauer 1998). The pamphlets, and his legal advice service, were advertised in the Daily News newspaper and other printed media.

Oceana Publications found a niche in the publishing market, creating major volumes on subjects ranging from public international law to international, comparative, transnational, and constitutional law, as well as legal bibliography (Cohen 1992, 114). Besides such popular topics as marriage, divorce and motor vehicle rules and regulations, Oceana also covered naturalisation and emigration/immigration issues. In 1953 How to Become a Citizen of the United States by Margaret Esther Hall (1953) and Immigration Laws of the United States by Carol McCormick Croswell were published, providing a guide for U.S. emigrants in the post-war period.

Interestingly, in 1952, the photobook Suffer Little Children by the émigré photographer Marion Palfi was published with Oceana Publications. It is the only photobook to be found in the publishing history of Oceana. Funded by a Rosenwald Fellowship grant, which she received in 1946, Palfi spent two years travelling across the U.S. recording instances of child neglect and juvenile delinquency. Her resulting Children in America exhibition in January 1949 at the Public Library travelled throughout the U.S. over the following three years. In Suffer Little Children Palfi focused on the diversity of American society rather than isolating one ethnic group, portraying poverty as a destructive force affecting African-Americans, Asian-Americans, whites and Latinos alike. A review of the book by Eleanor Roosevelt in December 1952 appeared in a number of newspapers across the U.S.: “This is a book that nearly all of us in the United States should look at with great care. There is some text in it, but the pictures are what will really remain with you. They are completely unforgettable. The reason none of us can fail to look at this book with care lies in the fact that these children are our future citizens, and we must know how they are growing up and what are their opportunities.” (Roosevelt 1952, 20)

Oceana Publications changed address on several occasions, moving between Midtown Manhattan and Chelsea. In the late 1950s it was located right across the street from the Schocken publishing house. In 1962 it moved to bigger headquarters in Dobbs Ferry and opened branches in Lagos, Nigeria, and in Dusseldorf, Germany, to cover the European continent.