Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 6. 1966.

NZ scientific magazines

NZ scientific magazines

It Has Been aptly pointed out that more than half the scientists who have ever lived are now alive, and active in research or other scientific work. But what is more important from the point of view of this article is that those now-living scientists are also writing up and publishing the results of their work. There are not only nuclear explosions and a population explosion, but also a publication explosion.

It has been reliably calculated that, Just as the rate of a chemical reaction doubles for every 10 degrees rise in temperature, the amount of scientific publication at least doubles every 10 years. New Zealand shares with the more advanced overseas countries in this accelerating rate of scientific and technical publication in the second edition of the Directory of New Zealand Science (1951), published by the NZ Association of Scientists, 59 New Zealand scientific periodicals were listed; but in the latest edition (4th, 1962) there are 107. And many of these are also increasing in size and frequency of issue. For example, the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, founded in 1958 as a quarterly with about 150 pages per number, had six parts in its last volume, and the latest number (admittedly for special reasons) consisted of 404 pages.

New Zealand can justly claim to be well served by scientific Journals. For the size of the country and its population, they compare well in standard, number and variety with those of any other part of the world. From the early days of European settlement there has been a desire to record in print scientific descriptions of the animals, plants, minerals and rocks, and other natural features of the country. Hence many of the early journals, and not a few of those currently produced, come within the broad field of natural history. Journals publishing articles in the exact sciences, the social and political sciences, and such field as mathematics and the philosophy of science were established later. Anthropology and ethnology were given attention early; but with few exceptions the applied sciences of agriculture, medicine, and engineering have had Journals serving their interests founded only more recently.

Because of the small population, and especially the small size of that part of it interested in science, many of the hundred-odd Journals how produced have quite small circulations, and arc struggling against financial difficulties. As a result, many New Zealand scientific journals have been short-lived, or have suffered changes in title, content, frequency of issue, format, price, and so on. This is probably also the reason for the fairly high proportion of the existing scientific periodicals that are sponsored (and in many cases subsidised) by either the government or one of the larger institutions, such as the Universities. There are few well-established commercially payable journals—and sucn as there are have to carry a heavy burden of advertising.

Financial difficulties have always plagued New Zealand scientific publishing. The earliest private - enterprise scientific periodical, the NZ Journal of Science, which ran from 1882 to 1885 and was published in Dunedin, issued with its second-to-last number the following "Notice to Subscribers":

Gentlemen,—We are reluctantly obliged to notify that owing to the very large number of unpaid subscriptions it will be necessary to' cease the further issue of The New Zealand Journal of Science after the end of this year. The difficulty of getting in small subscriptions from all parts of the colony is very considerable, and unless those who take out the Journal will respond to the requests made to them and forward the amounts due by them, arrears quickly mount up. Seeing that the Journal has now been in existence for four years, and has fairly well fulfilled its expectations, we think it a pity that its publication should now be stopped, but the matter is entirely in the hands of our subscribers, who have now the opportunity of signifying whether or not they desire to see this— the only non-official scientific publication of the colonycome to an end or not.

We are, Gentlemen, Your obedient servants. Wise. Caffin & Co.

Even this plaintive appeal was of no avail, however. In the last number, issued a few months later, the editor, under the heading "Moriturus te salutat," wrote:

"The cause of the discontinuance of the Journal . . . is not very creditable to a certain section of the subscribers. . . . Considering the enlightened class of readers for whom it was intended, very little margin was left for non-payers; unfortunately a very large margin has been required. . . . Herbert Spencer . . . gives an account of a serial publication 'limited in its circulation to the well-educated.' … In the course of time several of these subscribers fell into arrears, and after various attempts to extract payment out of them, an anafysis was made of the hardened offenders who had succeeded in totally evading their claims. … Of the clergy who had subscribed, no less than 31 per cent finally declined to pay. But we can beat that record hollow.

The New Zealand Journal of Science includes not only clergymen among its subscribers, but even Bishops, and among the Bishops no less than 66 per cent have hitherto evaded payment!"

A few years later (1891), the NZ Journal of Science was begun again. It lasted a single year (six issues). In the final number the editor, (G. M. Thomson) regretted

"That I have to announce to the subscribers . . . that the second attempt to keep a periodical of the kind going in this colony has proved, unsuccessful. . . . The history of private enterprise in connection with scientific periodicals in Australia and New Zealand has been one of failure."

Let us hope that. 75 years later, although it cannot honestly be claimed that all existing scientific journals in New Zealand are flourishing, yet that the subscription position has improved—although it is not likely that Bishops, or even the clergy generallv. find a great deal to interest them in the more specialised and more technical journals being published today. At ami-ate. I do not think the last' sentence quoted above is still true.