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A little history
Pacific Linguistics was established
in 1963 through an initial grant from the Hunter Douglas Fund.
The earliest books were published in the name of the Linguistic
Circle of Canberra. The founding editor was Professor Stephen
A. Wurm, who sadly passed away late in 2001.
From 1963 until 1999 Pacific
Linguistics published four series:
- Series A: Occasional Papers; collections
of shorter papers, usually on a single topic or area.
- Series B: Monographs of intermediate
length.
- Series C: Books; publications of
greater length, especially reference books such as dictionaries
and grammars, and conference proceedings.
- Series D: Special Publications;
including archival materials, pedagogical works, maps, audiovisual
productions, and materials that do not fit into the other
series.
Since the beginning of 2000,
only a single series has been published, beginning with Pacific
Linguistics 501. We are sometimes asked why we abandoned the
four series. There were a number of reasons. Series A had
long been problematic, as a volume could not be published
until enough papers about languages of the relevant area/family
were available to fill it, and this sometimes took years,
to the annoyance of authors whose papers had already been
accepted for publication. Series A was accordingly terminated.
The borderline between Series B and C had always been hazy,
and Series D simply included anything that didn't fit into
Series A, B and C. An added problem which readers complained
of was that some libraries treated our series as journals
and some would not allow them to leave the library, whereas
our most of our publications are properly catalogued as books,
and we were keen to emphasise that our publications are
books.
In 2007 Pacific Linguistics will gradually move towards electronic publication in association with E Press - http://epress.anu.edu.au/ - to provide POD (print-on-demand) copies. More information will be provided as Pacific Linguistics gradually moves towards this form of publication.
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