Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW
On this page:
- About the Journal
- Subscriptions
- Archived Journals
- History of the Journal and Proceedings
- Editorial Board
About the Journal
The Society’s journal is one of the oldest peer-reviewed publications in the Southern Hemisphere. Much innovative research of the 19th and early 20th centuries (e.g., Lawrence Hargrave's work on flight) was first brought to the attention of the scientific world through the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales. Over the past few decades, specialist journals have become preferred for highly technical work but the Journal and Proceedings remains an important publication for multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary work.
The Journal and Proceedings is exchanged with many institutions worldwide. Currently, issues are usually published around June and December each year, although a single December issue appeared in 2016.
The Society welcomes authors to publish their research or reviews in JProcRSNSW. Abstracts of doctoral theses are also considered by the editorial board and are welcome.
Subscriptions
Access to electronic copies of the Journal is free via this link.
If you would like to subscribe to a printed copy of the Journal (full-colour, acid-free paper), it can be purchased in the Society's online shop. Orders must be received by 30 April in order to receive the two issues for that calendar year.
The subscription rates for 2024 are:
| Members of the Society. | $70 per year |
| Non-members | $150 per year |
These rates include airmail postage.
Archived Journals
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) in the USA has scanned all but one of the Journal's issues from 1862 to 2000 and made them available via this direct link [for 1862-1865, use the link to the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales]. The journals have been scanned via optical character recognition (OCR) allowing text searches to be made, as well as providing a PDF file for each volume of the Journal. The Society gratefully acknowledges the contribution made by the University of NSW and, in particular, the Smithsonian Libraries in digitising these.
All articles since 1856 have now been indexed and made available via links to the BHL archive and the National Library of Australia's Trove database of Australian publications since 1788. See the Archive contents here.
History of the Journal and Proceedings
In 1821 each member of the Society furnished the secretary with an alphabetical catalogue of the books in his (no women members then) private library and these were available on loan to other members. At that stage, the Society had no journal but some of the papers read were included in a book edited by Barron Field, one of its members, and published in London in 1825.
Similarly, the Philosophical Society of 1850 had no journal, but its proceedings were reported quite extensively in the local press. In 1857 selected papers and abstracts were printed in The Sydney Magazine of Science and Art, a private commercial venture, but the arrangement lasted for only a year or two, and recourse was had again to the public press. In 1866 appeared the Society's own publication, the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales, 1862-1865. The Royal Society of New South Wales initiated the yearly publication of the Transactions in 1867, and ten years later the present title Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales was adopted.
Editorial Board
The journal is edited to high academic standards and attracts publications predominantly in the sciences but also across all other disciplines of interest to the Society's readership.
The members of the editorial board are:
Em. Prof. Robert Marks BE ME(Melb) MS PhD (Stanf) FRSN—Editor
Prof. Richard Banati FRSN MD PhD
Prof. Michael Burton FRSN MA MMaths (Cantab) PhD (Edinb) FASA FAIP
Dr Len Fisher OAM FRSN BA BSc(Hons) MA MSc PhD (UNSW) FRSC FRACI FInstP FLS
Dr. Donald Hector AM FRSN BE(Chem) PhD(Syd) FIChemE FIEAust FAICD
Em. Prof. David Brynn Hibbert AM FRSN BSc PhD(Lond) CChem FRSC FRACI
Dr. Nick Lomb BSc PhD(Syd)
Dr Jessica Milner Davis FRSN PhD
Prof. Timothy Schmidt FRSN BSc (Syd) PhD (Cantab)
The Editor may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
