PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND
Despite the proliferation of journals in the post-War era of rapid expansion of science, the Society’s Proceedings remains the pre-eminent generalist journal dedicated to Queensland-focused science. It is an accessible publication with a proud history of nearly annual publication over more than 135 years. It welcomes trans-disciplinary work and policy-orientated essays. The Proceedings are exchanged with several institutions, worldwide. Issues are print-published around late December each year. The journal is indexed by the major search engines – see below.
The Society invites authors to publish short communications, reviews or opinion pieces as well as original full-length research articles in our journal. Abstracts of completed dissertations, from degrees of whatever level, will be published if content is relevant. Below are links to a Guide to Authors and ethics statements. All articles except students’ abstracts are peer-reviewed. The Presidential Address and the Society’s Annual Report are peer-reviewed by Council. From time to time, the Society publishes themed Special Issues. In 2020, three were published. Papers that do not conform to the specifications in the Guide to Authors (such as on account of length or structure) may be considered as Occasional Papers: see dedicated page.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library based in the USA in collaboration with CSIRO and the National Museum, Victoria, have reached a milestone in a project to add article data to both The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland and Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Queensland up to 1955. Every article now has its own article landing page and a DOI, e.g. https://doi.org/10.5962/p.350431.
People can view the full list of articles in each volume by clicking on the “View parts” link under “View volume” on the title page of each journal, or by clicking on the “Table of contents” tab when viewing each volume. Both the “View parts” and “Table of contents” were created once articles were added (see that the volumes published after 1955, which are locked behind a paywall, don’t have these options). Also, taxonomic names are highlighted.
Print copies may be purchased online – see Purchases page.
CALL FOR PAPERS 2024
Papers are invited for the 2024 annual volume. Before submitting, please consult the 2023 Guide to Authors which may yet be revised. Enquiries may be directed to the Honorary Editor via editor@royalsocietyqld.org.au.
RECENT ISSUES
In 2020 for the first time, articles were posted online as they were accepted and typeset.
Volume 124, the regular annual issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland
Publication was delayed so the volume carries a date of 2020. Consult the dedicated page.
Volume 125, Special Issue on the Eungella Rainforests
Guest Editor Prof Roger Kitching of Griffith University. Consult the dedicated page. We gratefully acknowledge sponsorship by Griffith University, Reef Catchments and a private philanthropist towards the cost of typesetting and printing this volume.
Volume 126, Special Issue on Springs of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB)
This Special Issue captures historic and contemporary narratives, Indigenous perspectives, scientific papers (geohydrology, ecology, management and conservation) and opinion pieces, in a volume of some 324 pages. Lead Editors: Dr Renee Rossini and Prof Angela Arthington. Consult the dedicated page. We gratefully acknowledge sponsorship support by the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy and Griffith University towards cost of typesetting and printing.
Volume 127, Special Issue on the Rangelands Policy Dialogue
This is an anthology of short communications and opinion pieces contributed by delegates after the Rangelands Policy Dialogue of 1,2 July 2019. Consult the dedicated page. Lead Editor Paul Sattler OAM .We also thank an anonymous donor for covering the cost of a small print run. See our Purchases page for details.
Volume 128, the regular annual issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland
Published at the end of 2020. Consult the dedicated page.
Volume 129, the regular annual issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland
Published at the end of 2021. Consult the dedicated page.
Volume 130, Special Issue on preventative health
To be published in 2022-24. Consult the dedicated page.
Volume 131, the regular annual issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland
Published during 2022; printed at the end of 2022. Consult the dedicated page.
Volume 132, the regular annual issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland
Published online and printed in 2023. Consult the dedicated page.
Finding articles online by year
1859-1955: All articles from 1859 to 1955 are available free of charge on the Society’s website.
1884: Issue I (4.6MB) includes reports of the origin of the Society in 1884.
1884-1955: Articles from 1884 to 1955 are available free of charge via the Biodiversity Heritage Library; see explanation below.
1956-2018: A small copy fee is charged via our Melbourne-based agent Informit. Access to all volumes is available free to Society members.
Finding an article by search engine
Several search engines are available to identify an article:
- this website – full-text searching, see search box above and explanation below
- Scopus – keyword searching, Elsevier has indexed back to 1996
- Informit – keyword searching and purchase of individual papers
- Google Scholar, which draws upon the Informit database – keyword searching
- EBSCO – holdings back to 2008.
The journal is also indexed in Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Record.
Full-text search function
The archive of the Proceedings back to 1884 and the earlier Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Queensland back to 1859 is being made accessible by a full-text search engine. However, the text is imperfect. When the printed copies of the Proceedings were scanned, the machine didn’t merely photograph the pages, but converted the images into text. This is to enable full text searching (beyond simply the title and author of the article). The conversion process was imperfect (as is usual with this type of process). For example, an ink blot or scratch in the paper could mean that an S within a word is rendered as $, so the search engine will not find the word in its correct form.
The only way to remedy this problem is to compare the converted text with the original manually and edit out the spelling errors. A proofreading process like this is adopted by the State Library and Trove using volunteers to edit scanned pages of old newspapers. Until the text is validated in this way, any inquirer who finds difficulty in accessing a desired paper is invited to contact the Society.
Finding an article by Contents page
Index to Vols. 1-25 by A.B. Walkom, published in 1914.
Table of Contents Vols. 61-90 , 1949-1979.
Index of selected articles Vol. 78 (1966) to Vol. 117 (2011).
Table of Contents for Vol. 122 of 2017 . For Vol. 123 of 2018. For Vols. 124 of 2020 to 128 of 2020. For Vol. 129 of 2021.
Author index 1859-1959 by F.S. Colliver, published in Volume LXXI (1959).
Finding Special Issues of the Proceedings
1976 The Border Ranges: A Land Use Conflict in Regional Perspective.
1980 Contemporary Cape York Peninsula.
1981 Public Information: Your Right to Know.
1984 The Brigalow Belt of Australia.
1984 The Capricorn Section of the Great Barrier Reef: Past, Present and Future.
1984 Focus on Stradbroke: New Information on North Stradbroke Island and Surrounding Areas, 1974-1984.
1986 The Mulga Lands.
1989 Rural Queensland: A Sustainable Future: The Application of Geographic Information Systems to Land Planning and Management.
1995 Queensland: The State of Science.
2002 Landscape Health of Queensland.
2006 Bushfire 2006 Conference (Vol. 115).
2011 A Place of Sandhills: Ecology, Hydrogeomorphology and Management of Queensland’s Dune Islands (Vol. 117).
2020 The Land of Clouds Revisited: The Biodiversity and Ecology of the Eungella Rainforests (Vol. 125).
2020 Springs of the Great Artesian Basin (Vol. 126).
2020 A Rangelands Dialogue: Towards a Sustainable Future (Vol. 127).
Finding the Transactions of the Queensland Philosophical Society
Volume 1 covering 1859-1872 (327 MB)
Volume 2 covering 1877 (108 MB)
Volume 3 covering 1878-1882 (73 MB)
Finding an article in libraries
The State Library of Queensland holds a full set of the Proceedings. In addition…
Trove (the National Library of Australia master catalogue search engine) offers a keyword search, catalogue records for numerous linked libraries and links to some digital files. (Incidentally, Trove’s historical web archive Pandora captures the entire website of the Royal Society of Queensland in June every year).
The Biodiversity Heritage Library in the U.S.A. has posted the papers from the Proceedings, from 1885 to 1926, and onwards to 1955, online.
The Queensland Museum Library holds the library of the Royal Society of Queensland and maintains a full set of the Society’s journal. Members of the Society enjoy access to this library.
PAPERS ARE NOW INVITED FOR PROCEEDINGS 134
MANUSCRIPT DEADLINE 1 JULY 2024.
Scholarly articles including research articles, short communications, historical reviews and opinion pieces will remain the mainstay of the Proceedings. The journal also publishes book reviews and obituaries. The Society welcomes abstracts of completed dissertations by recent students in the sciences from any Queensland university, especially honours and masters-by-coursework students whose work is unlikely to enter the peer-reviewed literature.
Intending authors are invited to contact the Editor by email: editor@royalsocietyqld.org.au. Please consult the 2023 Guide to Authors (see dedicated page) before submitting a paper. Papers must conform to the style specified in the Guide before they can be accepted. (The 2024 Guide is yet to be issued). The Guide specifies a modified APA method of referencing. Commencing with volume 129, all articles will be assigned a DOI reference number.
INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
The Guide to Authors explains style and submission procedures. For ethics policies, consult the Ethics for Authors and Ethics for the Editor statements.
If uncertain about the suitability of the intended paper, approach the Editor for advice before submitting via editor AT royalsocietyqld.org.au. Researchers who would like assistance from an experienced scientist or editor in preparing a draft article for publication are invited to contact the Society via the general inquiries email rsocqld@gmail.com.
Special Issue Vol. 130 – Preventative health
In 2018 and 2019 the Society hosted three deliberative workshops sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers – on chronic disease, youth well-being and the well-being of Indigenous and remote communities. Papers on those issues, including epidemiological results, opinion pieces, book reviews and historical overviews are welcome. See the Guide to Authors – Preventative Health and contact Guest Editors Dr Joseph McDowall or Dr Geoff Edwards (rsocqld@gmail.com) for further information.
Endnote
A style sheet for installing PRSQ Endnote style into Endnote bibliographic software is available. Save the PRSQ style to your ‘styles folder’ where Endnote is installed, open Endnote and choose to use this style. If you have a document for which you have used the old unmodified style, simply choose to reformat that document with a completely different style (such as numbered, annotated etc), then choose to update the document with the PRSQ style. This will update the document on which you have been working. (Assistance from the Librarian, Queensland University of Technology is acknowledged).
Copyright
From Volume 124, papers published in the Proceedings including Special Issues will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. Individual articles may be copied or downloaded for private, scholarly and not-for-profit use. Quotations may be extracted provided that the author/s and The Royal Society of Queensland are acknowledged. Queries regarding republication of papers, or parts of papers such as figures and photographs, should be sent to the Secretary of The Royal Society of Queensland (rsocqld@gmail.com).
The right to charge fees for reproduction is transferred upon publication to and retained by the Society.
MEETING REPORTS
Minutes and reports of the Society’s historical meetings have been digitised, with the assistance of the State Library and Queensland Museum.
- Minute books from 1883 to the 1940s are available in nine files.
Four more files include:
- Members’ register from 1859 Member No. 1
- Library Borrowing Book 1870-1930
- Secretary’s notebook
- Minute book 1868 – 1883 etc.
This is a landmark step in protecting the Society’s heritage. The fragile works were taken from their secure repository in the Museum to conservation scanning in the State Library.
(A file linking some newspaper clippings within the early minute books to their source in Trove is now available).
For lectures and presentations from December 2013 and later, refer to “News and events”.
Book Preservation Scanning conducted by Avantix (pro bono developers of the present website).