82 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 11, NO. 4 



philanthropic periodicals apply equally well to those publislied for 

 profit, but there are some special features of the latter which require 

 further consideration. 



The publication for profit of strictly technological periodicals 

 (not trade journals) is a relatively recent development. The most 

 conspicuous example is the group of journals published by the Mc- 

 Graw-Hill Company. They have the great advantage of being 

 edited, managed, and circulated by men whose business is editing, 

 managing and circulating periodicals, and nothing else. They do not 

 suffer from the haphazard editing, inefficient business management, 

 and almost neglected circulation characteristic of most scientific 

 society journals. At first rather looked down upon and avoided 

 by scientific investigators, this class of periodicals now obtains, 

 by contribution, special reporting, or reprinting, first-class readable 

 material which it puts into the hands of readers at a comparatively 

 small price. 



The scientific societies have apparently not become aware of the 

 possibilities, both beneficent and dangerous, of these journals. It 

 is most important to recognize that their profit does not come from 

 subscriptions, but from advertising. Their problem, and likewise 

 the problem they offer the community, is thus exactly the same as 

 that of the popular magazine and the newspaper; they must publish 

 just enough reading matter, of just high enough grade, to most effi- 

 ciently carry the advertising, and no more. What this amount and 

 grade of reading matter shall be seems now fairly well established 

 for the newspaper, but is still a subject of empirical experimentation 

 by the popular magazine and the technical periodical published for 

 profit, with extinction as the penalty for the ones that make the 

 poorest guess. 



This dependence upon advertising may even have the effect of 

 making it good policy to restrict the circulation in certain directions 

 rather than enlarge it, and thus make the journal actually work 

 against rather than for the widest distribution of the information 

 it carries. The American Machinist, for example, probably costs 

 in the neighborhood of twenty dollars per copy per year, yet it sells 

 for $4.00 per year. Obviously, to send this journal to a professor 

 of Latin, with no interest in and no buying power for machine tools, 

 even though he be willing and eager to pay his $4.00 for it, is to waste 

 $16.00, for the advertisers have no interest in supplying information 

 to professors of Latin. This extreme case will serve to emphasize 



