FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[stumpy]

As the previous discussion was descending into petty flag waving, and has been locked, ( https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=1117 ) I would just ask you to consider one last thing before I fall silent on the matter - you don't even need to respond:

If all of the presently existing mineral journals switched to publishing in English, would this increase or decrease the number of articles accessible to you?

[Montanpark]

Stumpy .. or whoever you are ... (i don´t like the anonymus here) .. i followed the former thread and i must say that it is quite chauvinistic to say that english MUST be the common language etc etc. Although i read and write a quite fluent english there are lots of collectors in Germany for instance who do not read a word of english .. and that´s their good privilege. German is our native language and we need magazines in our language to fulfill their/our needs. I like localized magazines as well .. they are more into the regions and in international (english) issues those articles wouldn´t be there. So if you ask me .. if all magazines were english
1st: too big competition between the magazines as the target group is too small
2nd:locale issues have no chance
3rd: the cradle of mineralogy was in germany .. so i could ask all people to switch to german as THIS is the first major mineralogical language ...
you see the point??

Asking for all magazines to be in english is rubbish BS (sry Jordi) ... it ruins the diversity and it wouldn´t in any way increase the number of articles/information (it would get less, as for competition).

2 cents,
and no more
Roger

[Jesse Fisher]

As to the question posed above by Mr. Stumpy, if Peter is correct and a journal from a small country such as Norway, in the native language has twice the circulation of the Mineralogical Record, I think you have your answer right there!

However, arguments are not settled by a single piece of data. Does anyone have subscription numbers for the European journals? As I recall, the MR is somewhere around 4000 and Rocks & Minerals is around 5500 (plus plus single issue sales as it is distributed to periodical dealers, but the MR is not).

[Montanpark]

Jesse,
i do not have any numbers for Lapis but i think that it is also 4 digits .. so fullack

Roger

[alfredo]

I heard Lapis was over 10,000, so 5 digits?

American law obliges periodicals to publish their circulation figures (yearly?). I think that's usually in small print in a little box somewhere...

[Jesse Fisher]

Talk about "fine print," I had to get out my loupe to read the published statements, but as of Nov/Dec 2009 the paid distribution for the MR was 5226 copies and for R&M 4555.

[stumpy]

Roger's contribution has made me realise that I was wrong about this, and I now agree that it is better to have mineral magazines/journals in other languages besides English.

S.

[Les Presmyk]

The two American mineral magazines (Mineralogical Record and Rocks and Minerals) are not self-supporting and require help from the hobby in order to keep up the quality and full color photos. Both "Rocks and Gems" and "Lapidary Journal", on the other hand, boast paid subscriptions well above 10,000 and are profit making concerns.

In the past, the rule of thumb was that it takes about 10,000 paid subscriptions to put a magazine in the black. It would be interesting to know how many magazines in foreign languages are self-supporting, as well.

[Montanpark]