About Biuletyn Peryglacjalny
Aims and Publication Conditions
Biuletyn Peryglacjalny began to appear in 1954, although the idea of establishing it had emerged earlier, as a response by Polish geographers to the rapidly developing international trend in research on periglacial processes. The journal was founded in Łódź, thanks to the initiative of Professor Jan Dylik and the organizational support of the Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe (Łódź Scientific Society), which already had considerable experience in publishing scholarly periodicals. The initiative was endorsed – and perhaps elaborated – by a group of a dozen or so Polish researchers of periglacial issues, who recognised the opportunity to present their research results to a broader scientific community.
The aims of the journal and its thematic scope were defined in the editorial text of the first volume (Od Redakcji, Biuletyn Peryglacjalny 1, 1954), whose final version was edited by Professor Jan Dylik. It was assumed at that time that the growing number of Polish researchers working on periglacial problems – both those concerned with contemporary areas affected by cold climates and those dealing with fossil periglacial deposits and landforms – would continue to expand and would be able to provide sufficient material for systematic publication.
Already in 1953, while the journal was being planned, the editors anticipated that Biuletyn Peryglacjalny would publish research articles and scientific notes, materials discussing periglacial terminology (which at that time was still poorly known among geomorphologists), as well as literature reports and thematic bibliographies. The introductory text defined these various categories of planned publications in considerable detail (Od Redakcji, Biuletyn Peryglacjalny 1, 1954). It was also assumed from the outset that the journal would not appear on a regular schedule, but rather depending on the availability of material, and this approach was maintained until the end of the publication cycle. There were years in which two or even three issues appeared (nos. 7, 8 and 9 in 1960), but also years in which no volume was published (for example between 1983 and 1985, and between 1987 and 1991).
A very important function of the bulletin was its communicative and integrative role for the community of geographers dealing with permafrost and polar regions. Professor Jan Dylik undertook a commitment (probably during the congress of the International Geographical Union in 1956) that Biuletyn Peryglacjalny would publish scientific reports and summaries prepared by thematic commissions dealing with periglacial issues. Such materials appeared for the first time in volume 4.
Editorial Structure
Between 1954 and 2000, when Biuletyn Peryglacjalny was being published, only two editors-in-chief directed the work of the Editorial Office: Professor Jan Dylik, until his death in 1973, and Professor Anna Dylikowa, from 1973 to 2000.
Three individuals served as Editorial Secretary. From 1954 to 1986 (volume 31) this function was performed by Łucja Pierzchałko-Dudkiewiczowa. She was followed, for two volumes – 32 and 33 (1992 and 1994) – by Krzysztof Brodzikowski. During the final six years the role of Editorial Secretary was held by Leopold Dudkiewicz.
The Editorial Committee provided crucial scholarly and organizational support, especially in the first decades of the journal’s existence. Together with the Editor-in-Chief, committee members helped to shape the profile of the journal, to promote published volumes, and to support the acquisition of manuscripts, while also assisting with reviewing and editorial work. Over the 46 years of Biuletyn Peryglacjalny’s publication, a total of 23 people served on the Editorial Committee. In the early period there were only a few members; later, usually around ten; and the largest group – thirteen – was active between 1995 and 1998.
Between 1954 and 1968 (volumes 1–17) the Committee consisted of Professors Mieczysław Dorywalski, Bronisław Halicki, Rajmund Galon, Alfred Jahn and Stefan Zb. Różycki, who were among the most distinguished Polish geomorphologists and Quaternary geologists of that period. The contribution of Professor Alfred Jahn deserves special emphasis: alongside Jan Dylik, he was the most important Polish researcher of periglacial environments, highly engaged in international scientific cooperation and in promoting Biuletyn Peryglacjalny worldwide. In 1964, after the death of Professor Bronisław Halicki, Professor Andrzej Środoń joined the Editorial Committee.
Opening the journal more widely to international authors, and broadening its circulation, required the internationalisation of the Editorial Committee. Starting with volume 18, published in 1969 (dedicated to the symposium of the International Geographical Union held in Poland), the Committee was enlarged to include André Cailleux (France), Gunnar Hoppe (Sweden), Gerald C. Maarleveld (The Netherlands), Konstantin K. Markov (Soviet Union), René Raynal (Morocco/France), Albert L. Washburn (USA) and Anna Dylikowa. In 1976 the Committee was joined by Albert Pissart (Belgium), and in 1986 by Nikolai N. Romanovskij, who replaced the late Konstantin K. Markov. These were outstanding scholars of periglacial issues, highly regarded for their research and internationally influential publications.
The aforementioned broadening and more substantial changes in the composition of the Editorial Committee took place in 1995, during the preparation of volume 34 of Biuletyn Peryglacjalny. New members included Robert O. van Everdingen (Canada), Lorenz King (Germany), Viacheslav N. Konishchev (Russia), as well as Jan S. Goździk (Łódź), Halina Klatkowa (Łódź) and Kazimierz Pękala (Lublin). In 1997 Hugh M. French (Canada) was invited to join the Committee, followed in 1998 by Barbara Manikowska (Łódź).
Geographical Scope
Initially, the primary language of publication in Biuletyn Peryglacjalny was Polish (volumes 1–7). Even contributions by foreign authors were translated into Polish, and these early volumes were dominated by Polish authors, with only a few articles from other European countries and single contributions from Morocco and the USA. An exception is volume 4, devoted mainly to the French language and dedicated to the International Geographical Union congress in Rio de Janeiro. A large part of this volume was devoted to presenting the report of the IGU Periglacial Morphogenesis Commission, but it also included several articles by European researchers of periglacial phenomena.
Volumes 8 and 9, published in 1960, contained articles resulting from international conferences: the Periglacial Symposium held in Poland in 1958 and the Periglacial Conference in Liège in 1959. Contributions by participants – researchers from all over the world, including Poland – were published in French or English, as well as in German. Individual articles in Polish continued to appear until 1967 (volume 16), but all subsequent contributions were published exclusively in English or French, and occasionally in German.
The 1960 volumes marked the beginning of a phase in which the journal attained global reach – both in terms of the institutional affiliations of authors and the geographical locations of research sites, which were distributed across several dozen countries. Volumes published in the 1960s also addressed key theoretical, experimental and methodological questions, consolidating the status of Biuletyn Peryglacjalny as the leading international journal for researchers of permafrost and morphoclimatic processes in polar regions. An exception is volume 20, published in 1969, which contains twelve papers by Polish authors and documents the topics presented during the Periglacial Symposium held in Wrocław in 1968.
In the 1970s the international standing of Biuletyn Peryglacjalny had become firmly established, due in part to inviting eminent researchers with strong international reputations to join the Editorial Committee. The journal published leading contributions on both fossil periglacial environments and contemporary permafrost-related processes. In this period the geographical range of authors and of the areas studied was at its most diverse.
The economic crisis of the 1980s had a significant impact on the journal’s publication capacity. Only four volumes were issued during that decade, but together they contained nearly ninety research articles, notes and scientific communications. Like earlier volumes, they present a broad international spectrum of research topics. However, the long waiting times for publication – commented upon by some authors – likely contributed to difficulties in obtaining sufficient material for further issues.
In the 1990s additional volumes were published. The first of these, volume 32 (1992), was devoted to multilingual periglacial terminology, thus returning to one of the original aims of the Editorial Office. Subsequent volumes contained research results with a more limited geographical scope, and a somewhat narrower, though still international, range of authors – from France, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands and the USA – with Polish authors again predominating.
Contents
Across 39 volumes of Biuletyn Peryglacjalny a total of 427 research articles and scientific notes were published, although the number of contributions per volume varied considerably – from 3 to 25 (in volumes 18 and 31). A substantial portion – 127 items – consists of conference papers and abstracts of conference presentations, as well as descriptions of field excursions. A distinct category is formed by reports of specialist commissions of the International Geographical Union, which were published in volumes 4–15; in total, 50 such items appeared.
In the early phases of the bulletin’s publishing activity, an important and regular element (present in most volumes from those years) consisted of reports and reviews of thematic literature, prepared in the form of descriptive summaries and commentaries, either in Polish (with translations) or in French or English. In volumes 1–10, the final section of each volume contained summaries of the contents in English or French (when the main texts were published in Polish), or summaries in Polish (when the main texts appeared in other languages), and, in addition, summaries of the entire volume in Russian.
Indexes of all publications that appeared in Biuletyn Peryglacjalny are particularly valuable resources. Volume 25 (1976) includes a chronological list of items published and an alphabetical bibliography covering volumes 1–24 (Index to Biuletyn … 1976). Volume 39 contains a similar compilation for volumes 25–39 (Table of contents … 2000; Index of papers … 2000). These indexes greatly facilitated the retrieval of bibliographic information and the tracing of the publishing activity of individual authors in the journal. The list of publications comprises around 300 names, including both authors of single articles and researchers who published repeatedly in the journal.
Jan Dylik was one of the originators of Biuletyn Peryglacjalny, its first editor, and also the author of the largest number of items published in the journal. Most of these are conference communications, symposium reports, book reviews and literature surveys (Index to Biuletyn … 1976), but his research articles and scientific notes – fourteen in total – are of unquestionable scholarly value. They include key studies presenting major research results, analyses, interpretations and conceptual views, ranging from general terminological issues defining the characteristics of periglacial environments, through the problem of the origin and accumulation of loess, the interpretative significance of periglacial structures, and the role of slopes and slope deposits in shaping the relief of temperate and cold regions, to questions of Quaternary stratigraphy and palaeogeography.
There is a large group of authors whose output in Biuletyn Peryglacjalny consists of several or more contributions, and the temporal span of their publications is noteworthy. André Cailleux is one such researcher, with a dozen or so publications appearing between 1956 and 1976. Similarly frequent were the contributions of René Raynal, who began cooperating with the journal in 1956, while his last article appeared in 1994. Among other leading researchers of fossil periglacial environments who actively collaborated with the journal were Gerald Maarleveld, Albert Pissart, Jean Tricart and Andrei Vielichko. The journal also attracted leading scholars of contemporary permafrost-related phenomena and polar-climate environments, such as Albert Washburn, John Ros Mackay and Josef Sekyra, as well as, somewhat later, Hugh French, Steward Harris and Brigitte Van Vliet-Lanoë.
As already noted, Polish authors made a very substantial organisational and publishing contribution. Foremost among them were Professor Alfred Jahn and Professor Anna Dylikowa, both associated with Biuletyn Peryglacjalny from the first to the last volume, and each responsible for several publications. Other important contributors included Henryk Maruszczak, Józef Mojski and Stefan Kozarski, as well as representatives of the Łódź geomorphological school – Barbara Manikowska and Jan Goździk. Many papers were also authored by specialists from outside the Earth sciences, particularly archaeology and palaeobotany; at least two names deserve mention here: Waldemar Chmielewski, a leading expert on Palaeolithic archaeology, and Krystyna Wasylikowa, a palaeobotanist and the author of what is probably the most frequently cited article ever published in Biuletyn Peryglacjalny (Wasylikowa 1964).
