Pacific Affairs http://www.pacificaffairs.ubc.ca is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes academic research on contemporary political, economic, and social issues in Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and the Pacific. The journal was founded in 1926 as the newsletter for the entirety of the Institute of Pacific Relations

Institute of Pacific Relations

The Institute of Pacific Relations was an international NGO established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific Rim. The International Secretariat, the center of most IPR activity over the years, consisted of professional staff members who...

 (IPR). In May 1928, PA adopted its current name, and has been published continuously since. From 1934 to 1942, the journal was edited by Owen Lattimore

Owen Lattimore

Owen Lattimore was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of Central Asia, especially Mongolia. In the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963...

, the pioneering scholar of Central Asian history, then William L. Holland

William L. Holland

William Lancelot Holland worked with the Institute of Pacific Relations from 1928 until 1960 as Research Secretary; American IPR Executive Secretary and editor of its periodical, Far Eastern Survey; IPR Secretary-General and editor of its journal, Pacific Affairs...

.

The journal moved from the IPR headquarters in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 to the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

 in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, in 1961. Pressure from Senator Joseph McCarthy

McCarthyism

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...

 led to the dissolution of the IPR in 1960. It is currently housed in the Institute of Asian Research http://www.iar.ubc.ca/ at the University of British Columbia.

The journal's executive committee is composed of an editor, associate editors (based on the following geographic regions: Asia General, China and Inner Asia, Japan, Korea, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia and the Pacific Islands) and members representing Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...

 http://www.sfu.ca, University of Victoria

University of Victoria

The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...

 http://www.uvic.ca, University of Northern British Columbia

University of Northern British Columbia

The University of Northern British Columbia is a small, primarily undergraduate university whose main campus is in Prince George, British Columbia. UNBC also has regional campuses in the northern British Columbia cities of Prince Rupert, Terrace, Quesnel, and Fort St. John...

 http://www.unbc.ca, and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, created by an Act of Parliament in 1984, is an independent, not-for-profit think-tank on Canada's relations with Asia.-Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada:...

 http://www.asiapacific.ca.

Ingenta is the electronic provider for Pacific Affairs' online subscriptions. Subscribers also have access to the entire contents of the journal from its inception in 1926 in JSTOR

JSTOR

JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...

http://www.jstor.org with a four-year moving wall.

In addition to scholarly articles based on original research, the journal publishes "perspectives," which are shorter articles, and often groups articles with a common theme into special issues. Some recent themes include democratization and communication in Asia, contemporary Japan-North Korea relations, and East Asian cross-regional agreements.

Book Reviews

PA publishes 40-50 book reviews in each issue, under the headings of Asia General; China and Inner Asia; Northeast Asia; South Asia; Southeast Asia; and Australasia and the Pacific Region. Books from social sciences and humanities disciplines are reviewed by reviewers who are invited by PA’s executive committee. PA also publishes review articles which are also invited by the executive committee members. A review article is more in-depth, longer and compares the conclusions of several different authors on a single topic. The journal does not accept unsolicited book reviews.

In terms of chronological coverage, books that deal with topics before the 1860s are not reviewed unless there are explicit thematic or analytical links to contemporary affairs and/or theory.

External links

• Pacific Affairs (official site)
  • Links to Journal Archives, with Tables of Contents