More than hundred years of Finnish forest science publishing
Finnish Society of Forest Science started science publishing in 1913 by establishing the journal Acta Forestalia Fennica. The first issue of Acta Forestalia Fennica contained two monograph-style research reports written in German. During the early years, the publications of the Society were commonly edited in Finnish or German but some papers appeared in English or French.
Silva Fennica was established in 1926 for publishing “short” research reports. At that time, the research reports were usually tens of pages long, often written in the monograph style. Short report referred to articles written in the concise style of today’s research articles. Silva Fennica first appeared occasionally, after enough suitable papers were submitted. In 1967, Silva Fennica was converted to a quarterly scientific journal: Silva Fennica number 121 was also the first issue of volume 1 of the renovated journal. The Finnish Society of Forest Science started publishing cooperation with the Finnish Forest Research Institute in 1994, which continued until 2016. English became the only publishing language of Silva Fennica. Publication in domestic languages of Finland was concentrated to a new journal, Metsätieteen aikakauskirja. The same year, online publication of the abstracts began. Open access publication of whole text articles in the Internet began in 1998. Thus, Silva Fennica was among the first international scientific journals to go online. The monograph series of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, Communicationes Instituti Forestalis Fenniae, merged with Acta Forestalia Fennica in 1998. In 2000, Acta Forestalia Fennica merged with Silva Fennica because submission of monographs almost ceased.
Silva Fennica has established reputation as one of leading forest science journals of the world. The 100th year of forest science publishing by the Finnish Society of Forest Science, 2013, brought another important change for Silva Fennica because it went online only. Open access publishing continued. All articles of Silva Fennica are published in html and pdf formats. Metsätieteen aikakauskirja was converted to an online-only journal in 2017.
All monographs and journals published by the Finnish Society of Forest Science during the past 100 years are now available in electronic form. The Foundation Metsämiesten säätiö funded the scanning of all old paper publications. Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing funded the preparation of modern meta data for the archives of Silva Fennica and Acta Forestalia Fennica. The main publications of the Society, Acta Forestalia Fennica and Silva Fennica can be found through the web site of Silva Fennica. Several occasional publications by the Society are now deposited in the University of Helsinki Library’s Digital Archives (HELDA).
Links to the archive in HELDA
Forest dictionaries
Lexicon forestale. Metsäsanakirja. Skogsordbok. Forest dictionary. Forstwörterbuch. Lesnoj slovar’. – WSOY. 1979. 592 s. (Finnish – Swedish – English – German – Russian)
Lexicon forestale. Supplementum fenniae-polonicae. Suomalais-puolalainen metsäsanasto. Slownik lesny finsko-polski. – 1986. 289 s. (Finnish – Polish)
Metsäsanasto espanja-suomi-espanja. Terminología forestal español-finlandés-español. – 1994. 218 s. (Finnish – Spanish)