[1] Volumes of the journal are typically published annually, although this schedule has varied over time as the resources of The Royal Society of Queensland have allowed.

Value of local and regional journals The 2021 Honorary Editor, Dr Julien Louys of Griffith University, published a strong defence of regional journals like the Proceedings in his Editorial Foreword to Volume 129: "The science reported in the following pages represents strong observational data, rigorous interpretations, and discourse that will resonate well beyond the state.

Nevertheless, there is a wide-ranging perception, increasingly common across universities and funding bodies, that science should only be published in flashy, high-profile, or international publications.

The grand narratives, the meta-analyses, and the increasingly popular ‘big data’ driven research agendas do not occur in isolation but critically rely on local observations and smaller-scale studies… "The Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world…is composed of thousands of individual reefs, each in turn composed of billions of coral polyps, each building on the structures left by previous polyps.

This digitisation effort aims to make this scientifically and historically valuable collection more accessible to scientists, historians and the public generally.