{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.022944550669216062, 'fraction_numerical': 0.021510516252390057, 'mean_word_length': 5.13782991202346, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
150 years of scientific inquiry and scholarship

The Royal Society Te Apārangi (formerly the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi and before that the New Zealand Institute) is marking its 150th anniversary in 2017 in several ways, including a refreshed branding to give greater emphasis to our origins in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1860s when engagement with Māori was intensive on all sorts of levels. This special anniversary issue includes papers that revisit many of the central themes that were explored in the first issue of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, the forerunner of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand (JRSNZ). For those interested in the origins of the society and its premier research journal, John Martin’s Illuminating Our World: 150 years of the Royal Society of New Zealand, (Royal Society Te Apārangi, Wellington, 2017), contains a very readable and informative account. The five papers in this issue, which senior editor Ewan Fordyce has commissioned to mark ‘The 150-year voyage of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand: from colonial beginnings to an electronic world’, follow two special issues of the journal in 2017, edited by Simon Nathan and Rebecca Priestley. These two special issues, under the titles ‘Finding New Zealand’s scientific heritage: from Mātauranga Māori to Augustus Hamilton’ (47:1) and ‘Finding New Zealand’s scientific heritage: science in the 20th century’ (47:2), contain 32 shorter communications on the development of scientific inquiry in Aotearoa New Zealand and some of the influential leaders who contributed to shaping the society and its role in promoting research. Collectively these special issues, along with Martin’s history of the society, make a very substantive contribution to our celebrations of 150 years of discovery in 2017. I wish to commend the editors of the special issues and the editorial team in the Royal Society Te Apārangi for reminding all those interested in scientific inquiry and research more generally of a very rich history of scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand.