By stripping theories of a lot of the complexity that takes years to understand, popular science, or pop-science, attempts to make science accessible to a wider public. Countries like the United States started to see the publication of pop-science magazines as early as the 19th century. Taiwan, however, had a comparatively late start in the literary field.
Chang Tza-chieh (張之傑), who has written and worked as an editor for several of Taiwan’s pop-science publications, notes that the earliest such magazines were published in the 1950s. “Economically, Taiwan was still transforming from agriculture to light industry and politically the government was still planning on recovering mainland China,” Chang says of that decade. “While some scientists saw the need to promote science, the general public wasn’t interested in science and the government wasn’t giving it priority.” With very limited resources and a non-existent market, it is not surprising that none of these early periodicals is still in publication.
The oldest existing pop-science magazine in Taiwan is Science Study Monthly, which has been published by the National Taiwan Science Education Center since 1962. Originally an internal publication, the magazine started to take public subscriptions in 1971. Since 1979, it has been distributed free of charge to elementary and junior high schools as supplementary reading material. Another pop-science periodical published by the government is Science Development, which the National Science Council began publishing in 1973. Originally a monthly for academic readers, the magazine shifted its focus in 2002 to featuring scientific subjects for average readers.
January 1970 saw the debut of Science Monthly. The magazine was founded in the United States by Lin Siao-sin (林孝信), a Taiwanese national studying for his doctorate in physics at the University of Chicago, and a group of overseas Taiwanese students. Chinese-language articles written by overseas Taiwanese students from around the United States who were majoring in science were sent to Lin’s group in Chicago, which undertook the editing and layout and then sent the pages to Taipei for printing. Driven by the desire to contribute to their country, all of the students were volunteers. In the preface of its first issue, the editors noted their hopes of promoting Taiwan’s science education and bringing the spirit of science to people’s everyday life.
For more than four decades, Science Monthly has been able to continue publishing largely because of scientists’ passion to contribute their knowledge and promote pop-science. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
The editorial production of Science Monthly moved to Taipei toward the end of 1970. Although the magazine started out with articles written by overseas students, Science Monthly has always aimed to run content relevant to Taiwan. As early as its fourth issue—published in April 1970—there was an article reviewing Taiwan’s junior high school mathematics textbooks, for example.
Finding Taiwan-related story ideas has become easier as the nation’s development has accelerated in recent decades. Deputy editor-in-chief Tseng Yao-huan (曾耀寰) is an associate scientist at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s most prestigious research institution. Tseng explains that the magazine’s topics are decided upon at a monthly editorial meeting that includes high school science teachers, professors and researchers, with the articles written by Taiwanese or mainland Chinese scientists. Some of the most popular topics Science Monthly has covered include a series of feature stories on each of Academia Sinica’s research institutes, and a comparison between 3G and 4G wireless communications—a subject that has drawn a lot of discussion in Taiwan recently. In addition to printed copies, Science Monthly allows free public access to its digital archive of all past issues.
Much of the magazine’s production is still performed on a voluntary basis, as it was in the beginning. Currently three of the editors as well as two employees who work on advertising, subscriptions and distribution are paid staffers, but all the previous editors have been volunteers. Contributors wrote on a voluntary basis in the first decade of the magazine, although since then they have received a nominal fee for articles. “Making a profit has never been our goal and articles published in a pop-science magazine are of little use in terms of the contributors’ academic advancement,” Tseng says. “We’re willing to put in time and energy because we make it our mission to contribute to Taiwan by promoting pop-science.” In fact, a number of young scientists who have worked for the publication have gone on to play crucial roles in drawing up Taiwan’s science education policies as the heads of universities or even education ministers.
About 60 percent of the articles in the Taiwanese edition of Scientific American are translated from the US edition, while the rest are related local reports. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
On sale for just NT$10 (US$0.25 at the 1970 exchange rate) per copy, the first print run of 8,000 copies of Science Monthly’s first issue sold out within three days. A reprint of 5,000 copies also sold out immediately and a third run of 5,000 more were printed to meet the demand. Within two weeks, the newly published magazine had drawn 11,000 subscribers.
After the launch of Science Monthly, several other locally produced pop-science magazines joined the market in the 1970s. The new periodicals and several of the established ones began to add color covers and color pages.
Setbacks Before Success
Ironically, it seems that setbacks always have been a major spur for scientific development worldwide. China started to promote modern Western science in the 1910s after losing territory to foreign invaders with advanced weaponry. Then, in the 1970s, following Taiwan’s setbacks in international politics, many overseas students chose to return in order to contribute to their country even though there were better career opportunities abroad. “Losing our UN seat [in 1971] and formal ties with many countries, Taiwan recognized that it had to rely on itself in many respects,” Chang says. “For scientists, the way to serve the country was to use science to help the country and share their knowledge with their countrymen.”
The magazines set up in the 1970s inspired many young people to study science. Most of those publications, unfortunately, were established out of patriotism or enthusiasm rather than grounded in proper business management practices, and they eventually closed down. Even Science Monthly, though supported by a large group of volunteers and later with only a very small full-time staff, found that it needed more financial assistance to keep going. To bring in more funds, Science Monthly started to publish the Scitech Report in 1982, which focuses on reporting science-related policy as well as new technologies. Free copies are distributed to researchers and faculty members of college science departments. The Scitech Report earns just enough in advertising income, mostly from scientific equipment importers, to subsidize running Science Monthly, which retails at NT$140 (US$4.80) and has a circulation of 2,000 copies per month.
The online version of the Taiwanese edition of Scientific American (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Interest Enough
The release of the Chinese-language edition of the Japanese pop-science magazine Newton in 1983 by Taiwan’s Newton Press started a new era for Taiwan’s pop-science magazine market. Newton was Taiwan’s first translated pop-science magazine, as well as the first with full-color pages. Although much more expensive than other pop-science titles, Newton was very successful and the company later published Little Newton and Baby Newton for young readers. “On one hand, Newton’s market success posed a serious threat to locally produced pop-science magazines like Science Monthly,” Chang says. “At the same time, it indicated that there was a market for an ‘international Chinese edition’ of pop-science magazines, as Newton put it.” Encouraged by Newton’s success, Chinese-language editions of several Japanese or American pop-science magazines were published in the 1980s.
An important factor that influenced the pop-science publishing market was Taiwan’s economic growth, which allowed more people to invest in leisure reading. When the first pop-science magazines were published in the 1950s, Taiwan’s per capita gross domestic product was less than US$200. That figure had grown to US$389 in 1970 when Science Monthly was published and to US$2,819 in 1983 when Newton was released. In addition, Taiwan was becoming known throughout the world for its electronic products and was welcoming the return of more scientists, two trends that helped the promotion of science education in general and pop-science magazines in particular during the 1980s. “A science and technology-based economy was forming,” Chang says. “It got more people interested in science and created a market for pop-science publications.”
Come the 1990s, Taiwan’s science and technology standards as well as its economy continued to grow, but the market for pop-science magazines did not. In fact, Chang cannot recall any new pop-science magazines during that decade except for a large quantity of periodicals introducing 3C products—computers, communication and consumer electronics. In the meantime, part of the overall magazine market was lost to the many new television stations and greater number of newspaper pages that appeared following the end of martial law in 1987. Pop-science readers also started to shift from subscribing to magazines to purchasing books on their topic of interest because a number of magazine publishers experiencing financial difficulties at the time fell behind schedule or even closed down. “Compared with the uncertainty involved in subscribing to magazines, books in bookstores were apparently a much safer bet,” Chang says.
A semiconductor show at the National Taiwan Science Education Center in Taipei City. Taiwan’s transformation into a science and technology-based economy has attracted more interest in science and more readers for pop-science publications. (Photo by Central News Agency)
In terms of promoting popular science, the growth of the book market is not necessarily a bad thing because it indicates that more people have become interested in particular subjects, with books able to explore topics in greater depth than most magazines. Writer and editor Wang Chien-ren (王乾任) notes that several publishing houses had been trying to cultivate a pop-science book market for nearly a decade before the Chinese-language edition of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, published by Commonwealth Publishing Group, made it to the best-seller list in 1993. The success of the work by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, which was first published in 1985 in English in the United States by W.W. Norton & Co., prompted many other publishing houses to start releasing local translations of pop-science books.
An interesting observation Wang has on the development of Taiwan’s pop-science book market is that there were a lot of publications on physics, astronomy and many other branches of sciences, but very few on mathematics—the mother of them all—in the 1990s, as most Taiwanese students lacked interest in the subject. Since the early 2000s, however, mathematics has become one of the most popular subjects for pop-science publications. Wang believes that the catalyst for this interest lies in controversial changes made to math education in Taiwan in the mid-1990s that drew a lot of criticism and were eventually scrapped. The debate generated at the time caused many people to begin thinking more deeply about math, he says.
Scientific Breakthrough
Despite a struggling market for magazines, in 2002 local publishing house Yuan Liu Publishing Co.—one of the largest in Taiwan—decided to release a Taiwanese edition of Scientific American in traditional Chinese characters. A version of the magazine in simplified characters had existed for many years in mainland China. Deputy editor-in-chief Marine Chang (張孟媛), who has worked on the Taiwanese edition since it launched, notes that Scientific American has always been one of the world’s best-known pop-science periodicals and local pop-science enthusiasts, mainly scientists and school teachers, had pushed for the publication of a Taiwanese edition for some time before Yuan Liu decided to give it a go. “The problem was finding a publishing house that was willing to make the investment,” she says. “It was, quite frankly, a risky investment because of the small market, which was likely to stay small.” In 2005, Yuan Liu began selling an online edition of the publication which, according to Marine Chang, has had little impact on the sales of printed copies.
The growth of the pop-science book market since the early 1990s indicates that average readers are interested to learn about specific topics in greater depth than pop-science periodicals can offer. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)
Since its publication, the local edition of Scientific American has won the Golden Tripod Award for best pop-science magazine every year. The awards are the highest honors in Taiwan’s publishing circle. The publication also tries to add local content to each issue rather than just using translated articles. Currently, about 60 percent of the articles are translated from the US edition of Scientific American, while the rest are related local reports. For example, a translated article on quarks might be accompanied by a story written by a local scientist on the status of quark research in Taiwan. “Science has no national boundaries and it’s closely related to people’s everyday life, but that is different from place to place,” Marine Chang says. “Giving some of the science articles a Taiwanese perspective helps draw readers’ interest.”
In addition to printed and online editions, the magazine has established a database that includes all past local issues, the original English articles and an English-Chinese dictionary of scientific terms. At present, only school libraries can subscribe to the database.
According to Marine Chang, the magazine has a wide readership ranging from junior high school students to retirees. While withholding the exact circulation number as a trade secret, she says that it is somewhere between 10,000 and 90,000 copies per issue. In fact, even 90,000 copies per month is still quite small compared with other magazines in the local market that can sell more than 100,000 copies a week. But while aware they will never outsell magazines on finance, business, news or fashion, pop-science publishers, writers and editors also know that they are playing an irreplaceable role in the promotion of scientific knowledge in Taiwan.
Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw