Bibliography of European Palaeobotany and Palynology 2012-2013

The Bibliography provides an interesting historical context to our subject over the last 20 years. It does not make for completely comfortable reading. The number of contributors has declined dramatically, from 493 in 1994/5 to 102 in the present edition. Much of this occurred in the mid-1990s, when numbers nearly halved. I have not analysed the numbers in detail, but it is tempting to correlate this with the events that had recently taken place in eastern Europe; this had resulted in a decline in many research institutes in that part of Europe, and therefore of palaeobotanists and palynologists. Since then there has continued to be a steady, year - on - year decline in the overall number of contributors. This is, of course, not a statistically rigorous sample; some of the decline may be because we have lost contributors through pressure on their time - there are a few people missing from this edition who I know are still active. However, the consistency in the decline suggests that it reflects real underlying changes in our subject. The decline over the last few years in particular presumably reflects the job cuts that have occurred throughout Europe as a consequence of the economic storm we have all been suffering from.