# Why do academic journals usually have continuous page numbering? Tags: journals - Score: 44 - Views: 7721 - Answers: 2 - Answered: yes - Asked by: gerrit (44867 rep) - Asked: 2016-01-18 - Site: academia ## Question In a normal magazines, page numbers restart counting from 1 at every issue. Most academic journals, however, count continuously, perhaps per year or per quarter, leading to articles covering pages 13199–13255 or similar folly. Why is this so? When citing year and issue, there is no ambiguity when starting to count at 1 at every issue. So why not paginate by issue like everybody else? ## Answers ### Answer by Massimo Ortolano (score: 66 [ACCEPTED]) One of the reasons, if not the only one, is that each year journal issues are typically collected by libraries in bound volumes, which, in this way, have a continuous numbering. At the end of the year, journals would also publish indexes for relatively quick reference. Or, at least, that is what is used to be. Below, there is an example of bound volumes (picture source). ### Answer by Scott Seidman (score: 13) Many reasons. It makes the page and volume together a unique identifier for a paper, without having to t