The Magazine: Annals of Improbable Research

The magazine about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.

Real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere — research that’s maybe good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. Compiled for you, by the producers of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Six (6) new Improbable magazine issues every year!

SUBSCRIBE—or Buy Back Issues or Years!

• The magazine is published in PDF form. No more paper! (The last issue to be published in paper form was the November/December 2015 issue—volume 21, number 6.)
• GIFTS—Give a single issue as a gift. Or give all the issues from a particular year (2019, 2018, 2017, or some other year) as a gift. (We do not, alas, have machinery in place for gift subscriptions.)
• A little confused about how to subscribe? THIS may help.
• A little confused about how to give a (single issue as a) gift? THIS may help.

 

Click on a magazine cover to see its Table of Contents

The pages for individual issues before 2022 are offline while we are moving web hosts. Please come back soon!

 

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BACKGROUND INFO: Why We Shifted to Publishing Exclusively in PDF form

Some background info, in case you’re wondering, about why we converted from publishing the magazine in paper form, to publishing exclusively in digital form.

Here’s Gizmodo‘s report about that” “Fantastically Nerdy Science Humor Magazine Goes Digital“.

OBSCURE HISTORICAL INFO, for fanatic historians: Some historical technical info about publishing forms and formats

Before making the decision to publish exclusively in PDF form, we tried an experiment—a noble but doomed experiment. We invented an e-book form that solved a problem that plagued most of the e-book industry.

Here’s historical info about the E-book version that we produced for several years (and no longer produce): We were the first picture-filled magazine available as a series of standard e-books, comfy on both tiny (phone) and big screens:

• We produced each issue as a standard e-book (as well as producing the paper version). Read it the same way you read all your other e-books.
• We invented a simple way to make magazines comfy to read on both tiny and big screens (everything from smartphones to desktop monitors). Each e-book contains two copies — one formatted for tiny screens, one formatted identically to the glorious paper version. (Got a question about it? Ask our bookmaster.)
• This was a technological triumph, and a commercial flop – not so many people wanted to read e-books!