General Systems

General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research, known as General Systems, is the first annual journal in the field of systems science initiated in 1956 edited by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Anatol Rapoport. This journal featuring selected publications by foundational authors of the systems sciences.

Overview
Each December since 1956, the Society has published the General Systems Yearbook, comprising a wide spectrum of articles delineating progress in general systems theory. These yearbooks collects together significant papers, often originally published in journals of a wide variety of disciplines. This is a very valuable source for the location of concepts and their definitions.

The yearbook contains some of the classic works in the field of systems theory, such as:
 * Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General Systems Theory," in General Systems Yearbook 1 (1956),
 * Kenneth Boulding, "General Systems Theory -- The Skeleton of Science," General Systems Yearbook, I (1956), pp. 11-17.
 * W. Ross Ashby, "General systems theory as a new discipline," General Systems Yearbook, 3, (1958).
 * Charles A. McClelland, "Systems and History in International Relations," General Systems Yearbook, III (1958).

The General Systems Yearbook also contains examples of the third kind of general systems activity — creating new laws and refining old.

History
This journal was initiated in 1956 as the General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory. This Society was founded in 1954 by the biologists Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Ralph Gerard, the economist Kenneth Boulding, and the mathematician Anatol Rapoport. It particularly aimed at overcoming the growing isolation of specialized disciplines by developing General Systems Theory. The Society changed its name in 1956 to the Society for General Systems Research and the yearbook changed with it.

In the 1970s the General Systems Yearbook and the General Systems Journal (quarterly) were the most important periodicals in the area of general systems theory. In 1987 the Society again renamed to International Society for the Systems Sciences. From 1956 to 1986 the yearbook was published as one book. Since 1987 the Yearbook has been published each year as part 5 (Sept/Oct) of the journal Systems Research and Behavioral Science.