The journal Board Games Studies “is an academic journal for historical and systematic research on board games. Its object is to provide a forum for board games research from all academic disciplines in order to further our understanding of the development and distribution of board games within an interdisciplinary academic context“.

It has appeared (so far) seven times between 1998 and 2004, and has contained a wealth of well-researched and fascinating articles on a wide variety of subjects connected to board games.

It is, however, relatively expensive – €24 per issue, or €168 for the complete set of seven volumes. 

It is with some surprise, therefore, that I discovered that it is now possible to download issues 1, 2 and 3 directly from the BGS website:

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/issue1/BGS1-complete.pdf

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/issue2/BGS2-complete.pdf

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/issue3/BGS3-complete.pdf

What is not announced on the BGS website, though, is that issues 4, 5 and 6 can also be downloaded, simply by stepping back through the levels of the URL until you get to ‘www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf’ and then following the /aux/ directory; thus giving: 

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/aux/BGS4-complete.pdf

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/aux/BGS5-complete.pdf

http://www.boardgamestudies.info/pdf/aux/BGS6-complete.pdf

Only issue 7 remains out of reach. But then it was never really the best issue anyway.