The Pacific Linguistics monograph series has been publishing scholarly research relating to the languages and linguistics of Asia, the Pacific and Australia since 1963. Established by Professor Stephen A. Wurm through an initial grant from the Hunter Douglas Fund, the earliest books were published under the name Linguistic Circle of Canberra. From 1963 until 2012, Pacific Linguistics was managed by linguists at the ANU, with about 600 volumes published during this time. Pacific Linguistics remains managed by an Editorial Board based primarily at the ANU, but since 2012 has been published by de Gruyter Mouton. Alongside Pacific Linguistics, the Editorial Board now also manage an open-access series Asia-Pacific Linguistics, which is published by ANU Press.

The goal of Pacific Linguistics has always been the dissemination of knowledge about the languages of our region, many of which remain little known beyond the communities in which they are spoken. This collection makes Pacific Linguistics volumes published up to 2012 freely available in electronic form.

Pacific Linguistics would like to acknowledge the assistance of Doug Cooper and the Centre for Research in Computational Linguistics, a US 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in California, for producing electronic versions of many of the earlier Pacific Linguistics volumes, which were previously only available as printed books, and producing and maitaining the DOIs for Pacific Linguistics volumes.