Metron Archive

Where the journal is today

This website is not the scientific journal.
Metron – International Journal of Statistics is published by Springer and is available at
link.springer.com/journal/40300.
ISSN 0026-1424 (print) · 2281-695X (online) — ISSN International Centre registers.

These pages document the history of the journal and of the domain that hosts them. For research articles, current issues and the digital archive, Springer is the reference.

What Metron was

The first issue of Metron appeared in July 1920, in Padua, under the editorship of Corrado Gini, then professor at that university. It was not an institutional publication: it was Gini’s own journal — he owned it personally as well as editing it. When he moved to the University of Rome in December 1925, the journal moved with him.
(Source: Alfò M., «A hundred years of Metron», Metron 78, 2020 — «In July 1920, the first issue of Metron was published under the editorship of Corrado Gini. At the time he was professor at the university of Padua and, as the Editor, he also owned the property of the Journal».)

The name comes from the Greek μέτρον, measure.

In its early decades Metron was one of the venues where modern statistics was taking shape:

(Source for these citations: the journal’s own centenary editorial, Metron 78, 2020. For the 1924 paper Springer gives pp. 329–333, Google Scholar 329–332.)

In the 1960s the journal added a book series, La Biblioteca di Metron, devoted to the foundations of statistics and probability. It included the joint work of Bruno de Finetti and Leonard J. Savage, Sul modo di scegliere le probabilità iniziali (series C: Note e Commenti, Rome, Istituto di Statistica dell’Università, 1962, pp. 82–154) — the text de Finetti later reworked in Probability, Induction and Statistics (Wiley, 1973). Savage also sat on the journal’s editorial board, alongside Francesco Paolo Cantelli and S. S. Wilks.

Editors

(Source for the succession of editors: Alfò M., Metron: one hundred years of statistics, Metron 78 (2020), centenary editorial. For the current editorship: editorial board, Springer, verified 26 July 2026.)

During Giorgi’s first term (2003–2006) the journal moved to English only, ending the multilingual policy Gini had maintained.

From private ownership to Sapienza

Until Gini’s death — Rome, 13 March 1965 (Treccani, DBI vol. 55) — the journal was his personal property. Since the 1960s it has belonged to Sapienza Università di Roma, and is today run by the Department of Statistical Sciences.
(Source: the centenary editorial — «Since the 60s, the Journal is a property of the University “La Sapienza”… still run by the staff in the Department of Statistical Sciences». This is the only source that states it, and it is the journal writing about itself. We found no institutional act dating the transfer precisely, so we say “the 1960s” and no more.)

On SpringerLink the digital archive begins at volume 68 (2010); earlier volumes are not there (Volumes and issues, Springer).

⚠️ A correction to our own earlier text, which said «Metron moved to Springer in 2013». We could not verify this and it is probably wrong: SpringerLink carries articles with Springer DOIs from 2012 (vol. 70/1, April 2012), and the Keepers Registry lists «Springer-Verlag Italia» as publisher with preservation from 2010. 2013 appears to mark only the change of DOI prefix (from BF to s40300, vol. 71/1). Until we find an editorial act giving the date, we publish no date.

Why these pages exist

The domain metronjournal.it hosted the journal’s website for years. When publication moved to Springer those pages disappeared — but hundreds of academic links still point here: statistics departments, library catalogues, encyclopaedia entries, researchers’ bibliographies around the world.

This section exists so that those references do not dead-end. Anyone arriving here looking for Metron finds the journal’s history and the exact address where the scientific edition now lives.

The website hosting these pages is an Italian publication devoted to data journalism and statistical literacy. It is not the scientific continuation of Metron and it does not publish peer-reviewed research. What it takes from Metron is the method, not the role: measure things properly, and say how you measured them.

For librarians and webmasters

If you maintain a page that links to an old metronjournal.it URL, here is what happened and what we suggest.

Our recommendation is straightforward: if your link was meant to point to the journal, please update it to the Springer page — that is the correct citation and it will not break again. If it was meant to point to the journal’s history or to Gini’s biography, these pages are the successors of the ones you linked, and we have kept the substance while adding the sources.

Corrections and additions are welcome. If something on these pages is wrong, we would rather hear it than keep it.

Read more

• Corrado Gini — the founder, his contribution to statistics, and his relationship with the Fascist regime
• Historical volumes — what the archive contained, and how to find it today

Sources