CSIRO to shut COSMOS magazine after 20 years

Mumbrella | 19 May 2025

by NATHAN JOLLY

The CSIRO has announced it will stop printing popular science magazines COSMOS and Double Helix, with the national science agency blaming “the rising costs of producing print magazines.”

This comes less than year after CSIRO Publishing, the agency’s editorially independent publishing arm, took ownership of  COSMOS from the Royal Institution of Australia, who had published the quarterly science news magazine since 2018.

 COSMOS, which launched in 2005, will release its final print edition next month, before moving to an online-only format.

The cosmosmagazine.com website — which currently houses online news, as well as curriculum-mapped lessons for high school teachers — will transition to be CSIRO Publishing’s new “digital destination for science content”. It will publish peer-reviewed papers, e-books, and science news.

Double Helix, a magazine aimed at school-aged readers, which launched in 2015, will close down completely.

In a website posting announcing the “difficult decision”, CSIRO Publishing said the move “mirrors a wider shift of audiences away from print magazines and the rising costs of producing print magazines.”

he CSIRO signalled the magazine’s uncertain future when first taking custodianship of the science quarterly last June.

At the time, director Gail Fulton said, “over the next year we will be exploring options for  COSMOS, with the aim of identifying a long-term sustainable business model that maximises the impact of the publication, making science accessible for the Australian public.”

The magazine was staffed and printed in Adelaide.

According to data from Roy Morgan and Ipsos iris, released on Monday morning by media industry body Think News Brands,  COSMOS’s average monthly readership was approximately 113,000 for April.

Roy Morgan print-only data shows that  COSMOS’ print readership declined more than 12.4% from 2023 to 2024 (to 110,000). The title is eclipsed by Australian Geographic, which actually expanded its monthly print readership to 480,000 in 2024.