Yearbooks of international law are publications common to many countries. The present contribution aims at presenting the argument that the yearbooks in the Visegrád countries play an extremely important role for the national academia and its identity and visibility in the globalized world. The argument is justified by an excursion to the common history of the academia in these countries, in particular during the years of communist régime and the transformation in the 1990s. The lack of specialized journals and other publications on international law in English, together with the internal and external stress on publication activities, makes them very precious.

The paper presents an original introduction to the forty-fifth volume of the yearbook. Volume number, and above all, the date of its publication, Anno Domini 2017, give it an honor of jubilee edition, which creates a good opportunity to recall the history of the magazine. The work also includes short introductions to some articles.

The article is devoted to the establishment, development and activity of the Committee of Oriental Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which has been operating under various names since 1952 and celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. The Committee is the most important institution of Oriental studies in Poland, coordinating and monitoring the development of various fields of this area of science. It also conducts organizational activities (conferences, symposia, conventions) and publishing – among others it is the publisher of the oldest Polish scientific journal in this field, Rocznik Orientalistyczny / Yearbook of Oriental Studies and various publishing series.