This article examines the 50 year history of the "British Journal of Learning Disabilities," which was launched as Apex, the "Journal of the Institute of Mental Subnormality," in 1973. Changes in language and terminology are tracked and the journal is placed in the context of wider policy and social developments. Three general phases are identified in the trajectory of the journal: the hospital period, the shift to community care, and the post-institutional period. The journal was not entirely anti-institution in its earliest days, and each transition through its different phases is gradual rather than abrupt. The enduring continuity of the journal's commitment to interdisciplinarity, eclecticism and practice-based research is evident throughout, and some of the controversies that have arisen from this approach are examined. The conflict between the desire to include people with learning disabilities in the journal and the academic demands of journal production is described.