The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic was established in 1995 by the Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) to provide a journal of high standards that would be both accessible and of interest to as wide an audience as possible. Its stated purpose is to keep the logic community informed quickly of important developments in all parts of the discipline. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic primarily publishes two types of papers: articles and communications. Articles present topics of broad interest that should be accessible to a large audience. They can be purely expository, survey, or historical articles, or they may contain, in addition, new ideas or results or new approaches to old ones. Communications are announcements of important new results and ideas. They are expected to include a description of the new work, as well as enough history, background, and explanation to make the significance of the work apparent to a wide audience. Papers in The Bulletin may deal with any aspect of logic, including mathematical or philosophical logic, logic in computer science or linguistics, the history or philosophy of logic, or applications of logic to other fields.

The Association for Symbolic Logic is an international organization supporting research and critical studies in logic. Its primary function is to provide an effective forum for the presentation, publication, and critical discussion of scholarly work in this area of inquiry. Among its many activities, the Association organizes and sponsors meetings and summer schools throughout the world, and publishes books and journals. Logic is an ancient discipline that has undergone striking modern developments through the introduction of rigorous formal methods, stimulated largely by foundational problems in mathematics. "Symbolic logic" is a term intended to encompass the entire field of logical inquiry, undertaken in this modern spirit. The Association was founded in 1936, at a time when great advances in logic were beginning to be made. Its first members were mainly mathematicians and philosophers who perceived a common ground and sought to strengthen it. Recent research in other areas such as computer science, linguistics, and cognitive science has also been inspired by logic, and the current membership and activities of the Association reflects such expanding interests.