350 years of scientific periodicals

Notes and Records

Volumn 69, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 227-239

  Fyfe, Aileen ^a   McDougall Waters, Julie ^a   Moxham, Noah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMICS; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; PUBLICATION; PUBLISHING; STATISTICS AND NUMERICAL DATA; UNITED KINGDOM;

EDITORIAL POLICIES; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; LONDON; PERIODICALS AS TOPIC; PUBLISHING; SOCIETIES, SCIENTIFIC;

EID: 84939144996     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2015.0036     Document Type: Review

References (62)

1. T. H. Huxley, 'On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge' (1866), in Collected Essays, vol. 1, p. 23 (Macmillan, London, 1893).
2. The address originated as a lay sermon delivered in St Martin's Hall on Sunday, 7 January 1866 and was published in Fortnightly Rev. 3, 626-637 (1866).
3. Because the term 'scientific journal' was a creation of the early nineteenth century, we have tried to use 'periodical' when referring either to the earlier period or to the longue durée. On the emergence of 'journals', see J. R. Topham, 'Anthologizing the book of nature: the circulation of knowledge and the origins of the scientific journal in late Georgian Britain', in The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India, and China (ed. B. Lightman and G. McOuat), pp. 119-152 (Brill, Boston, 2013)
4. I. Watts, '"We want no authors": William Nicholson and the contested role of the scientific journal in Britain, 1797-1813', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 47, 397-419 (2014).
5. H. White (ed.), Catalogue of Scientific Papers [first series, 1800-63] (Royal Society, London, 1867-72), p. viii.
6. See also A. J. Meadows, 'The growth of journal literature: a historical perspective', in The web of knowledge: a Festschrift in honor of Eugene Garfield (ed. B. Cronin and H. B. Atkins), pp. 87-107 (Information Today Inc., Medford, NJ, 2000).
7. However, David Kronick, with a background in library science, began his important series of books and articles on seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century scientific journals in the 1960s. In particular, see D. A. Kronick, A history of scientific and technical periodicals: the origins and development of the scientific and technical press, 1665-1790 (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1976)
8. see also idem, 'Scientific journal publication in the eighteenth century', Pap. Bibliogr. Soc. Am. 59, 28-44 (1965)
9. idem, 'Authorship and authority in the scientific periodicals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries', Library Q. 48, 225-275 (1978)
10. idem, 'Anonymity and identity: editorial policy in the early scientific journal', Library Q. 58, 221-237 (1988)
11. idem, 'Peer review in 18th-century scientific journalism', J. Am. Med. Assoc. 263, 1321-1322 (1990).
12. A. J. Meadows (ed.), The development of science publishing in Europe (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1980), which includes an essay ( pp. 95-122) by W. H. Brock on 'The development of commercial science journals in Victorian Britain'
13. W. H. Brock, 'Brewster as scientific journalist', in 'Martyr of Science': Sir David Brewster, 1781-1863 (ed. A. Morison-Low and J. R. R. Christie ), pp. 37-44 (Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum, 1984)
14. idem, 'Patronage and publishing: journals of microscopy 1839-1989', J. Microsc. 155, 249-266 (1989).
15. A. Gross, J. Harmon and M. Reidy. Communicating science: the scientific article from the 17th century to the present (Oxford University Press, 2002); Dwight Atkinson, Scientific discourse in sociohistorical context: the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675-1975 (Laurence Erlbaum Associates, London, 1999).
16. A. Johns, The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
17. J. A. Secord, Victorian sensation: the extraordinary publication, reception and secret authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (University of Chicago Press, 2000)
18. J. R. Topham, 'Scientific publishing and the reading of science in early nineteenth-century Britain: an historiographical survey and guide to sources', Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 31A, 559-612 (2000).
19. Our understanding of eighteenth-century learned journals has recently been enhanced significantly by the many Continental case studies collected in J. Peiffer, M. Conforti, and P. Delpiano (eds), Les journaux savants dans l'Europe des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles/Communication et construction des savoirs/Scholarly Journals in Early Modern Europe. Communication and the construction of knowledge, special issue of Arch. Int. Hist. Sci. 63 (Brepols, Turnhout, 2013).
20. G.Cantoret al. (eds), Science in the nineteenth-century periodical: reading the magazine of nature (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
21. L. Henson et al. (eds), Culture and science in the nineteenthcentury media (Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2004)
22. G. Cantor and S. Shuttleworth, Science serialized: representations of the sciences in nineteenth-century periodicals (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004)
23. A. Fyfe, Science and salvation: evangelicals and popular science publishing in Victorian Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
24. A. Fyfe and B. Lightman (eds), Science in the marketplace: nineteenth-century sites and experiences (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
25. B. Lightman, Victorian popularizers of science: designing nature for new audiences (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
26. This focus on the popular will be to some extent redressed by new work, such as M. Baldwin, Making Nature: the history of a scientific journal (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and A. Csiszar, The rise of the scientific journal in nineteenth-century France and Britain (University of Chicago Press, in preparation).
27. J. A. Secord, 'Introduction: the big picture', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 26, 387-389 (1993).
28. The conference was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and by the Royal Society.
29. Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/K001841.
30. On 'literary replication', see J. Secord, 'Knowledge in transit', Isis 95, 654-672 (2004), at p. 660.
31. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (eds), The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg [hereafter Oldenburg Correspondence] (13 volumes) (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1966), vol. 2, p. 210, Oldenburg to Robert Boyle (22 August 1664).
32. Robert Moray to Christiaan Huygens, 13 February 1665 n.s., in Oeuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens (22 volumes) (Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag, 1888-1950), vol. 5 (1908), pp. 234-235.
33. Henry Oldenburg, 'Advertisement', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 2, 489-490 (1667).
34. A. Johns, 'Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 33, 159-186 (2000)
35. Marie Boas Hall, Henry Oldenburg: shaping the Royal Society (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 84-85.
36. On early printers, see D. A. Kronick, 'Notes on the printing history of the early "Philosophical Transactions"', Libraries Cult. 25, 243-268 (1990).
37. Oldenburg Correspondence, vol. 2, pp. 646-647.
38. With the Oxford bookseller, Richard Davis (Oldenburg Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 563); an additional 250 copies were printed that were not part of any profit-sharing agreement: 200 for the bookseller and 50 for Oldenburg personally.
39. Oldenburg to Boyle, 17 December 1667. Oldenburg Correspondence, vol. 4, pp. 58-59.
40. British Library Sloane MS 4026, ff.270-271.
41. Lucina Sine Concubitu (1750), A Dissertation on Royal Societies (1750) and Review of the Works of the Royal Society (1751). The first two were printed anonymously but the third appeared under Hill's own name. On Hill, see George Rousseau, The notorious Sir John Hill: the man destroyed by ambition in the age of celebrity (Lehigh University Press, Bethlehem, PA, 2012), pp. 65-83.
42. See RS Journal Book (Originals), vol. 22, 23 January 1751/2.
43. RS Council Minutes (Originals) [hereafter RS CMO], vol. 4, 19 March 1751/2.
44. RS Committee of Papers minute-book [hereafter CMB] 90/1.
45. RS CMO/4 15 February 1751/2.
46. Charles Blagden Diary, RS CB/3/3 f.8r, 3 July 1794; f.68r, 7 September 1795; f.77v, 17 November 1795.
47. See the pencil annotations on RS Letters & Papers, Decade IX, f.57.
48. See, for example, the reforms proposed by the committee for reducing membership (RS CMB/1/20); and, notoriously, Charles Babbage's Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (B. Fellowes, London, 1830). The aftermath of the Banks presidency is discussed in M. B. Hall, All scientists now: the Royal Society in the nineteenth century (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 17-62.
49. The Register of Papers (MS/421 and following) is currently being transcribed into a Virtual Register of Papers database by our project team; it will ultimately be a rich resource for analysing editorial practice and the sociology of refereeing.
50. RS CMP/7, 6 December 1894.
51. RS CMP/10, 21 May 1914.
52. Proceedings split into series A and B in 1905.
53. P. Collins, 'A role in running UK science?', Notes Rec. R. Soc. 64 (suppl. 1), S119-S130 (2010). On the Society in the twentieth century, see the other articles in that issue of Notes Rec. R. Soc, and Peter Collins's forthcoming book on the post-1960 period.
54. Figures provided by Royal Society's publishing division.
55. A. Weedon, Victorian Publishing: the economics of book production for a mass market, 1836-1916 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003).
56. M. Twyman, Printing 1770-1970: an illustrated history of its development and uses in England (British Library, London, 1998), ch. 6.
57. On the implications of this for science, see G. Belknap, '"From a Photograph": photography and the periodical print press 1870-90', PhD thesis, University of Cambridge (2011), ch. 2.
58. Emergency Finance Committee, 1 July 1920, CMB/86/1/2.
59. This coincides with the so-called 'discovery phase' of modern journals, including the successes of Elsevier and Pergamon. See R. Campbell, E. Pentz & I. Borthwick, Academic and professional publishing (Chandos Publishing, Oxford, 2012), p. 3.
60. Total unrestricted income was 12.1m. See Trustee's report and financial statements (Royal Society, London, 2014), pp. 82 and 94.
61. They already overlapped significantly. For instance, by 1892 (if not earlier), the meetings moved to the pre-circulation of papers supplemented by the discussion of selected papers involving 'experiments, diagrams &c' in an endeavour to make meetings more interesting; see CMP/6, 18 February 1892.
62. There was lengthy discussion of the merits of establishing Sectional Committees; Council approved them in CMP/7, 21 February 1895, but then spent more months in discussing how they should be composed, and how they should operate. There had also been Sectional Committees in operation in the 1840s.