A History Of Scientific Journals

Download or read book The Scientific Journal written by Alex Csiszar and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-25 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not since the printing press has a media object been as celebrated for its role in the advancement of knowledge as the scientific journal. From open communication to peer review, the scientific journal has long been central both to the identity of academic scientists and to the public legitimacy of scientific knowledge. But that was not always the case. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, academies and societies dominated elite study of the natural world. Journals were a relatively marginal feature of this world, and sometimes even an object of outright suspicion. The Scientific Journal tells the story of how that changed. Alex Csiszar takes readers deep into nineteenth-century London and Paris, where savants struggled to reshape scientific life in the light of rapidly changing political mores and the growing importance of the press in public life. The scientific journal did not arise as a natural solution to the problem of communicating scientific discoveries. Rather, as Csiszar shows, its dominance was a hard-won compromise born of political exigencies, shifting epistemic values, intellectual property debates, and the demands of commerce. Many of the tensions and problems that plague scholarly publishing today are rooted in these tangled beginnings. As we seek to make sense of our own moment of intense experimentation in publishing platforms, peer review, and information curation, Csiszar argues powerfully that a better understanding of the journal’s past will be crucial to imagining future forms for the expression and organization of knowledge.

Download or read book Making "Nature" written by Melinda Baldwin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making "Nature" is the first book to chronicle the foundation and development of Nature, one of the world's most influential scientific institutions. Now nearing its hundred and fiftieth year of publication, Nature is the international benchmark for scientific publication. Its contributors include Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, and Stephen Hawking, and it has published many of the most important discoveries in the history of science, including articles on the structure of DNA, the discovery of the neutron, the first cloning of a mammal, and the human genome. But how did Nature become such an essential institution? In Making "Nature," Melinda Baldwin charts the rich history of this extraordinary publication from its foundation in 1869 to current debates about online publishing and open access. This pioneering study not only tells Nature's story but also sheds light on much larger questions about the history of science publishing, changes in scientific communication, and shifting notions of "scientific community." Nature, as Baldwin demonstrates, helped define what science is and what it means to be a scientist.

Download or read book Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain written by Gowan Dawson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Periodicals played a vital role in the developments in science and medicine that transformed nineteenth-century Britain. Proliferating from a mere handful to many hundreds of titles, they catered to audiences ranging from gentlemanly members of metropolitan societies to working-class participants in local natural history clubs. In addition to disseminating authorized scientific discovery, they fostered a sense of collective identity among their geographically dispersed and often socially disparate readers by facilitating the reciprocal interchange of ideas and information. As such, they offer privileged access into the workings of scientific communities in the period. The essays in this volume set the historical exploration of the scientific and medical periodicals of the era on a new footing, examining their precise function and role in the making of nineteenth-century science and enhancing our vision of the shifting communities and practices of science in the period. This radical rethinking of the scientific journal offers a new approach to the reconfiguration of the sciences in nineteenth-century Britain and sheds instructive light on contemporary debates about the purpose, practices, and price of scientific journals.

Download or read book The Art and Politics of Science written by Harold Varmus and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-05-24 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Nobel Prize–winning cancer biologist, leader of major scientific institutions, and scientific adviser to President Obama reflects on his remarkable career. A PhD candidate in English literature at Harvard University, Harold Varmus discovered he was drawn instead to medicine and eventually found himself at the forefront of cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco. In this “timely memoir of a remarkable career” (American Scientist), Varmus considers a life’s work that thus far includes not only the groundbreaking research that won him a Nobel Prize but also six years as the director of the National Institutes of Health; his current position as the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and his important, continuing work as scientific adviser to President Obama. From this truly unique perspective, Varmus shares his experiences from the trenches of politicized battlegrounds ranging from budget fights to stem cell research, global health to science publishing.

Download or read book A History of Scientific Journals written by Aileen Fyfe and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2022-10-03 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern scientific research has changed so much since Isaac Newton’s day: it is more professional, collaborative and international, with more complicated equipment and a more diverse community of researchers. Yet the use of scientific journals to report, share and store results is a thread that runs through the history of science from Newton’s day to ours. Scientific journals are now central to academic research and careers. Their editorial and peer-review processes act as a check on new claims and findings, and researchers build their careers on the list of journal articles they have published. The journal that reported Newton’s optical experiments still exists. First published in 1665, and now fully digital, the Philosophical Transactions has carried papers by Charles Darwin, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking. It is now one of eleven journals published by the Royal Society of London. Unrivalled insights from the Royal Society’s comprehensive archives have enabled the authors to investigate more than 350 years of scientific journal publishing. The editorial management, business practices and financial difficulties of the Philosophical Transactions and its sibling Proceedings reveal the meaning and purpose of journals in a changing scientific community. At a time when we are surrounded by calls to reform the academic publishing system, it has never been more urgent that we understand its history.

Download or read book Opening Science written by Sönke Bartling and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern information and communication technologies, together with a cultural upheaval within the research community, have profoundly changed research in nearly every aspect. Ranging from sharing and discussing ideas in social networks for scientists to new collaborative environments and novel publication formats, knowledge creation and dissemination as we know it is experiencing a vigorous shift towards increased transparency, collaboration and accessibility. Many assume that research workflows will change more in the next 20 years than they have in the last 200. This book provides researchers, decision makers, and other scientific stakeholders with a snapshot of the basics, the tools, and the underlying visions that drive the current scientific (r)evolution, often called ‘Open Science.’

Download or read book Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty written by Benjamin H. Irvin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty examines the material artifacts, festivities, and rituals by which Congress endeavored not only to assert its political legitimacy and to bolster the war effort, but ultimately to glorify the United States and to win the allegiance of the American people. But fact, as Benjamin H. Irvin demonstrates, the "people out of doors"--including the working poor, women, loyalists, Native Americans and others not represented in Congress--vigorously contested the trappings of nationhood into which Congress had enfolded them.