Academic publication - A brief history

ACADEMIC PUBLICATION A brief history FOCUS on Academic journal articles Monographies PROTOPUBLISHERS XVIIth century Key figures such as Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) and Henry Oldenburg (1615-1677) received, copied and spread selected letters and articles. They fueled debates and had a great influence on the scientific discussion of their time. Gingras, Yves. “Mapping the Structure of the Intellectual Field Using Citation and CoCitation Analysis of Correspondences.”History of European Ideas, vol. 36,no. 3, 2010, pp.330–39, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.04.002. Demilly, Adrien. Proto Éditeurs. 2022. Sorbonne Université. LEARNED SOCIETIES and the First scholarly journals XVIIth century The scientific community grows, specializes in fields. New journals are created, and the article become the format of reference. The editorial work also gains in structure with the emergence of bibliographic norms and the development of peer review. At the time, most journal are edited and published by learned societies, and are therefore controlled entirely by researchers themselves. Journal Des Sçavans N°1. 1665. Title Page to Volume 1 of Philosophical Transactions. 1666. Royal Society of London. ROBERT MAXWELL and the rise of commercial publishers XXth century After being slowed down by two world wars, the growth of academic journals resumes its exponential pace in the 1950s. In the same period, commercial editors aggressively buy a large portion of journals previously owned by learned societies. Buranyi, Stephen. “Is the Staggeringly Profitable Business of Scientific Publishing Bad for Science?” The Guardian,27 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/ jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science. Bogaerts, Rob. Publisher Robert Maxwell at the Global Economic Panel in Amsterdam 1989. 1989. Fotocollectie Anefo. Number of new scientific journals created Year of creation Log scale ! Larrègue, Julien, et al. “Revues savantes et diffusion des connaissances à l’ère numérique: une synthèse des pratiques.” Lex Electronica, no. 23, Nov. 2018, pp. 11–34, https://www.lex-electronica.org/articles/volume-23/revues-savantes-et-diffusion-des-connaissances-a-lere-numerique-une-synthesedes-pratiques/. THE OLIGOPOLY of commercial publishers XXth century As a result a increasingly large portion of academic journals comes under the management of a handful of commercial publishers. Larivière, Vincent, et al. “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era.” PLOS ONE, edited by Wolfgang Glanzel, vol. 10, no. 6, June 2015, p. e0127502, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502. Larivière, Vincent, et al. “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era.” PLOS ONE, edited by Wolfgang Glanzel, vol. 10, no. 6, June 2015, p. e0127502, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502. CITATIONS and journal rankings XXth century In 1963, Eugene Garfield designs bibliometric tools initially used by sociologists and historians of science. These same tools, including the now infamous Impact Factor, have then been misappropriately used as a proxy to judge the “quality” of scientific research and rank academic journals. Artiste inconnu. Eugene Garfield Posed with an Issue of ‘The Scientist. 1986. Science History Institute. THANK YOU