what can history teach us about the future of academic publishing? dr aileen fyfe school of history,...

What can History teach us about the Future of Academic Publishing?

Dr Aileen FyfeSchool of History, University of St Andrews

PI, the ‘Publishing the Philosophical Transactions’ Project

https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/philosophicaltransactions/@AileenFyfe / @AHRCPhilTrans

1. A brief history…

1665: Philosophical Transactions

Henry Oldenburg

1665 was the start, not the end…

• Originality of research• Self-authorship• Refereeing• Standardised structure and style

=> 19th century

• English as the language of science• Highly profitable• Professional editors/publishers• Widespread use of peer review

=> 20th century

More Journals…!1665 1 scientific periodical

1790 ~460 scientific periodicals possibly extant (1,000 periodicals believed to be founded by this date; but only 46% last more than a decade) (Kronick, 1976)

1900 1,400 scientific periodicals indexed in Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers

1934 36,000 periodicals in the World List of Scientific Periodicals

1981 43,000 scientific periodicals in British Library Lending Division (cited in Larsen & von Ins, 2010)

2004 250,000 periodicals in Ulrich’s International Serials Database;21,000 are refereed research journals (Dalen & Klamer, 2005)

2010 24,000 ‘serious scientific journals’ (Larsen & von Ins, 2010)

Expansion of Societies / Academies

Geographically…

Expansion of Societies / Academies

… and by specialisation

Independent Journals

Philosophical Magazine (f.1798)

Nature (f.1869)

Chemisches Journal (f.1778, later Chemische Annalen)

Societies, Academies: communities

The Royal Society, 1845

Académie royale des sciences, c.1671

Journals with strong editors!

Richard Taylor

Norman Lockyer

2. Business Models

Oldenburg’s plan… and reality

Henry Oldenburg hoped to make money from the

Transactions

Hans Sloane spent £1,500 of his own money on the

Transactions

Taylor, of Taylor & Francis

‘Scientific journals in this country are supported with very great difficulty… I have witnessed in my own recollection a failure of all the scientific journals almost that have been set on foot… They have all of them failed from an inability to cover their expense’

Richard Taylor, 1838

Contacts with the learned societies

Acquisitions and Mergers

Journal of Natural Philosophy

Annals of Natural Philosophy

Edinburgh Journal of Science

An attractive miscellany?

Research articles, of various sorts

Correspondence

Reports on learned societies

Meteorological reports

Societies and Journals

Royal Society publishing

Pre-1838, we have cost data, but not sales income… Sales income is also missing for most of the period 1848-1865

See A. Fyfe, ‘Journals, learned societies and money’ Notes & Records of the Royal Society 69 (2015)

Production costs

Sales income

From henceforth, the Transactions ‘shall be printed at the Sole Charge of the Society, and under the direction and inspection of the Council… and also that the Philosophical Transactions so printed shall be for the Sole use and benefit of the Society, and the Fellows thereof.’

19 March 1751/2

1752: taking on the Transactions

George Parker, Earl of Macclesfield, Council member, soon-to-be-President

‘It is but reasonable that all persons who for the future… shall be admitted fellows…, and consequently will become intitled to receive gratis a Copy…, should contribute in some measure towards defraying the said extraordinary Expence’

19 March 1751/2

1752: paying for the Transactions

James West, Treasurer of the Royal Society

‘It is but reasonable that all persons who for the future… shall be admitted fellows…, and consequently will become intitled to receive gratis a Copy…, should contribute in some measure towards defraying the said extraordinary Expence’

19 March 1751/2

1752: paying for the Transactions

But by late 19th century, things were not so simple:• Society membership was smaller• Fellows were less likely to be wealthy• Publication costs were growing• Sales income was not growing

Rising Costs

1753

1894

1800 1850 1900

1765 1838 1908

Articles 35 21 37

Pages printed 344 408 1552Illustrations (plates) 13 10 73

Print run 850? 1000 800?

‘A scientific journal… is not a profitable undertaking, even though the contributors are, in contrast to the contributors to a literary journal, paid nothing for their contributions…; the expenses are so great, the public so small, and the incidental remuneration by advertisements so uncertain and insignificant… [Hence,] the scientific journals in this country,… are carried on with great difficulty…, and at a loss…

20 June 1895

Lord RayleighSecretary to the Royal Society

1765 1838 1908

(Estimated) sales 209 140 80

To the fellowship 512 733 510

Free distribution 8 61 260

Estimated circulation 729 934 850

Circulation of Philosophical Transactions

Free Distribution in 1908

British Isles 79British Dominions 25Europe 119Americas 35Rest of World 2 260

3. Peer Review


• Oldenburg as sole editor• Crown licensing requirements: President of Royal

Society has imprimatur


• An editorial committee• Collective responsibility• To protect the Society’s

reputation by excluding unsuitable papers

1764: Académie royale des sciences

• Papers (by non-academicians) could be referred to a committee of rapporteurs (academicians)

• Joint reports• Testing the knowledge claims

(e.g. by replication of experiments)

• Abandoned in 1830s as unsustainable

See J. McClellan, ‘Specialist Control’ (2004)


George Busk took five pages to recommend publication of an 1861 paper by TH Huxley

• Editorial committee – for collective responsibility

• Referees reports by fellows of the Society – for subject expertise

• Eliminating obvious errors and oversights

• Improving the rhetorical style, and argumentation of the article

• Collegial discussions?

1925: Philosophical Magazine

Sir Oliver Lodge thought Felix Ehrenhaft’s 1925 paper was ‘either badly written or badly translated’ and almost certainly wrong – but supported its publication.

See Clarke & Mussell ‘Conservative attitudes’ (2015)

1953: Nature‘I published a few things in Nature when I was a PhD student [in the 1960s] and almost anything could get into it at the time, if it wasn’t actually wrong. Refereeing was pretty erratic and I think they took more notice of where it came from than the content’

Walter Gratzer, in M. Baldwin, ‘Credibility, peer review and Nature’

(2015)

Sir W.L. Bragg, who wrote to Nature endorsing Watson and

Crick’s double helix article

Peer review is really recent…

4. Lessons from History

• The editorial and commercial practices of scientific publishing are not set in stone



• Societies matter!



• Societies matter!• Are practices that evolved in an age of paper

and ink still fit for purpose?

https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/philosophicaltransactions/

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

what can history teach us about the future of academic publishing? dr aileen fyfe school of history,...

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