Steam and the landscape of knowledge : W. & R. Chambers in the 1830s–1850s

Postprin

Journals, learned societies and money : Philosophical Transactions ca. 1750–1900

This paper investigates the finances of the Royal Society and its Philosophical Transactions, showing that in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries journal publishing was a drain on funds rather than a source of income. Even without any expectation of profit, the costs of producing Transactions nevertheless had to be covered, and the way in which this was done reflected the changing financial situation of the Society. An examination of the Society’s financial accounts and minute books reveals the tensions between the Society’s desire to promote the widespread communication of natural knowledge, and the ever-increasing cost of doing so, particularly by the late nineteenth century.PostprintPeer reviewe

Tracts, classics and brands: science for children in the Nineteenth Century

Postprin

Editors, referees, and committees : distributing editorial work at the Royal Society journals in the late 19th and 20th centuries

Ever since the Royal Society replaced the editor of the Philosophical Transactions with an editorial committee in 1752, it created an increasingly complex system which distributed editorial work and responsibility among many individuals. A 1902 suggestion that the Society ought to appoint an editor offers an opportunity to explore what the role of “editor” was believed to be: why might such a role now benefit the Society and its journals? What role might an “editor” play amidst the existing editorial structures? Examining the Royal Society's long‐standing commitment to distributed editorial practices offers a counterpoint to histories of academic editorship that focus on the rise of the sole editor. It allows us to investigate the acknowledged challenges of working with distributed editorial practices and to consider the shifting perception of the academic journal editor within the wider editorial system.PreprintPeer reviewe

The geography and politics of the Royal Society’s approach to circulating scientific journals, c.1760-1930

Funding: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/K001841/1).Philanthropic gifts to learned institutions was the key way in which the scientific journals of the Royal Society of London circulated internationally in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This paper begins by considering the origins of the practice of using the Philosophical Transactions and the Proceedings of the Royal Society as gifts and in exchanges. Over the course of the nineteenth century, more and more institutions were added to the list of recipients. This growth reflects the expanding geographical horizons of the Royal Society’s view of science and scholarship – from Britain and western Europe, to the British empire and a few places beyond – and also reveals that a wide variety of organisations (not just university libraries) have historically been considered as plausible points of access for readers of scientific journals. The final section of the paper examines the surviving archival evidence for the tacit evaluation criteria that underpinned the Royal Society’s assessment of the scholarly reputation of other institutions. The result is a new picture of the global landscape of scholarly institutions in the long nineteenth century, as seen from London.Non peer reviewe

Introduction: Editorship and the editing of scientific journals, 1750-1950

Funding: Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant Number(s): AH/K001841).The editors of scientific journals are key gatekeepers for building careers and communicating knowledge, but we know far less about them than about scientific authors and readers. Using a variety of methodological approaches, this issue of Centaurus investigates the motivations for editorship, and the practices,strategies and resources needed to carry it out successfully. It asks us to reflect on how editors, editing and editorship have differed across countries, and over two centuries.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Ladies, gentlemen, and scientific publication at the Royal Society, 1945-1990

The research for this article was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant AH/K001841, as part of the project ‘Publishing the Philosophical Transactions: The Economic, Social and Cultural History of a Learned Journal, 1665–2015’. See: https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/philosophicaltransactions/. Acknowledgements Many thanks for input and comments from Royal Society archivist Keith Moore, and from our colleagues Dr Noah Moxham and Dr Julie McDougall-Waters. We also thank all our interviewees and sources, both named and anonymous, for their willingness to talk to us and for permission to use their material. We have particularly benefited from conversations with the current Head of Publishing Dr Stuart Taylor, the Publisher Phil Hurst, the Head of Publishing Operations Charles Lusty, and the former Diversity Manager Lenna Cumberbatch. We thank the Royal Society for use of its archives. We also thank our two referees, whose identities and gender we do not know, but who helped us streamline our argument.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Societies as publishers : The religious tract society in the mid-nineteenth century

PostprintPeer reviewe

Industrialised conversion : the Religious Tract Society and popular science publishing in Victorian Britain

Digitisation of this thesis was sponsored by Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin

Making public ahead of print: Meetings and publications at the Royal Society, 1752–1892

This essay examines the interplay between the meetings and publications of learned scientific societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when journals were an established but not yet dominant form of scholarly communication. The ‘making public’ of research at meetings, long before actual ‘publication’ in society periodicals, enabled a complex of more or less formal sites of communication and discussion ahead of print. Using two case studies from the Royal Society of London—Jan Ingen-Housz in 1782 and John Tyndall in 1857 to 1858—we reveal how different individuals navigated and exploited the power structures, social activities and seasonal rhythms of learned societies, all necessary precursors to gaining admission to the editorial processes of society journals, and trace the shifting significance of meetings in the increasingly competitive and diverse realm of Victorian scientific publishing. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of these historical perspectives for current discussions of the ‘ends’ of the scientific journal