Towards a history of scientific publishing (original) (raw)

Towards a history of scientific publishing (accepted version) (Introduction to the special issue "Cultures of scientific publishing", History of Science 60/2 (2022)) Although individual aspects of a history of scientific publishing have been intensively researched, other dimensions of the field continue to be less visible. With a few exceptions-Ludwik Fleck and his concept of the Denkkollektiv (thought collective) and Bruno Latour's science in action-, 1 integrative approaches to a constructivist and practice-orientated history of science including Knorr-Cetina's epistemic cultures, Pickstone's ways of knowing and Ankeny's and Leonelli's repertoires have also touched on publishing only marginally, if at all. 2 There are a number of reasons for this. On the one hand, the lasting concentration of historians of science on object-related practices has diminished their interest in scientific textuality and print. 3 On the other, for many if not most historians of science, publication practices and their protagonists lie outside the realm of what they consider to be 'science'as if the making and the communication of science can be categorically separated from each other. This special issue aims to correlate the practice of making science with the practice of making it public, address the thematic, chronological and geographical breadth of scientific publishing, and thus hopes to contribute to a more integrative history of this topic. Scientific journals have so far been at the centre of attention. Interest has focused on their predecessors from the second half of the seventeenth century, in particular, the Philosophical transactions, the Journal des sçavans and the Acta eruditorum; on their thematic diversification from the second half of the eighteenth century; and, finally, on the rise of the journal to become the main medium for publishing the results of scientific research. Much work has been done recently in Anglophone history of science on how this process unfolded in Britain, so this does not need to be repeated here. 4 Instead, two