From philanthropy to business: the economics of Royal Society journal publishing in the twentieth century

From philanthropy to business: the economics of Royal Society journal publishing in the twentieth century
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从慈善到商业:二十世纪皇家学会期刊出版的经济学

DOI:
10.1098/rsnr.2022.0021
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发表时间:
2022
期刊:
the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
Fyfe A
Fyfe A
中科院分区:
--
文献类型:
--
作者:
Fyfe A

文献摘要

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科学期刊出版已经成为一个有利可图的企业,商业公司和(一些)社会出版商一样;但它并不总是这样。皇家学会是世界上历史最悠久的科学期刊的出版商,在《哲学汇刊》的大部分历史中,它的出版严重消耗了学会的资金。本文利用皇家学会丰富的档案资料,探讨了世纪期刊出版的经济转型过程。它在世纪开始时是一项由学会大力资助的学术使命活动,但最终成为一种宝贵的收入来源。前所未见的数据揭示了三个阶段:慈善发行模式的终结;在战后订户数量激增期间向基于销售的商业模式的过渡;以及在20世纪后期订户数量下降后,新商业模式面临的挑战。这篇论文并不直接涉及21世纪的开放获取运动,但对于理解金融背景是必不可少的阅读。
Scientific journal publishing has become a lucrative enterprise, for commercial firms and (some) society publishers alike; but it was not always thus. The Royal Society is the publisher of the world's longest-running scientific journal, and for most of the history of thePhilosophical Transactions, its publication was a severe drain on the Society's finances. This paper uses the rich archives of the Royal Society to investigate the economic transformation of journal publishing over the course of the twentieth century. It began the century as a scholarly mission activity heavily subsidized by the Society, but ended it as a valuable income stream. Never-before-seen data reveal three phases: the end of the philanthropic model of circulation; the transition to a sales-based commercial model amidst the post-war boom in subscriber numbers; and the challenges facing that new business model once subscriber numbers went into decline in the late twentieth century. The paper does not directly address the open access movement of the twenty-first century, but is essential reading to understand the financial background.