Publishing the Philosophical Transactions: the social, cultural and economic history of a learned journal, 1665-2015

皇家学会是世界上现存最古老的科学期刊《哲学学报》的出版商。皇家学会希望在2015年举办一系列备受瞩目的活动，庆祝350周年，并激发公众对学术出版未来的讨论。作为这些庆祝活动的一部分，正在为两个关于哲学会刊历史的相关项目寻求资金，这两个项目都位于圣安德鲁斯大学。目前的应用程序是两个博士后研究人员和适当的支持，以创建一个周年的历史，相关的文章和一组定量数据系列来自哲学交易档案，可用于调查英国图书贸易的长期模式和趋势。（两名博士生的单独资助申请正在等待中。除了支持周年纪念活动之外，由此产生的奖学金还将在科学史、出版史和经济史方面向学术界发表演讲。《哲学会刊》的重要性对于研究科学史和学术出版史的学者来说是众所周知的。它的起源和功能，在新成立的皇家学会在恢复英格兰已多次讨论的历史学家早期现代科学。它的文章的文学品质已经被文学和传播学者广泛分析，对科学修辞感兴趣;它的引用模式已经被科学社会学家研究，作为过去科学家社区运作的证据。我们建议的项目的关键优势是我们对档案材料的重视，以调查商业，经济和编辑实践背后的出版网页。在这一点上，我们将建立在现有的奖学金在早期的哲学交易，但将追求的故事到工业印刷时代，科学的专业化，并最终，电子出版。我们的重点不是开创性的创新，而是编辑实践、商业策略和技术流程在长期内的逐渐发展、适应和衰落。这个项目将利用皇家学会的出版部门来调查过去350年来学术出版的挑战和机遇。《哲学汇刊》最初是皇家学会秘书的私人企业;在世纪，它成为学会的正式出版物;在19世纪，它面临着来自商业科学期刊和来自更新、更专业、更有学问的学会创办的期刊的新的竞争;在20世纪，学术出版日益商业化，人们对研究成果的所有权和可靠性提出了质疑。无论是学术团体期刊的持续活力，还是皇家学会期刊的持续活力，都不能被视为理所当然：例如，皇家学会本身在世纪初因未能支持专业科学专家而受到强烈批评，而其期刊同时受到一系列新竞争对手的压力。《学会》和《哲学汇刊》都幸存了下来，但这些事件将使我们能够批判地看待那些现在被认为对现代科学研究的运作至关重要的过程和实践的偶然发展。在项目结束时，我们应该更好地理解我们现在使用的过程的起源，我们可能会在一些未采取的路径中找到当代的选择。这一项目具有很强的历史性，但由于触及知识经济的核心问题，它对决策者、教育工作者和活动家等广大受众具有重大的当代意义。

The Royal Society is the publisher of the oldest surviving scientific journal in the world: the Philosophical Transactions. The Royal Society wishes to organise a number of high-profile events for 2015, to celebrate the 350th anniversary and to stimulate public debate about the future of scholarly publishing. As part of these celebrations, funding is being sought for two linked projects on the history of the Philosophical Transactions, both based at the University of St Andrews. The current application is for two postdoctoral researchers and the appropriate support to create an anniversary history, associated articles and a set of quantitative data series derived from the Philosophical Transactions archives which can be used to investigate long-term patterns and trends in the British book trade. (A separate application for funding for two doctoral students is pending.) As well as underpinning the anniversary events, the resulting scholarship will speak to academic communities in the history of science, the history of publishing and economic history.The significance of the Philosophical Transactions is well-known to scholars working on the history of science and on the history of scholarly publishing. Its origins and function in the newly-founded Royal Society in Restoration England have been repeatedly discussed by historians of early modern science. The literary qualities of its articles have been extensively analysed by literary and communications scholars, interested in the rhetoric of science; and its citation patterns have been studied by sociologists of science as evidence of the functioning of past communities of scientists. The key strength of our proposed project is our emphasis upon the archival materials, to investigate the commercial, economic and editorial practices which lie behind the published pages. In this, we will build upon the existing scholarship on the early years of the Philosophical Transactions, but will pursue the story into the era of industrial printing, the professionalization of science, and ultimately, electronic publishing. Our emphasis will not be on pioneering innovations, but on the gradual development, adaptation and decline of editorial practices, commercial strategies and technological processes over the long durée.This project will use the Royal Society's publishing division to investigate the challenges and opportunities of scholarly publishing over the past 350 years. In its earliest days, Philosophical Transactions was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary; in the eighteenth century, it became an official Society publication; in the nineteenth century, it faced new competition from commercial science journals and from the journals launched by newer, more specialised, learned societies; in the twentieth century, scholarly publishing became increasingly commercialised, and questions were asked about the ownership and reliability of research results. Neither the continuing vigour of learned society journals in general, nor of the Royal Society's journals in particular, can be taken for granted: the Royal Society itself, for instance, came under vigorous criticism in the early nineteenth century for failing to support professional scientific experts, while its journal was simultaneously under pressure from a range of new competitors. Both the Society and the Philosophical Transactions survived, but such episodes will enable us to look critically at the contingent development of the processes and practices that are now taken to be essential to the operation of modern scientific research. By the end of the project, we should better understand the origins of the processes we now use, and we may find contemporary options in some of the paths-not-taken. This project is firmly historical, but, by touching on issues at the heart of the knowledge-based economy, it has substantial contemporary relevance to a wide audience of policy makers, educators and campaigners.