Annex 1
THE ORIGIN
OF THE
SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL
AND THE
PROCESS OF
PEER REVIEW
Learned publishing by means of the journal first
began in the mid 17th century. Henry Oldenburg created the world's
first scientific journal for the newly founded Royal Society of
London (of whom he was first Joint Secretary) in March 1665 to
solve a number of problems faced by early scientists. Principal
among these was the desire to establish precedence: the first
authors of a phenomenon or result wanted their priority as discoverer
to be publicly acknowledged and secured before they were prepared
to share their results with their colleagues. Oldenburg realised
that an independent periodical publication run by an independent
third-party that would faithfully record the name of a discoverer,
the date the paper was submitted and a description of the discovery
could resolve this dilemma for the pioneering scientists of his
age. Philosophical Transactions, the journal Oldenburg set up
for members of the Royal Society (but at his own financial risk
and profit) did exactly this. In its monthly issues, it registered
the name of the authors and date that they sent their manuscripts
to Oldenburg as well as recording their discoveries, thereby securing
the priority for first authors and encouraging them to share their
results with others, safe in the knowledge that their "rights"
as "first discoverers" were protected by so doing. Philosophical
Transactions from its outset did not publish all the material
it received; the Council of the Society reviewed the contributions
Oldenburg received before approving a selection of them for publication.
Albeit primitive, this is the first recorded instance of "peer
review". It was quickly realised by Oldenburg's contemporaries
that the accumulating monthly issues of the journal also represented
a record of the transactions of science of archival value.
The four functions of Oldenburg's journal: registration,
dissemination, peer review and archival record are so fundamental
to the way scientists behave and how science is carried out that
all subsequent journals, even those published electronically in
the 21st century, have conformed to Oldenburg's model. All modern
journals carry out the same functions as Oldenburg's and all journal
publishers are Oldenburg's heirs.
The journal article performs a unique role in
scholarship. It is an on-the-record, validated public statement
of the claims made by its authors, like a witness statement under
oath in the court of scientific opinion. It occupies a central
position in terms of the wider set of possible communication modes
that a researcher may adopt (oral presentations at conferences,
early draft versions of a paper (preprints), an evaluated review
article of other research articles in a field, a scholarly monograph
or textbook). It is the evaluated (that is, peer reviewed) public,
formal and final nature of the published journal article that
make it so important to its authors, their individual standing
and their career prospects.
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