Publish or Perish? The Past, Present and Future of the Scientific
Periodical
A history of science conference at the Royal Society
19-21 March 2015
Academic Programme
Thursday 19th March 2013
1230-1300: registration
1300-1310: Welcome
1310-1410: Plenary: roundtable discussion – Adrian Johns (Chicago) & Jim Secord (Cambridge) Chair: Aileen Fyfe (St Andrews)
1430-1600: Parallel Session 1:
The Early Phil Trans and the Republic of Letters
Chair: Niall Hodson (Durham) (TBC)
Daniel Carey (NUI Galway):
The History of Nature and the Ends of Travel: The Philosophical Transactions, Inquiries and the ‘Natural History of Man’
Urmi Bhowmik (OU):
Making a Corporate Body: the Phil Trans and the Community of Experimental Philosophy, 1660-1677
Jens Bjerring-Hansen (DSL, Copenhagen):
The perils of periodicals: Some observations regarding 18th century concerns on journal reading
Reform and Reaction in the 19th and 20th centuries
Chair: David Knight (Durham)
James Mussell (University of Leeds):
Conservative Attitudes to Old-Established Organs: Oliver Lodge and the Philosophical Magazine
Steven Joseph (independent)
Awkward bedfellows: photography and scientific periodicals in Belgium, 1865-1890
Maeve Adams (Manhattan College)
Discipline and Publish: The Modern Academic Journal and the Reform of Scientific Scholarship
1600-1730: Focus session 1 – Form and Genre; or, what is a Scientific
Journal?
Noah Moxham (St Andrews)
Iain Watts (Princeton)
Chair and Respondent: Simon Schaffer (Cambridge)
1730-1900: The Experience of Scientific Publishing – public oral history event.
Friday 20th March:
0930-1100 – Parallel Session 2
Editors, Reviewers and Disciplinary Context
Chair: Peter Bowler (Queen’s University, Belfast)
Roberto Lalli (MPIWG, Berlin)
General Relativity, refereeing practices and the editors of the Physical Review
Sylvia Nickerson (York, Ontario)
TBC
Jennifer Connor (Memorial University of Newfoundland):
The ‘Least Understood’ Medical Specialty: C20th developments in editorship
Distribution of scientific journals
Chair: Noah Moxham (St Andrews) [?]
Thomas Broman (Wisconsin)
The Profits (& Perils) of Publicity: The Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, the Thurn und Taxis Post, and the Periodical Business in the 1780s.
Alex Csiszar (Harvard):
The Separate Copy: A Secret History
Joris Vandendriessche (KU Leuven):
Historicising Peer Review: publishing procedures in 19th-century Belgian medical societies
1130-1230 – Plenary – Aileen Fyfe. Chair: Stuart Taylor (Royal Society)
Journals, learned societies and money: The Philosophical Transactions c.1750-1950
1330-1500 – Parallel Session 3 –
Images and Knowledge in the early Philosophical Transactions
Chair: Michael Hunter (Birkbeck)
Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge):
Illustrating the Philosophical Transactions: the first fifty years
Jim Bennett (Science Museum):
The use of text and image for communicating developments in instruments in the early Phil Trans
Meghan Doherty (Berea College):
Serialized Comparisons: Illustrating Anatomy in the Philosophical Transactions
Elizabeth Yale (Western Carolina University):
The Image of Antiquities in the First Century of the Philosophical Transactions
Beyond Europe: Learned Society Journals in the 20th Century
Beth LeRoux & Mariette Franken (Pretoria):
Transformations and Challenges in the Publication of Academic Journals in South Africa
Ke Zunke & Li Bin (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences):
Ke Xue and the Science Society of China
Charu Singh (Jawaharlal Nehru University):
Scientific publishing, Hindi print, and the Vijnana Parishad in early-twentieth century
north India (WITHDRAWN)
Peter Collins (Royal Society):
Publishing and the postwar Royal Society on the global stage
1500-1630 – Focus session 2: Peer review in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Julie McDougall-Waters (St Andrews)
Melinda Baldwin (Harvard)
Chair and Respondent: Bill Brock (Leicester)
1730-1900 – The Future of Scientific Publishing – Panel Discussion
1930-2130 – Conference Dinner (Royal Society)
Saturday March 21st
0900-1100 – Parallel Session 4
Chair: Sylvia Nickerson (York, Toronto) (TBC)
Maths in the Phil Trans
Sloan Despeaux (Western Carolina University):
Peer review for mathematics in the Philosophical Transactions and beyond
Adrian Rice (Randolph-Macon College)
“Fish Remarkably Stinking”: Augustus De Morgan’s antagonistic attitude to the RS and its Phil Trans
Deborah Kent (Drake University)
The Philosophical Transactions: An inimitable publication across the pond
June Barrow-Green (OU):
“Merely a speculation of the mind?” William Henry Fox Talbot, the Phil Trans and mathematics
The European Circulation of the Philosophical Transactions, 1665-1800
Chair: Mordechai Feingold (Caltech) (TBC)
Jeanne Peiffer (Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris):
Translating the Philosophical Transactions (1731-1741) Into French: François Brémond’s Motivation and Agenda
Niall Hodson (Durham):
Henry Oldenburg’s Philosophical Transactions as a Repository of Translations
Jens Haeseler (Potsdam):
The presence of the Philosophical Transactions in the international scientific press in Germany during the first half of the 18th century.
Patrizia Delpiano (Torino)
The Philosophical Transactions in 18th century Italy
1115-1300 – Parallel Session 5
Constructing Scientific Communities – Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st
Centuries
Chair: Jonathan Topham (Leeds)
Geoff Belknap (Leicester)
Participating in Victorian Science through the Illustrated Periodical
Berris Charnley (Oxford)
Publishing Eleanor Ormerod’s Notes of Observations of Injurious Insects 1878-1901
Sally Frampton (Oxford)
‘A Borderland in Ethics’: Relations between the Medical and Lay Press in Late Victorian Britain
18th Century scientific authorship
Chair: Thomas Broman (Wisconsin) (TBC)
Marie-Claude Felton (McGill):
Self-Publishing Science Journals in C18th Paris – a Comparative Study
Maria Conforti (Sapienza):
Becoming a scientific author: how Italians contributed to the Philosophical Transactions
Iris Montero Sobrevilla (Brown):
How do hummingbirds feed? Solving a natural-historical conundrum in English, French and Mexican Journals 1693-1790
Richard Sorrenson (Auckland):
How can a content analysis of the Phil. Trans. in the 18th century contribute to a history of the Royal Society?
13:00 CLOSE