Projects per year
Abstract
In the decades after the Second World War, learned society publishers struggled to cope with the expanding output of scientific research and the increased involvement of commercial publishers in the business of publishing research journals. Could learned society journals survive economically in the postwar world, against this competition? Or was the emergence of a sales-based commercial model of publishing – in contrast to the traditional model of subsidized journal publishing – an opportunity to transform the often-fragile finances of learned societies? But there was also an existential threat: if commercial firms could successfully publish scientific journals, were learned society publishers no longer needed? This paper investigates how British learned society publishers adjusted to the new economic realities of the postwar world, through an investigation of the activities organized by the Royal Society of London and the Nuffield Foundation, culminating in the 1963 report Self-Help for Learned Journals. It reveals the postwar decades as the time when scientific research became something to be commodified and sold to libraries, rather than circulated as part of a scholarly mission. It will be essential reading for all those campaigning to transition academic publishing – including learned society publishing – away from the sales-based model once again
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 255-279 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | History of Science |
Volume | 60 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 18 Mar 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2022 |
Keywords
- Academic publishing
- Scientific journals
- Twentieth-century Britain
- Commercialization
- Open access
- Scientific societies
- Scholarly communication
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Dive into the research topics of 'Self-help for learned journals: scientific societies and the commerce of publishing in the 1950s'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Publishing the Philosophical Transaction: Publishing the Philosophical Transactions: the social, cultural & economic history of a learned journal 1665 - 2015
Fyfe, A. (PI), McDougall-Waters, J. (CoI), Moxham, N. J. (CoI), McDougall-Waters, J. (Researcher), Moxham, N. J. (Researcher) & Rostvik, C. M. (Researcher)
Arts and Humanities Research Council
1/05/13 → 31/08/17
Project: Standard