While exploring the archives of the Royal Society, we have come across so many fascinating stories and intriguing documents. Some of the documents don’t look particularly striking (cf any volume of Council Minutes), but sometimes, they reveal significant moments in the history of Royal Society publishing. Here, we tell some of those stories.
- “Permit me to lay before you the bladder of Mr Gardiner”
- 1875: A new scheme of selling separate copies [CMB/47/3 1 June 1875]
- 1886-1887: Changing the way the Philosophical Transactions is published
- 1892: Changes to the reading of papers
- 1894: Treasurer’s letter to Council on high cost of publishing
- 1895: Creation of Sectional Committees
- 1895: The Society’s request for a Government Grant in-aid of publication
- 1907: Fellow’s memorandum on changing the Society’s publishing practices
- 1914: Proceedings recognised as a research journal
- 1920: Emergency Finance Committee
- 1925: Printed referee report forms (used since the 1890s)
- 1934: Questioning the quality of paper, printing, and engraving
- 1936: LNG Filon on the importance of journal reputation
- 1936: Royal Society and Cambridge University Press
- 1945+: Papers delayed till after the Second World War
- 1951: Rosalind Franklin at the Royal Society
- 1963: ‘Self-help for Learned Societies’ pamphlet
- 1963: The Royal Society Publishing Code
- 1987-1988: The Royal Society ad hoc Publications Policy Committee
- 1990: A note on copyright and licensing
- A bad break in the Lakes
- A Royal occasion
- An Art Historian in Philosophical Transactions
- Crossword puzzles and gee-whizz factor: The Royal Society and BA journal Science and Public Affairs in the 1980s and 90s
- Crowd-sourcing eighteenth-century science: the Great Fireball of 1783
- Don’t try this at home: scientific injuries in the Royal Society archives
- From manuscript to Microsoft
- Job’s boils and washballs
- Making the first scientific journal
- Mathematical musings from the sickbed
- Mocking your elders
- Ownership and control of scientific journals: the view from 1963
- Printed referee report form (used since the 1890s)
- The Acts of God Committee
- The lesser-spotted physicist
- What did the Philosophical Transactions look like?
- What history tells us about diversity in the peer review process
- Where did the practice of ‘abstracts’ come from?