The first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was published 350 years ago today. It established a new model for publishing scientific, medical, academic and scholarly research that is used by tens of thousands of journals today. This model relies on peer-review of the research followed by publication in a regularly published and dated journal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Portrait by an unknown artist of Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society (1662–1677) and founder of the Philosophical Transactions. Photograph: The Royal Society

This publishing model formally began under the guidance of Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society (1662–1677) and founder of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. As secretary, Oldenburg was officially responsible for the Society’s dealings and communications with natural philosophers across Europe and throughout the world. Oldenburg rewrote raw material gathered from scientific meetings and correspondences as well as the latest books and pamphlets to create a new kind of publication. He published this information into a monthly overview of all that was new in natural philosophy and sold it for one shilling.

“I think one of the most important things that the Royal Society ever did -- and did it right at its very beginning -- was to invent the scientific journal”, says Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society and co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

When the Royal Society launched its first journal, they pioneered and defined the model that still is followed by almost 30,000 scientific, medical, academic and scholarly journals today: (1) peer-review to ensure that the research is robust and meets the journal’s standard of quality, and (2) publication in a dated journal to establish scientific priority (i.e.; this identifies who gets credit for first publishing a particular idea, result or discovery).

“That’s basically the same thing that we have now -- all of the thousands, tens of thousands of scientific journals -- they publish regularly, they’re dated, they’re peer-reviewed”, Sir Paul continued. “It’s all exactly the same model.”

In this video, Sir Paul and his daughter, Dr Emily Nurse, discuss the Philosophical Transactions, the world’s oldest continuously-published scientific journal as it turns 350 years old:

Video by The Royal Society.

Some of the important research papers published in Royal Society journals include:

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In the 1750s electricity was a largely unknown and mysterious entity. Franklin made the radical suggestion that the lightning seen during storms was electricity flowing from the clouds to the earth. Given that at the time many believed the weather, and in particular lightning bolts, was caused by supernatural forces, his ideas appeared very radical. He went further, however, suggesting that this electricity of the clouds could be collected artificially by flying a kite into a storm. It worked and, miraculously, did not kill him. Illustration: The Royal Society

The gruesome account of an early blood transfusion (1666; PDF)

The paper that proved Einstein right (1920; PDF)

Stephen Hawking’s early writing on black holes (1970; PDF)

Benjamin Franklin’s account of flying a kite in a storm to identify the electrical nature of lightning -- the Philadelphia Experiment (1752; PDF)

Sir Isaac Newton’s landmark paper on the nature of light and colour (1672; PDF)

A scientific study of a young Mozart confirming him as a musical child genius (1770; PDF)

The discovery of a comet by the first recognized female scientist, Caroline Herschel (1787; PDF & 1794; PDF)

Hans Sloane’s account of inoculation with small pox (1755; PDF)

J. Clerk Maxwell’s discovery of the electromagnetic properties of light (1865; PDF)

All these highlighted papers and more are freely available in a special collection. Further, all Royal Society content is freely available until the end of March 2015 -- so now’s your chance to download all those papers that you’ve wanted all these months. You are also invited to search the archives yourself, either to find a favourite paper or just to explore. If you run across a weird or wonderful paper, please share it on twitter using the hashtag #publishing350 or write about it in a piece that you are invited to share on the Royal Society blog.

In addition to this special collection, the Royal Society is hosting a series of events that celebrate the history of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and anticipate the future of scientific publication -- a dynamic, rapidly changing future since the advent of the digital age.

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The Royal Society is on twitter @RoyalSociety.

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