ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Researchers and the Management of Scientific Journals in the Mid-20th-Century: Franco-British Perspectives

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

By the late 20th century, commercial firms had become the major players in the publication of scientific journals in the English-speaking world, and calls now abound for researchers to ‘take back control’ of journals. The question of academic involvement in the management of journals lies at the heart of this session. We will focus on the period from the 1920s to the 1980s, offering new perspectives on the period in which ‘profit-seeking’ came to replace ‘non-profit’ as the dominant model for journal publishing. We will explore debates about the respective merits of commercial or scholarly management for journals, and investigate the challenges and opportunities faced by those who ran scholar-led journals in this changing climate. By bringing together scholars with different perspectives, we aim to look beyond the dominant (Anglophone) narrative of the commercialisation of journal publishing, and to stimulate comparative conversations about diverse models for running scientific journals.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Alex Csiszar, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Scientists’ involvements in academic publishing before open access: a comparative survey of publishing companies controlled by authors, Britain and France, 1920-1990 - Valérie Tesnière, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Centre Maurice Halbwachs

• Behind the École des Annales: the Marc Bloch Society between scientific publishing and research support, 1949-1984 - Gabriel Galvez-Behar, Université de Lille

• Ownership and control of scientific journals: British perspectives in the 1960s and 1970s - Aileen Fyfe, University of St. Andrews

Session Organizers

• Marianne Noel, LISIS (CNRS, INRAE, Université Gustave Eiffel)

• Aileen Fyfe, University of St. Andrews