Scientific Journal, History of

The 17th Century

It is understandable that letters were the first means chosen for the rapid dissemination of scientific [Page 753]discoveries; it is also understandable that the limits of the medium were soon perceived. This perception was shared in both France and England, where Paris and London were, respectively, centers of scientific activity. In the same year, 1665, Denis de Sallo began publishing his Journal des Savans (Journal of the Learned) and Henry Oldenburg initiated the Philosophical Transactions. Scientific journals and their articles were born out of the need to provide a medium of communication that would simultaneously satisfy two needs: disseminating scientific news as quickly as possible to a growing audience and establishing prior credit for discoveries. In these early efforts there emerged three features that continue to mark scientific communication: a style, or a unique pattern in the choice of syntax and of words; a form of presentation, or a unique order in which text, tables, and images are arrayed; and a way of arguing or of arraying evidence in support of knowledge claims.

In the 17th century, there were remarkably few differences between the style of French and of English scientific prose in these two earliest journals, as well as in the Mémoires of the Académie Royale des Sciences, the premier French scientific journal of the 17th and 18th centuries. That style already projected objectivity. Ornament is largely absent, and there is a movement toward impersonal expression—one that favors the objects of inquiry over the inquirer. With regard to presentational features, there is also little difference between France and England. While no common system of presentation is evident, one finds everywhere in the pages of today's journals elements of a system that had already made a cameo appearance: article titles that specify content, introductions that con-textualize a research problem, and conclusions that stake out a knowledge claim. Citations, headings, and numbered graphics and tables were also found in these earliest journals, but only on occasion and without uniform format.

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