Before the PDF: Writing, Publishing, and Measuring Science, ca. 1945-1980s

This session explores novel perspectives on publication formats in 20th century science publishing. Thereby we build on recent scholarship of print media in the sciences, yet we address a rarely looked at period that is crucial to understand current debates about publishers or media. When and why became natural scientists invested in specific formats of print, such as different variants of journals and books, how have such preferences fared and what did this mean for long-term disciplinary developments? How has the “impact” of publications been determined, what functions have journals or books occupied? In brief, we will explore science’s paper media (creation, sales and uses) before digitization. This session follows these issues along the problem of periodicity in journals and non-journal formats as viewed from publishers’ perspectives in the 1950-60s (Schmidtke), by questioning the concept, the making and the crisis of encyclopedic handbooks in the post-war chemical sciences (Grote), by analyzing efforts to catalogue and measure the impact of publications (Csiszar), and by assessing the role of journals, partly through commemorative practices, in building international and disciplinary communities in the 1950-80s (Daling). We argue that in order to get a more articulated view on recent publishing trends, it is crucial to understand past developments affecting the formation and choice of formats, as well as authors’, editors’, readers’ and publishers’ strategies. A commentary (Hagner) will wrap up the session and stimulate a discussion on a pertinent, timely and undervalued topic in the history of science.