Has Scientific Communication Changed in 300 Years?

In a recent editorial I discussed the future of scientific publication. 1 I mentioned Joshua Lederberg’s EUGRAM— the process of sending messages and “publishing” papers via computer terminals. z While Lederberg’s preview of the future may cause some readers “future shock, ” I wondered how much different publication will be in 2001 than it was 300 years ago. Although the technology of producing copies of scientific communications has changed somewhat, it is the scale that has undergone the most dramatic changes. Copyists were available in 17th-century Europe to help you produce a dozen copies of a short paper. After all, that’s about the number of readers most papers find anyhow. But just imagine what the copying process would have been like had 17th-century scientists been producing 1,000,000 papers per year. Undoubtedly the automatic ink “copier” would have been invented even earlier. Since scientific journals and journal articles are so widespread as a means of scientific communication today, we tend to take them for granted. But like so many other things we take for granted, journals had to be “invented.” In fact, until the 17th century the idea of the scientific journal had not yet been imagined. And this was about 250 years after the invention of printing. Although scientific study itself has a long history, until the last few centuries the body of scientific information was so small that there was no need for a formal medium of communication. The ancient Greeks did considerable scientific work, and many other cultures, such as the Chinese and Indian, developed bodies of scientific thought in ancient times. Modern science is largely descended from the Greeks who, until the time of Aristotle, relied mostly on oral methods of handing down their knowledge. After the Greeks, the number of scholars pursuing scientific studies and the amount of scientific literature grew so large that a new form of scientific communication became a necessity. The oral method was certainly inadequate to the task of international scientific communication. Two major means of communication developed—the private letter, and, following Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 15th century, books. Both forms have flourished well into the 20th century. Scientists still write hundreds of letters and other forms of unofficial communications to one another. The photocopying machine makes it even easier. I estimate that in the past 25 years I may have written or signed 100,fXK)letters of one kind or another. At least a small percentage were “scientKlc .“ And the production of books is still substantial. Hence the need for an Index to Book Reviews in the Science$TM.s But it is the journal article which has become the predominant form of scientific communication today.