Questions tagged [publishing]

For questions about historical aspects of the process of publishing results in academic journals or similar platforms for scientific and/or mathematical knowledge.

48 questions
22
votes
2 answers

How old is the peer-review process in scientific publishing?

Everything is in the title but just to expand on the question, I am wondering if there was any publication process similar to the peer-review process in the past (and when). If not, does it mean that anybody could widely release its results without…
Peabody
  • 525
  • 2
  • 8
14
votes
2 answers

Do the titles starting with "On the ..." have a historical tradition?

In my field of research (theoretical physics), titles of publications occasionally begin with "On the ..." (a German language equivalent which was also in use is "Über ... " meaning "About ...".) This seems a bit artificial because in these cases…
highsciguy
  • 271
  • 1
  • 5
9
votes
5 answers

Can we estimate the first appearance of popular science books?

Is it possible to say which was the first popular science book? I was reading this question Einstein's readings of popular sciences as a kid , and started wondering how far back this kind of distinction between popular science books for…
Mauricio
  • 3,897
  • 17
  • 35
7
votes
1 answer

Publishing the Principia

It is well-known that Newton's Principia was published by Halley at his own expense, and the story of writing, editing, printing, correction and proofreading is well described in Newton's biographies. However I cannot find some important…
Alexandre Eremenko
  • 48,930
  • 3
  • 80
  • 177
7
votes
1 answer

What are some major examples of rushed scientific publications based on flawed data?

In 2014 BICEP2 made a very controversial press release. It was rushed, given before any papers where published, because they feared they would be scooped by another similar experiment. In the end it turned out that their analysis of their data was…
Jekowl
  • 173
  • 3