Yesterday, I was pleased to celebrate two birthdays: the
birth of The Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society (of which I was Editor in Chief between 1997 and
2003), and the birth of Michelangelo.
The birth of The
Philosophical Transactions (established March 6, 1665) was celebrated at a party at the Royal Society
(accompanied, strangely enough, by hot dogs and French fries!!). Phil Trans, as
it is now commonly referred to in abbreviation, is the world’s first scientific
journal, its longest running, the first to introduce the peer-review system and
the first to publish a paper by a woman scientist (Caroline Herschel in 1787).
As the President of the Royal Society reminded those gathered
to celebrate last night, before Phil Trans was established, scientists used to
correspond with each other, often in code, for fear that their findings may be
stolen. Phil Trans changed all that and hence made science more accessible,
while at the same time giving a scientist priority for his/her findings.
It was established by Henry Oldenburg, German by birth and
the first Secretary of the Royal Society, and has since published many
interesting papers, including ones by Newton, Boyle and others. More recently,
these have been in the form of reviews and the issues have often been theme
issues, devoted to a particular topic.
Soon after its birth, London was hit by the Great Plague and
then the Great Fire. Phil Trans was spared because, at that time, its offices
had moved to Oxford.
But Oldenburg himself was incarcerated briefly at the Tower
of London. He had been in correspondence with some Dutch scientists and, during
the Anglo-Dutch wars, the security services suspected him of having Dutch
sympathies and therefore of being a security risk.
In 1887, the journal divided into two sections, one devoted
to the physical sciences (A) and the other to the biological sciences (B) and
has continued in that form (I was Editor of the B section).
The birthday was also a moment of reflection about the future
of scientific publication and the peer-review system. The latter is often
abused but not nearly as much, I think, as people believe. But with so many
scientists producing so much, can the peer-review system survive in its present
form?
In a sense, the peer-review system is itself somewhat
outdated now, or rapidly becoming so. Scientific findings, especially ones that
are considered to be important, are subject to post-publication scrutiny. Just
think of what happened to a certain well-known paper published in Nature last year. This perhaps will
rapidly reduce the peer-review system to a sort of check-list, to ensure that
it is broadly respectable, without too much quibbling about the interpretation
of the results.
Plus of course, any scientist who is completely shut out can always publish results on the internet.
In fact, post-publication review has been with us
for as long as Phil Trans and even longer. Good papers stand the test of time
because they are found to be good post-publication and bad or indifferent ones
wither away and are forgotten, no matter how glowing the peer review may have
been.
No one invited me to a celebration of Michelangelo’s
birthday (March 6, 1475) – assuming that any had been organized.
So I celebrated it with friends, all of them Michelangelo nuts, at a dinner.
Altogether a very nice day.
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