From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 13:59:54 -0400

Thank you, Anthony, for these details. I essentially agree with them

Many of the academic journals, so far as I know, represented only a
small fraction of publishers' activities. Whether they were profitable
or not, to my knowledge, has never been carefully documented. On the
other hand, maintaining a regular contact with publishing scholars
through articles could lead to more profitable projects such as
reference monographs or even textbooks.

Books remained important in science until the 20th century. Darwin is
a particularly good example of this attitude, but he was far from
being the only one acting in this way in the 19th century. The
collective publication gradually issued under the imaginary name of
Bourbaki between the two WW was also done in book form.

In short, the publishing situation is complex. National models (if
they can be so called) varied to some extent, but scientific
publishing of journals was generally not very profitable until after
the 2nd WW. By contrast, and as an example, Elsevier got rid of its
publications for a wider public in the late 90's, in order better to
focus on law and STM. The reason invoked was that profit rates in the
non-specialized publications were too low for that voracious company.

Finally, as Anthony points out, German scientific publishing was
displaced in two ways: Jewish publishers often sought to rebuild their
activity outside Germany after 1933, and many went to the USA. For the
rest, the victory of the Allies in 1945 led to a total reorganizing of
the stategic channels of scientific communication. In this context,
the role of Robert Maxwell (Pergamon Press) was crucial and he
certainly was among the earliest businessmen to udnerstand the crucial
role of the Science Citation Index to construct an inelastic market of
journals and, thereby, introduce profit rates that had never been met
before, even remotely, so far as I know. He also supported a more
formal approach to peer-review as a way to argue in favour of the
quality of his journals and as a way to put them inside the SCI.

We need far more studies of the scientific publishing industry since
around 1815, and, personally, I will be waiting for Anthony's work
with great interest. Please keep us posted about your progress as this
is very important.

Jean-Claude Guédon

Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal



-----Original Message-----

From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 20:02:02 +0100

A little more history which is not I think controversial.

Before WWII German journals were central to the international scholarly
discourse and they were mostly commercial. I can give the references.

In the UK going back into the C19 before WWII most UK journals were a little
more local but some international and they were published by some commercial
publishers like Longman, Macmillan and T&F and of course CUP and OUP. All
these publishers saw journals as a sideline and not very profitable.

Many learned societies published with commercial publishers as now and
perhaps as many in terms of percentages.

The big change came with the German model coming in through the US and the
Netherlands mediated by émigrés and of course through Pergamon from the
1950s. I have been doing work on this for a book chapter.

My first employer is a good example - Academic Press. AP set up in a hotel
room in Manhattan in 1942 with Advances in Cancer Research. AP set up in
London in 1959 with Journal of Molecular Biology.

Anthony