What were scientific journals supposed to do in the modern system of science that grew up and solidified over the nineteenth century, and how did they come to assume their central role in that system? These are the fundamental questions of Alex Csiszar’s provocative and surprisingly wide-ranging new book. We might think we already know the answers. Scientific journals are the repositories of peerreviewed, authored articles communicating original research, and these articles in turn function as the basic units of scientific knowledge. Since the late nineteenth century, at least, we have been told that this form began with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and spread from there (p. 279). But as Csiszar shows in detail in this meticulously researched book, the rise of the journal and the article as the fundamental modes of formal communication in science was a long-drawn-out process, in which some features (such as peer review) gained hegemony much later than we might expect. The resulting form is—and has always been—invested with many different, sometimes conflicting, purposes. As Csiszar explains right on page 1, the scientific journal is understood simultaneously as a site for publishing new knowledge claims and as an archive of existing knowledge. It embodies a politics of knowledge as “open to all” but is in fact the technical domain of experts. Writing journal articles is essential to scientific identity, yet the journal is just one of many ways in which scientists actually communicate knowledge. This book examines the formation of the scientific journal in France and Britain during the long nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the 1830s–1860s. The subtitle phrase, “authorship and the politics of knowledge,” is informative. The book does not seek to provide a comprehensive overview of the business of scientific periodical publishing, with special attention to journals, editors and publishers, or circulation figures. Nor is it a(nother) study of the role of periodicals in circulating and transforming scientific knowledge as it has traveled across audiences. Instead, Csiszar, an associate professor of history of science at Harvard, has written something rather different and more original: a study of the development of the scientific journal as both a central idea and a communicative form in the social imaginary of modern science.

中文翻译：

---

定义现代科学中的作者和权威

在 19 世纪发展壮大的现代科学体系中，科学期刊应该做什么，它们是如何在该体系中发挥核心作用的？这些是 Alex Csiszar 具有挑衅性且范围广泛的新书的基本问题。我们可能认为我们已经知道答案了。科学期刊是同行评审的、发表原创研究的文章的储存库，这些文章反过来又是科学知识的基本单位。至少从 19 世纪后期开始，我们就被告知这种形式始于皇家学会的哲学汇刊，并从那里传播开来（第 279 页）。但正如 Csiszar 在这本精心研究的书中详细说明的那样，期刊和文章作为科学中正式交流的基本模式的兴起是一个漫长的过程，其中某些功能（例如同行评审）获得霸权的时间比我们预期的要晚得多。由此产生的形式是——而且一直是——投资于许多不同的，有时是相互冲突的目的。正如 Csiszar 在第 1 页所解释的那样，科学期刊同时被理解为发布新知识主张的网站和现有知识的档案。它体现了“向所有人开放”的知识政治，但实际上是专家的技术领域。撰写期刊文章对于科学认同至关重要，但期刊只是科学家实际交流知识的众多方式之一。本书考察了 19 世纪法国和英国科学期刊的形成，特别强调了 1830 年代至 1860 年代。副标题“作者身份和知识政治”提供了丰富的信息。本书不寻求提供科学期刊出版业务的全面概述，特别关注期刊、编辑和出版商，或发行量。它也不是对期刊在传播和转化科学知识方面的作用的（另一种）研究，因为它在读者中传播。相反，哈佛大学科学史副教授 Csiszar 写了一些完全不同且更具原创性的东西：一项关于科学期刊作为现代科学社会想象中的中心思想和交流形式的发展的研究。