A brief history of scientific journals

A brief history of scientific journals

At the beginning of the 17th century we had the initial steps of scientific research publications in journals, one of the first was the Journal des Savants and the Philosophical Transactions, both began their activities in 1665.

In this period communication took place through letters, books and philosophical and scientific meetings that took time to reach the streets, and such debates had their restricted circulation among the academic and financial elites of the time. Science was neither democratic nor free to access, as we know today thanks to social mobility and the democratisation of education in most countries.

Technological development has brought the impression and circulation of these journals and their access becomes more democratic and social. Thus, the debate of ideas began to be more widely discussed and disseminated. Since the 1990s, with the advent of the Internet and the emergence of the first electronic journals, open access, the use of DOI (Digital object identifier) and even the growth of preprint publications (publications without peer review and not published in journals and fat track (publication with reduced stages of publishing), we recorded a favorable scenario for the growth of journals worldwide, highlighting its segmentation and also the commercialization of these platforms 'of knowledge', which was previously restricted only to universities and, now, the private sector becomes an important actor in this increasingly disputed scenario among publishers.

Video that tells the story of periodicals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaAUMiJmiZQ&t=329s