The Scientific Journal: Authorship and Knowledge Politics in the Nineteenth Century: A Book Review

Abstract

This article offers a critical reading of The Scientific Journal by American historian Alex Chesser, a work that reconstructs the institutional history of scientific publishing and challenges the notion of journals as neutral vehicles of knowledge circulation. It highlights how, since the nineteenth century, journals have functioned as cognitive and political instruments in shaping the scientific field—defining legitimacy, authorship, arbitration, discovery priority, and access to knowledge—while situating Chesser’s thesis within broader debates on contemporary publishing practices such as peer review, bibliometrics, the “publish or perish” imperative, open access, and the entanglement of publishing with institutional power. At the same time, the article underscores methodological limitations, including the book’s focus on British and French contexts and its neglect of marginal voices, alongside critical remarks on Arabic translation and terminology. Ultimately, it concludes that Chesser’s study provides a valuable historical and critical framework for rethinking the institutions of scientific publishing and the mechanisms through which academic recognition and legitimacy are produced.