The Catalogue of Scientific Papers was an attempt by the Royal Society of London to catalogue all papers published in scientific periodicals back to the year 1800 and produce a bibliographic index organised by author.[1][2] The first volume was published in 1867 and it ran until 1901. From 1902 it was continued in an expanded form as the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature.[3][4]
The original idea came from an American engineer, Edward Hunt,[5] who suggested it to the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Henry. Henry, however, was concerned that the newly formed Smithsonian did not have sufficient resource to undertake the task and so in 1855 he proposed it[6] to the British Association for the Advancement of Science who set up a committee to explore the idea and to define its scope. In 1857, the British Association came to the conclusion that it would be a suitable project for the Royal Society to undertake. The Society's Council agreed and cataloguing work started the following year.
References edit
- ^ Csiszar, A. (2017). "How lives became lists and scientific papers became data: cataloguing authorship during the nineteenth century". The British Journal for the History of Science. 50 (1): 23–60. doi:10.1017/S0007087417000012. PMID 28202102.
The Catalogue of Scientific Papers, published by the Royal Society of London beginning in 1867, projected back to the beginning of the nineteenth century a novel vision of the history of science in which knowledge was built up out of discrete papers each connected to an author.
- ^ Gay, H. (2012). "A Questionable Project: Herbert McLeod and the Making of the Fourth series of the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1901–25". Annals of Science. 70 (2): 149–174. doi:10.1080/00033790.2012.713512. S2CID 218637183.
- ^ Adler, C. (1897). "The International Catalogue of Scientific Literature". Science. 6 (136): 184–201. Bibcode:1897Sci.....6..184A. doi:10.1126/science.6.136.184. hdl:2027/njp.32101073341768. PMID 17836206.
- ^ "The International Catalogue of Scientific Literature". Nature. 104 (2610): 265. 1919. Bibcode:1919Natur.104Q.265.. doi:10.1038/104265a0.
- ^ Hunt, E. B. (1855). "On an index of papers on subjects of mathematics and physical science". American Journal of Science. 20: 344–348.
- ^ Beaver, D. deB. (1972). "The Smithsonian origin of the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers". Science Studies. 2 (4): 385–393. doi:10.1177/030631277200200407. S2CID 145111239.