The process of publication of the results of scientific enquiry was formalized towards the middle of the seventeenth century through the contributions of Newton, Oldenburg and Hooke which led to the development of The Royal Society of London. The periodic journal came to be adopted as the format for exchange of ideas in the field of scientific research. The idea was rather simple: one experiment or observation per article. And thus the scientific journal was born, in 1665, as the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Now scientific work could finally reach a larger audience and contribute to the improvement of society in a more systematic way. Scientists now had the chance to build on each other’s work and advance scholarly work in a collaborative and open atmosphere. context of collaboration and openness. The scientific ethos was thus to “work, finish, and publish,” as Michael Faraday described it less than a century later.
With this increased growth in scientific activity, governments soon started replacing individuals as the patrons of scientific research. Researchers have been applying for funds to the government or foundations for carrying out their research work. This has a downside in that research projects have boiled down to utilization certificates being produced to the Government with the whole purpose of research being lost. In several cases research projects get completed without a single publication and not even a proper report on the research findings are produced.
In our organization, however, we do take publications very seriously because we believe serious research is not complete till it get published. In spite of the great debate on whether the publishing industry, with their monopoly on science is “The Great Paywall of Science”, and without any major grants from the Government, publications in different fields have been made from the organization.