From the Republic of Letters to double-blind peer-review: An archeology of academic journals

Abstract

The work of an academic is today mainly structured by the publication of academic articles in scientific journals. These are usually managed by an editorial team that guarantees a double-blind peer-review process. Despite obvious innovations and developments, this form of organization of academic work is heavily institutionalized, and more and more globalized. We offer an archeology of academic journals by identifying the emergence of their key components: learned societies and periodical publications in the seventeenth century, editorial policies and reading committees in the eighteenth, and finally the double-blind peer-review process that was established during the second half of the twentieth century. Part of our historical analysis will be focused on the two publications that are considered to be the matrices of modern journals: the French Journal des Sçavans and the British Philosophical Transactions. This article aims to problematize these key elements of academic journal culture by situating them in the contexts in which they made it possible to respond to problems, while at the same time making them the subject of debate and negotiation. Our aim is to contribute to the history of managerial thought, but also, using an approach highly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, to contribute to a critique (in the philosophical sense) of organization and management science as an academic field and as a profession.