Insights of book historians into the production and circulation of printed items have alerted historians of science to the scientific book as a material, commercial, and epistemic object. In recent years the scope of interest has broadened to include scientific paper technologies, scribal practices, and, to some extent, the relationship between manuscript and print. Yet, as a result of the lasting impact of the intertwined practice and object turns, a residual taboo still seems to surround books and texts as objects of research, at least to some degree. But books, manuscripts, and other paper technologies are scientific objects, and writing, using, publishing (and reading) them are practices of knowledge-production that require much more detailed investigation. This panel will therefore explore processes, practices and protagonists of scientific publishing from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century in various disciplines. Topics to be addressed include: modes of authorship, practices of editing, the use of paper technologies, and cultures of scientific publishing.
