This paper explores the culture of co-authorship in eighteenth-century botany, focusing on the practice of posthumous publishing and the publication trajectory of the papers and illustrations left by the French botanist Charles Plumier (1646-1704). In 1689 Plumier had travelled through Martinique and St. Domingue in order to investigate the pharmaceutical uses of the flora of the French Antilles. He had brought back a rich haul of descriptions and drawings, and he worked fast to have them published. Within ten years, three illustrated botanical works had come out. Yet they contained only a small part of what he had gathered. When he died much of this botanical material, eagerly awaited by the botanical community, was still unpublished. As the information economy of botany tried to prevent the loss of precious data, other botanists took on the task of editing Plumier’s manuscripts. Several authors were involved in a publishing process, whose aim was less to make the material available to the botanical community in an original version than to update and correct it.The resulting layering of information shaped not only the appearance of the published text, but also far-reaching forms of scientific co-authorship.
 

At a time when the learned public of Paris was increasingly captivated by the wonders of science and new discoveries, the publication of books and pamphlets became a means a choice for any “savant” to get the readers’ attention and, hopefully, gain recognition from the members of the Académie des Sciences. The story of Pierre-Joseph Buc’hoz (1731-1807), lawyer, physician and botanist and his quest for independence from the publishers and recognition from his peers affords a window into the world of publication and scientific authorship. Having published – mostly through his own means – more than 300 pamphlets and books, including 95 folio volumes, on various topics ranging from medicine, botany to zoology, Buc’hoz not only had to face the harsh financial, legal and material realities of publication, but also the rejection of the Académie, whose members accused him of simply copying the works of others. Were Buc’hoz’s works original? How and why did he publish on his own? How had the concepts of originality and plagiarism made their way into the discourse of scientific authorship in the 1780’s? Through the sad story of Buc’hoz and his battle against the Académiciens, his “sworn enemies”, this paper will help explore the forging of scientific authority and authorship in Enlightenment France.

My starting point is Jöns Jacob Berzelius, prominent chemist as well as founder, editor, and reformer of a number of scientific periodicals. In his roles as editor, he corresponded extensively with editors of other journals, he gained access to these journals, and he made his views on chemical and editorial practices known through his own publications. In his position as Permanent Secretary, he reformed the publications of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and launched several new periodicals. 

These periodicals were currency in a rapidly expanding system of exchange, where scientific societies, academies, universities, and libraries expanded their collections as well as their influence through the exchange of publications. Formalised networks, such as the Marburg Akademischer Tauschverein (1817), established their own rates and rules; but institutions also engaged in exchanges according to their academic status or that of their editors. 

The scientific status of Berzelius was crucial to the influence of the journals he founded, edited, and contributed to. They, in their turn, were of vital importance in establishing – or re-establishing – the Academy of Sciences as a notable player in a diversifying institutional scientific landscape, where knowledge circulated according to emerging hierarchies and power relationships.

Studying the changes in exchange practices during the 19th century highlights the practical conditions for the circulation of scientific knowledge, and the fundamental importance of exchange networks in the moral, as well as monetary, economy of science.