There is no such thing as the typical scientific journal: some are highly specialized, while others focus on a very narrow field of knowledge; some target a small audience of highly-specialized peers, while others aim to serve a wider audience; some are product of one individual’s committed efforts, others are, in a way, the club magazine of a scientific society; again others are the profit-driven endeavors of commercial publishers. This wide range of scholarly (and semi-scholarly) periodicals is part of a publishing industry that also provides the scholarly world with an impressive number of monographs, edited volumes, and textbooks. Since early modern times researchers have anxiously observed that it has become all but impossible to keep up with all new and potentially relevant publications in their fields of interest. In this respect recent developments don’t seem to be very comforting: one recent study suggests that the number of scientific publications has more than doubled between 1980 and 2010![1]
One more journal?
In this light it might seem more prudent to argue for a reduction of the number of scientific periodicals than to applaud the establishment of yet another new journal. I would, however, like to extend a warm welcome to the recently founded Journal of Trial and Error. It namely draws attention to the nooks and crannies of scholarship that are rarely reflected upon in the many journals, monographs, edited volumes, and textbooks that appear every year. The journal’s editors rightfully emphasize the merits of a closer look at the messy successions of trial and error that form the basis of neatly wrapped-up research papers and monographs: these invaluable elements of science are generally kept hidden from audiences of both peers and lay people.
In addition, the founders of the Journal of Trial and Error place themselves in a respectable older tradition of establishing a new journal in order to highlight some structurally underreported aspect of scholarship. After all, every age (or every publishing industry) has its own blind spots. In this respect, Wilhelm Wundt might be one of the most famous spiritual predecessors of the founders of the Journal of Trial and Error.
The sad fate of innovative dissertations
After his appointment as Professor of Philosophy in Leipzig in 1875, Wundt established the first laboratory for experimental psychology. This laboratory provided a workspace for research on the cutting edge of epistemology and physiology. Under Wundt’s hands-on supervision an increasing number of physiologically inclined philosophers completed innovative doctoral dissertations. He realized, however, that the highly limited book editions of these dissertations hardly reached an audience beyond the doctoral candidates’ supervisory committees. He therefore tried to ensure their publication in philosophical journals that reached a broader scholarly public, both as a service to his students and to promote the work carried out in his laboratory. He had particularly high expectations of the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, because the journal’s editorial outlook suited Wundt’s experimental approach, and because its editor, Richard Avenarius, was a former student of his.
However, Avenarius was reluctant to answer his Doktervater’s requests. The fact that most dissertations were also published as books or brochures was not even his primary objection. He also emphasized that he was simply not able to fulfill doctoral candidates’ usual demand that their dissertation would be published on very short notice. His strongest doubts were fueled by the perceived disinterest in these works among his readers:
At the moment, we have the experience that ‘philosophical’ essays in general, and philos[ophical] ‘doctoral dissertations’ in particular, hardly cover the printing costs.
The reason was that they dealt with topics ‘[…] for which there is – alas – not much demand.’[2]
A new platform for dissertations
Wundt then turned to the publisher of his books, who was wary of the financial challenges of printing dissertations in journals as well. But, since Wundt was one of his best-selling authors, he was willing to do him a favor. If his doctoral candidates renounced all financial compensation, he was willing to publish a new journal under Wundt’s editorship: the Philosophische Studien. This new journal would offer Wundt’s doctoral students a publishing platform between 1881 and 1903.
Its successor, the Psychologische Studien was discontinued after Wundt’s death in 1917. The journal was no longer viable, because it had never developed beyond being a podium for dissertations written by people from its founder’s own inner circle. Today, it’s difficult to imagine the continued existence of a journal with such a strong emphasis on publishing doctoral dissertations, especially one with a narrow focus on publishing the work from one particular laboratory. Other means of disseminating the fruits of doctoral research have become more prominent: PhD candidates are expected to publish significant parts of their research in one of the many new peer-reviewed scholarly journals, digital copies of dissertations are being made available online through university websites, and PhD candidates in the humanities are often encouraged to turn their dissertation into a publishable monograph.
The blind spots of today
This does not mean that today’s scientific publishing industry does not have its own blind spots. As the format of the scientific article became ever more codified throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, criticism of its impenetrable character has grown. In the nineteen-sixties the biologist Peter Medawar complained that the modern scientific paper had become ‘a fraud, because it [was] deliberately constructed so as to disguise the actual process of discovery’.[3] Three decades later the historian of science Frederic Holmes described the modern-day scientific article as ‘a story reduced to the elements deemed essential to its outcome, pared [….] of all details of procedure and background’.[4] It is exactly this messy mix of trial and error that precedes almost all ‘finished’ products of science and scholarship and to which the Journal of Trial and Error aims to draw attention.
In a similar vein, I think it would
be interesting to think of some kind of platform to share rejected research
proposals. After all, the highly competitive current system of research funding
ensures that some of the brightest younger (and older) minds in academia spend
an increasing amount of time and effort in writing an increasing number of
great research proposals, that are too easily forgotten when financial support fails
to materialize.
[1] Lutz Bornmann and Rüdiger Mutz, Growth Rates of Modern Science: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on the Number of Publications and Cited References, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (November 2015), 2215-2222. 2217. DOI: 10.1002/asi.23329.
[2] Richard Avenarius to Wilhelm Wundt, 31 December 1880: https://home.uni-leipzig.de/wundtbriefe/letters/00362/o.pdf.
[3] Paraphased in: A.J. Meadows, Communication in Science (London 1974), 82.
[4] Frederic L. Holmes, ‘Argument and Narrative in Scientific Writing,’ in: Peter Dear (ed.), The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies (Philadelphia 1991), 164–181. 180–181.