4 ms·

Royal Society journal archive made permanently free to access

158 points by teoruiz 15y ago

_delirium 15y ago
The press release naturally doesn't mention it, but I'd guess this was done at least in part because the release of the back issues for free public access became a fait accompli with: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709 People have been pressuring them for years to make these open-access, arguing that a non-profit society dedicated to spreading public knowledge ought to at least make the very old historical articles freely available to the general public.
retrovirus 15y ago
It's good to see hardcore academic institutions like the Royal Society move towards opening knowledge for the public.
- twstws 15y ago
  I suppose, but they are only opening articles that are 70 years old. Which means curiosities like Darwin's geology papers are now available, but you still need to pay for anything remotely current. So it's a nice start, but unlikely to effect their bottom line, or make doing science any easier for anyone outside the first world academy.
  - retrovirus 15y ago
    Yes, you're right. But it's still a step in the right direction and hopefully others will follow suit. And I am really optimistic, looking at the uber-cool initiatives of the Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/ http://www.khanacademy.org/), MIT's OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm), Stanford's OpenClassroom (http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php) and their latest online courses in Machine learning (http://ml-class.org http://ml-class.org), Artificial Intelligence (http://ai-class.com http://ai-class.com), and Databases (http://db-class.org http://db-class.org).
- 0x12 15y ago
  They didn't have much choice in the matter. For a few months now there is a torrent floating around with most of this stuff in it.
  - retrovirus 15y ago
    While I think it's a bit extreme to say they didn't have much choice, it seems to me making data more open is becoming somewhat trendy and this sort of peer pressure may have certainly played a role in the Royal Society's decision. Anyways, the inertia of the status quo shouldn't be underestimated and although things are really not that fair, it will probably take quite a bit of time before we see widespread democratization of data.
tokenadult 15y ago
Benjamin Franklin's 1752 paper on experimenting with electricity from thunderstorms, collected in a Leyden jar, is not to be missed. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.pdf http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.p... After edit: To answer a question raised by another HN user, the Wikipedia article on the medial s character in older printed English-language books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s is helpful about the history of printing that character.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- vibragiel 15y ago
  "Make a small cross, of two light strips of cedar; the arms so long, as to reach the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief, when extended: tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross; so you have the body of a kite..." Love it. Also, the first paper by Newton, on his new theory about light and colour. He was still just a "Mr."! http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/69-80/3075.full.pdf+html?sid=0d477dd8-8dec-4ac3-8187-b6df96d4d670 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/69-80/3075....
  - mikedmiked 15y ago
    A Professor before becoming a Dr... Those were the days...
    - hugh3 15y ago
      There are plenty of professors out there without PhDs, even nowadays. Not at Cambridge, and not in Physics, but they exist.
      - felipemnoa 15y ago
        In my school at least, they were not called professors if they did not have a PhD, just lecturers.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tsycho 15y ago
Anyone knows why most of the "s" characters have become "f"? eg: beft, fucceeded etc. Interestingly, nothing else seems to be wrong (at least I didn't spot anything else). And it's not even consistent, eg: crofs (instead of cross, so only one 's' became 'f' here).
- twstws 15y ago
  Those are 'long s' characters, not f. They were used for lower case s at the start or middle of a word. I don't recall why.
- dchest 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
- ig1 15y ago
  OCR software tends to have problem with the ligatures used for "s" in old fonts so often transcribes them as "f". More expensive OCR software tends to get around this by using probability models to guess the correct word (i.e. "best" is much more likely than "beft"), but I'm guessing they're using some mid-range OCR package.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    Seriously? Did you even look at the pages in question? They are reproductions of the originals, and maintain the original fonts and orthography. This includes the long s, as well as certain ligatures (like ct), and has absolutely nothing to do with their choice of OCR software. In fact, there's no indication that OCR software was used at all.
    - nobody3141 15y ago
      He didn't say it did - but it is an issue with converting and indexing old documents. Google's ngrams for instance regularly transcribes them as 'f' so you have to search for both possibilities.
    - 15y ago
euroclydon 15y ago
The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson, has a highly entertaining historical fiction treatment of the Royal Society, Newton and other main characters.
- xefer 15y ago
  The grotesque experiment on the dog by Hooke described in the book is outlined here: http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/23-32/539 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/23-32/539 The Royal Society had open up their complete archives a few years ago for a period and I fished this out then.
  - vibragiel 15y ago
    I saw the paper referenced at the Trailblazing website. It's a nice visual way of exploring some of the most notable papers from the Royal Society. http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/ http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
yannis 15y ago
You got to love some of these papers. Account of an Elephant's Tusk, in which the Iron Head of a Spear was found imbedded. By Mr. Charles Combe, of Exeter College, Oxford, 1801. Coming up with research topics was always an art!
Jun8 15y ago
These are gold! Obligatory Isaac Newton search reveals his biting answer to "some considerations upon his doctrine of light and colors": http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084.full.pdf+html?sid=0bd4bec0-7c12-4aa2-aa18-88ee41085e43 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084.... (note spelling of "color"). The initial phrase sets the tone: "Sir, I have already told you ..." Too bad scientific papers have lost this rhetorical flavor.
Dn_Ab 15y ago
I cannot adequately express how awesome having access to this information is to me. When I was younger I would read one biography from http://www.gap-system.org/~history/ http://www.gap-system.org/~history/ before going to bed. It is nothing short of amazing to be able to get a projection, a snapshot of the workings of the great minds of centuries past. To see them struggle and then brilliantly succeed in explaining concepts that were at the edge of knowledge, that are still non-trivial and have their work remain timeless by continuing to stand head and shoulders above modern treatments of the same subject is remarkable. I did a search on a bunch of people - Hamilton, Euler, George Green, Bernoulli, Euler, Gauss, Clifford, Boole and more. As is to be expected not every one is there. The most interesting essays my short search found were: A Mathematical Theory of Magnetism by William Thomson http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full.pdf+html?sid=fe65c826-aad8-409c-89d5-cd8378f605c6 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full.... and An Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances by Thomas Bayes. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.pdf+html?sid=5a73db2e-6635-4240-a252-e54cc481c83f http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.p...

158 points by teoruiz 15y ago

The press release naturally doesn't mention it, but I'd guess this was done at least in part because the release of the back issues for free public access became a fait accompli with: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709 People have been pressuring them for years to make these open-access, arguing that a non-profit society dedicated to spreading public knowledge ought to at least make the very old historical articles freely available to the general public.

retrovirus 15y ago

It's good to see hardcore academic institutions like the Royal Society move towards opening knowledge for the public.

twstws 15y ago
I suppose, but they are only opening articles that are 70 years old. Which means curiosities like Darwin's geology papers are now available, but you still need to pay for anything remotely current. So it's a nice start, but unlikely to effect their bottom line, or make doing science any easier for anyone outside the first world academy.
- retrovirus 15y ago
  Yes, you're right. But it's still a step in the right direction and hopefully others will follow suit. And I am really optimistic, looking at the uber-cool initiatives of the Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/ http://www.khanacademy.org/), MIT's OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm), Stanford's OpenClassroom (http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php) and their latest online courses in Machine learning (http://ml-class.org http://ml-class.org), Artificial Intelligence (http://ai-class.com http://ai-class.com), and Databases (http://db-class.org http://db-class.org).
0x12 15y ago
They didn't have much choice in the matter. For a few months now there is a torrent floating around with most of this stuff in it.
- retrovirus 15y ago
  While I think it's a bit extreme to say they didn't have much choice, it seems to me making data more open is becoming somewhat trendy and this sort of peer pressure may have certainly played a role in the Royal Society's decision. Anyways, the inertia of the status quo shouldn't be underestimated and although things are really not that fair, it will probably take quite a bit of time before we see widespread democratization of data.

tokenadult 15y ago

Benjamin Franklin's 1752 paper on experimenting with electricity from thunderstorms, collected in a Leyden jar, is not to be missed. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.pdf http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.p... After edit: To answer a question raised by another HN user, the Wikipedia article on the medial s character in older printed English-language books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s is helpful about the history of printing that character.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
vibragiel 15y ago
"Make a small cross, of two light strips of cedar; the arms so long, as to reach the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief, when extended: tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross; so you have the body of a kite..." Love it. Also, the first paper by Newton, on his new theory about light and colour. He was still just a "Mr."! http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/69-80/3075.full.pdf+html?sid=0d477dd8-8dec-4ac3-8187-b6df96d4d670 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/69-80/3075....
- mikedmiked 15y ago
  A Professor before becoming a Dr... Those were the days...
  - hugh3 15y ago
    There are plenty of professors out there without PhDs, even nowadays. Not at Cambridge, and not in Physics, but they exist.
    - felipemnoa 15y ago
      In my school at least, they were not called professors if they did not have a PhD, just lecturers.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

tsycho 15y ago

Anyone knows why most of the "s" characters have become "f"? eg: beft, fucceeded etc. Interestingly, nothing else seems to be wrong (at least I didn't spot anything else). And it's not even consistent, eg: crofs (instead of cross, so only one 's' became 'f' here).

twstws 15y ago
Those are 'long s' characters, not f. They were used for lower case s at the start or middle of a word. I don't recall why.
dchest 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
ig1 15y ago
OCR software tends to have problem with the ligatures used for "s" in old fonts so often transcribes them as "f". More expensive OCR software tends to get around this by using probability models to guess the correct word (i.e. "best" is much more likely than "beft"), but I'm guessing they're using some mid-range OCR package.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  Seriously? Did you even look at the pages in question? They are reproductions of the originals, and maintain the original fonts and orthography. This includes the long s, as well as certain ligatures (like ct), and has absolutely nothing to do with their choice of OCR software. In fact, there's no indication that OCR software was used at all.
  - nobody3141 15y ago
    He didn't say it did - but it is an issue with converting and indexing old documents. Google's ngrams for instance regularly transcribes them as 'f' so you have to search for both possibilities.
  - 15y ago

euroclydon 15y ago

The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson, has a highly entertaining historical fiction treatment of the Royal Society, Newton and other main characters.

xefer 15y ago
The grotesque experiment on the dog by Hooke described in the book is outlined here: http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/23-32/539 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/23-32/539 The Royal Society had open up their complete archives a few years ago for a period and I fished this out then.
- vibragiel 15y ago
  I saw the paper referenced at the Trailblazing website. It's a nice visual way of exploring some of the most notable papers from the Royal Society. http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/ http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

yannis 15y ago

You got to love some of these papers. Account of an Elephant's Tusk, in which the Iron Head of a Spear was found imbedded. By Mr. Charles Combe, of Exeter College, Oxford, 1801. Coming up with research topics was always an art!

Jun8 15y ago

These are gold! Obligatory Isaac Newton search reveals his biting answer to "some considerations upon his doctrine of light and colors": http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084.full.pdf+html?sid=0bd4bec0-7c12-4aa2-aa18-88ee41085e43 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/81-91/5084.... (note spelling of "color"). The initial phrase sets the tone: "Sir, I have already told you ..." Too bad scientific papers have lost this rhetorical flavor.

Dn_Ab 15y ago

I cannot adequately express how awesome having access to this information is to me. When I was younger I would read one biography from http://www.gap-system.org/~history/ http://www.gap-system.org/~history/ before going to bed. It is nothing short of amazing to be able to get a projection, a snapshot of the workings of the great minds of centuries past. To see them struggle and then brilliantly succeed in explaining concepts that were at the edge of knowledge, that are still non-trivial and have their work remain timeless by continuing to stand head and shoulders above modern treatments of the same subject is remarkable. I did a search on a bunch of people - Hamilton, Euler, George Green, Bernoulli, Euler, Gauss, Clifford, Boole and more. As is to be expected not every one is there. The most interesting essays my short search found were: A Mathematical Theory of Magnetism by William Thomson http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full.pdf+html?sid=fe65c826-aad8-409c-89d5-cd8378f605c6 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/141/243.full.... and An Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances by Thomas Bayes. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.pdf+html?sid=5a73db2e-6635-4240-a252-e54cc481c83f http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/53/370.full.p...