Just to alert members to the latest posting on this topic on the Notes and Records ‘have your say forum’, from the Editor, Robert Fox:

 

“It seems that one motive for the ERIH initiative was the laudable one of raising the profile of journals that publish in languages other than English and in specialized areas that might be expected to attract modest readerships.  Those who have signed the petition, among whom are the editors of many such journals, are acutely sensitive to this problem. So too were the contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the subject in the General Assembly of the European Society for the History of Science in Vienna in July. But one of the worst consequences of the ERIH, indeed of any conceivable system of grading, would surely be to reinforce the very hierarchy that seems to have concerned the ESF and that we all agree is damaging to our discipline. The ESF could have served our community in far better ways.  For example, rather than promoting the ERIH, it might more usefully have sponsored a data-base on which all the journals in the history of science, technology, and medicine, in Europe and beyond, could give essential information about their scope, editorial policies, and anything else they wished to publicize.  Such a data-base would facilitate precisely the non-judgemental diffusion of information that is the life-blood of our scholarly lives.”

 

The fuller discussion is available at http://publishing.royalsociety.org/index.cfm?page=1938

 

Regards

Phil

 

 

Phil Hurst

Publisher

 

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