ABSTRACT
When one turns to the history of publishing, however, difficulties immediately arise. For many reasons, the history of scientific publishing in general, and of international scientific publishing in particular, has been neither popular nor easy. For here, one must deal with more than the antiquarian's history of individual books, or authors, or ideas. Rather, one must examine a complicated pattern of economic and, institutional, as well as intellectual factors; the promotion of cultural values, as well as the pursuit of ideas. The historian of scientific publishing must concern himself with the image, as well as with the content, with commercial prospects, as well as philosophical positions, with the vagaries of fashion, as well as with the codification of new knowledge.
