Works by Newton, Darwin, others now free online

A wealth of scientific articles, many written by some of history's greatest minds, now awaits the public after the United Kingdom's Royal Society made its world-famous historical journal archive free to access online. The Royal Society said its archive, which includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal, includes 60,000 historical scientific papers and papers published more than 70 years ago. “I’m delighted that the Royal Society is continuing to increase access to its wonderful resources by opening up its publishing archives. The release of these papers opens a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries and will be of interest to anybody who wants to understand how science has evolved since the days of the Royal Society’s foundation," said Royal Society library committee chair Professor Uta Frith FRS. The move is being made as part of the Royal Society’s ongoing commitment to open access in scientific publishing. Opening of the archive is being timed to coincide with Open Access Week, and comes shortly after the Royal Society announced its first ever fully open access journal, Open Biology. Among the treasures in the archive are:

• Isaac Newton’s first published scientific paper
• geological work by a young Charles Darwin
• Benjamin Franklin’s celebrated account of his electrical kite experiment.

Readers who want to go deeper into the archive may find undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution – including accounts of monstrous calves, grisly tales of students being struck by lightning, and early experiments on to how to cool drinks “without the Help of Snow, Ice, Haile, Wind or Niter, and That at Any Time of the Year." The Royal Society is the world’s oldest scientific publisher, with the first edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appearing in 1665. Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society and first Editor of the publication, ensured that it was “licensed by the council of the society, being first reviewed by some of the members of the same", thus making it the first ever peer-reviewed journal. Philosophical Transactions survived early setbacks including plague, the Great Fire of London and even the imprisonment of Oldenburg. Its foundation would eventually be recognized as one of the most pivotal moments of the scientific revolution. "If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions, were to be destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded," Thomas Huxley FRS had written in 1870. Fully searchable Science-oriented site io9.com said the fully searchable online archive covers some 60,000 scientific papers. "And while complimentary access is limited to those articles published before 1941, don't let that distract you from the incredible collection of publications included in the archive," it said. — TJD, GMA News