Royal Society Journal Archive Free Online

The Royal Society has announced that its world-famous historical journal archive has been made permanently free to access online.  The archive includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal ’Philosophical Transactions’ pub 1665. Other gems include works by Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday and Charles Babbage. As history dictates, the list of women authors is perhaps not as lengthy. Although founded in 1660, women were not permitted to become fellows of the Royal Society until 285 years later in 1945, rather behind the times as women over the age of 30 had won the vote nearly 30 years earlier, in 1918.

That said although not documented widely in terms of contribution women played a key role on the development of scientific inquiry. The first woman to attend a meeting of the Royal Society was Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, in May 1667. Caroline Herschel in August 1786 was the first women to be published in Philosophical Transactions the paper was snappily titled  ”An Account of a new Comet, in a letter from Miss Caroline Herschel to Mr Charles Blagden MD, Secretary to the Royal Society”. A dig through the inspiring achieves will undoubtedly uncover more of these fascinating details in the development of this hugely influential institution.

The Royal Society’s has opened its archive to coincide with the start of Open Access week a global event now entering its 5th year, encouraging open participation to promote ”free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need [which, in tern] has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted”

Find more here about Open Access week

Enjoy a search through the Royal Society archives here

Sources (Wikipedia, Guardian 2010, Margaret Cavendish Society, Royal Society, Caroline Herschel )