- Science Journal was also the name of a British science magazine published 1965–71, later merged into New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly international science magazine and website covering recent developments in science and technology for a general English-speaking audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier. New Scientist has maintained a...
Science is the
academic journalAn academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research. Content typically takes the...
of the
American Association for the Advancement of ScienceThe American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation between scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for...
and is considered one of the world's most prestigious
scientific journalIn academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
s. The peer-reviewed journal, first published in 1880 is circulated weekly and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve a larger audience, its estimated readership is one million people.
The major focus of the journal is publishing important original scientific
researchResearch can be defined to be search for knowledge or any systematic investigation to establish facts. The primary purpose for applied research is discovering, interpreting, and the development of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of scientific matters of...
and research reviews, but
Science also publishes science-related news, opinions on
science policyScience policy is an area of public policy usually concerned with the funding of science and with the regulation of technology produced by scientific research...
and other matters of interest to
scientistA scientist, in the broadest sense, is any person who engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the...
s and others who are concerned with the wide implications of
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
and
technologyTechnology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...
.
- Science Journal was also the name of a British science magazine published 1965–71, later merged into New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly international science magazine and website covering recent developments in science and technology for a general English-speaking audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier. New Scientist has maintained a...
Science is the
academic journalAn academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research. Content typically takes the...
of the
American Association for the Advancement of ScienceThe American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation between scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for...
and is considered one of the world's most prestigious
scientific journalIn academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
s. The peer-reviewed journal, first published in 1880 is circulated weekly and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve a larger audience, its estimated readership is one million people.
The major focus of the journal is publishing important original scientific
researchResearch can be defined to be search for knowledge or any systematic investigation to establish facts. The primary purpose for applied research is discovering, interpreting, and the development of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of scientific matters of...
and research reviews, but
Science also publishes science-related news, opinions on
science policyScience policy is an area of public policy usually concerned with the funding of science and with the regulation of technology produced by scientific research...
and other matters of interest to
scientistA scientist, in the broadest sense, is any person who engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the...
s and others who are concerned with the wide implications of
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
and
technologyTechnology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...
. Although most scientific journals focus on a specific field,
Science and its rival
NatureNature is a prominent British scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. Most scientific journals are now highly specialized, and Nature is among the few journals that still publish original research articles across a wide range of scientific...
cover the full range of scientific disciplines.
Science places special emphasis on
biologyBiology is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy...
and the
life sciencesWe define Life Sciences to encompass companies in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biomedical technologies, life systems technologies, nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, food processing, environmental, biomedical devices, and organizations and institutions that devote the majority of...
because of the expansion of
biotechnologyBiotechnology is technology based on biology, agriculture, food science, and medicine. Modern use of the term usually refers to genetic engineering as well as cell- and tissue culture technologies...
and
geneticsGenetics, , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding...
over the past few decades.
Sciences impact factorThe impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...
for 2006 was 30.028 (as measured by Thomson ISIThe Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare & Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.ISI offered...
).
Although it is the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, membership in the AAAS is not required to publish in Science
. Papers are accepted from authors around the world. Competition to publish in Science
is very intense, as an article published in such a highly cited journal can lead to attention and career advancement for the authors. Fewer than 10% of articles submitted to the editors are accepted for publication and all research articles are subject to peer reviewPeer review is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review...
before they appear in the magazine.
In 2007 Science
(together with Nature
Nature is a prominent British scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. Most scientific journals are now highly specialized, and Nature is among the few journals that still publish original research articles across a wide range of scientific...
) received the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanity
Science
is based in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
, USThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, with a second office in CambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. It is also at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen....
, EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
History
Science was founded by New York journalist John Michaels in 1880 with financial support from
Thomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb...
and later from
Alexander Graham BellAlexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....
. However, the magazine never gained enough subscribers to succeed and ended publication in March 1882. Entomologist
Samuel H. ScudderSamuel Hubbard Scudder was an American entomologist and palaeontologist.He was born 13 April 1837 in Boston, Massachusetts and died in the same city 17 May 1911. He had very weird sideburns....
resurrected the journal one year later and had some success while covering the meetings of prominent American scientific societies, including the AAAS. However, by 1894, Science
was again in financial difficulty and was sold to psychologist James McKeen CattellJames McKeen Cattell , American psychologist, was the first professor of psychology in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and publications, most notably the journal Science.At the beginning of his career, many scientists...
for $500.
In an agreement worked out by Cattell and AAAS secretary Leland O. HowardLeland Ossian Howard, Ph.D., M.D. was an American entomologist, born at Rockford, Ill. He graduated at Cornell in 1877. He was employed by the Department of Agriculture, and became chief of the Bureau of Entomology in 1894...
, Science
became the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900. During the early part of the 20th century important articles published in Science included papers on fruit fly
geneticsGenetics, , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding...
by
Thomas Hunt MorganThomas Hunt Morgan was an American geneticist and embryologist. Morgan received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 and researched embryology during his tenure at Bryn Mawr. Following the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance in 1900, Morgan's research moved to the study of mutation in...
, gravitational lensing by
Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a theoretical physicist. His many contributions to physics include the special and general theories of relativity, the founding of relativistic cosmology, the first post-Newtonian expansion, explaining the perihelion advance of Mercury, prediction of the deflection of...
, and spiral nebulae by
Edwin HubbleEdwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer. He profoundly changed our understanding of the universe by demonstrating the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way. He also discovered that the degree of redshift observed in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the...
. After Cattell died in 1944, the ownership of the journal was transferred to the AAAS.
After Cattell's death, the magazine lacked a consistent editorial presence until Graham DuShane became editor in 1956. Physicist and
Nobel laureateThe Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
, Philip Abelson, the co-discoverer of
neptuniumNeptunium is a chemical element with the symbol Np and atomic number 93. A radioactive metallic element, neptunium is the first transuranic element and belongs to the actinide series. Its most stable isotope, 237Np, is a by-product of nuclear reactors and plutonium production and it...
, served as editor from 1962 to 1984. Under Abelson the efficiency of the
peer reviewPeer review is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review...
process was improved and the publication practices were brought up to date. During this time, papers on the
Project ApolloNASA's Apollo Program landed the first humans on Earth's moon. US President John F. Kennedy announced his support for a manned moon landing on May 25, 1961, as part of a special address to a joint session of Congress:...
missions and some of the earliest reports on
AIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus ....
were published.
Biochemist
Daniel KoshlandDaniel Edward Koshland, Jr. reorganized the study of biology at the University of California at Berkeley and was the editor of the leading US science journal, Science, during the decade 1985-1995...
served as editor from 1985 until 1995. From 1995 until 2000, neuroscientist Floyd Bloom held that position.
Biologist
Donald KennedyDonald Kennedy is an American scientist, public administrator and academic.Donald Kennedy was born in New York and educated at Harvard University . He has spent most of his professional career at Stanford University...
became the editor of Science
in 2000. Biochemist Bruce AlbertsBruce Michael Alberts is an American biochemist. He is noted particularly for his extensive study of the protein complexes which enable chromosome replication when living cells divide. He was the president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005 and is a trustee of the Carnegie...
took his place in March 2008.
In February 2001, draft results of the human genomeThe human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs. Twenty-two of these are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...
were simultaneously published by Nature
and Science
with Science publishing the Celera GenomicsCelera Corporation was formerly a business unit of the Applera Corporation, but was spun off in July 2008 to become an independent publicly traded company...
paper and Nature
publishing the publicly funded Human Genome ProjectThe Human Genome Project was an international scientific research project with a primary goal to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA and to identify and map the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint...
.
Controversies
In 2002, Science
withdrew eight papers authored by Jan Hendrik SchönJan Hendrik Schön is a German physicist who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs that were later discovered to be fraudulent...
after it was shown that Schön had fabricated much of his data.
An article published in Science
in 2002 on the neurotoxicity of the drug MDMA ("ecstasy") caused some controversy when a mix-up of vials caused the paper to be retracted in 2003 (see Neurotoxicity of MDMA controversy).
Science
encountered another controversy in 2006 when papers by Hwang Woo-SukHwang Woo-suk is a South Korean veterinarian researcher. He was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University who became infamous for fabricating a series of experiments, which appeared in high profile journals, in the field of stem cell research...
on cloningCloning in biology is the process of producing populations of genetically-identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or organisms...
human embryos from stem cellStem cells are cells found in most, if not all, multi-cellular organisms. They are characterized by the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and differentiating into a diverse range of specialized cell types. Research in the stem cell field grew out of findings by Canadian...
research were withdrawn by Seoul National UniversitySeoul National University , colloquially known in Korean as Seoul-dae , is a national research university located in Seoul, ranked 24th in the world in publications in an analysis of data from the Science Citation Index and 47th in the world and 7th in Asia by THES-QS World University Rankings...
due to apparent scientific fraud. A committee set up by Science
to study the matter found that the journal's procedures had been followed, and the journal could do little in the face of deliberate fraud. The committee recommended that papers received should henceforth be classified as non-controversial or controversial; controversial papers should be looked at more thoroughly. Science
also suggested that Nature may want to take up the same standards it was adopting.
Kennedy defended the peer review system, pointing out that catching fraud would require "costly and offensive oversight on the vast majority of scientists in order to catch the occasional cheater".
Availability
Online versions of full-text archive articles are not generally made available to the public. Full text is available online to AAAS members from the main journal website. Individual and institutional subscriptions are also available for a fee (though it is significantly less expensive to simply join the AAAS and receive the magazine for free). The
Science website also gives free access to some articles (principally original research articles and editorials) as well as the complete table of contents of the current and past issues, a year after their publication. Access to all articles on the Science website is free if the request comes from an IP address of a subscribing institution. Articles older than 5 to 6 years are available via
JSTORJSTOR is a United States-based online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions.JSTOR was originally funded by the Andrew W...
and recent articles older than 12 months are available via
ProQuestProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based electronic publisher and microfilm publisher.It provides archives of sources such as newspapers, periodicals, dissertations, and aggregated databases of many types. Its content is estimated at 125 billion digital pages...
. In addition, AAAS membership includes full access to the Science
archives at the Science
website, where it is called Science
Classic. Institutions can opt to add Science
Classic to their subscriptions for an additional fee.
The Science
website also gives access to the Science of Aging Knowledge Environment (SAGE KEThe Science of Aging Knowledge Environment is an online scientific resource provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science , which also publishes the journal Science.-History and Organization:...
). Knowledge Environments are an attempt to utilize internet-based technologies to enhance access to scientific information and improve the effectiveness of information transfer. The former Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment (STKE) is now known as Science Signaling
.
See also
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation between scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for...
- Breakthrough of the Year
The Breakthrough of the Year is an annual award made by the journal Science for the most significant development in scientific research. Originating in 1989 as "the molecule of the year", inspired by Time's Man of the Year, it was renamed the "Breakthrough of the year" in 1996...
NatureNature is a prominent British scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. Most scientific journals are now highly specialized, and Nature is among the few journals that still publish original research articles across a wide range of scientific...
, another notable scientific publication and long-term competitor
Retracted article on neurotoxicity of ecstasy"Severe dopaminergic neurotoxicity in primates after a common recreational dose regimen of MDMA' ", was a paper by Dr. George Ricaurte which was published in the leading journal Science, and later retracted....
SAGE KEThe Science of Aging Knowledge Environment is an online scientific resource provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science , which also publishes the journal Science.-History and Organization:...
External links
Science
official website
Science Japan office website