Issue 08 of the Science Museum Group Journal is now live



Issue 08 is supersized. This is partly due to a rare collection of papers gathered under a Museums theme. These are authored by senior curators and museum directors (Dirk Van Delft,Peter Donhauser, Martha Fleming, Jennifer Landry and Robert Bud) who were involved in experimental responses to a perceived crisis in science museums at the turn of this century.

In other articles Charlotte Sleigh looks at the cultural history of the wireless through a work by science-fiction author E C Large, and Barry Murnane et al use a study of Dr Nelson’s Inhaler to explore the growth of inhalation therapy in the mid-nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Sophie Goggins et al return to museum practice by considering how museums display prosthetics, drawing on examples from the Royal College of Surgeons, London, and National Museums Scotland. The issue also includes three articles by entrants to the Journal’s first annual writing competition for early career scholars: John Kannenberg, Joshua Butt, and Jean-Francois Fava-Verde. The judges were impressed by the standard of entries in this first year of the prize, and we are keen to continue to encourage and support early-career researchers. Do submit your articles for this year’s prize by 1st March 2018 for a chance to win the £500 prize.

The Journal is always looking for ways to innovate. In issue 08 we present an experimental type of article - ‘Reflections on Research’ (see Tim Boon et al). Here, the idea is to publish the research that usually predates any public museum exhibition or programme. This work can take place over several years and is usually highly collaborative but rarely discussed. We welcome contributions of similar articles from other museums and institutions.

But issue 08 starts and finishes with articles questioning the nature of modern scholarship and scholarly publication. In his Editorial, Justin Dillon considers what open-access journals can do to encourage generous scholarship, while the Journal’s new Reviews Editor, Geoff Belknap, asks what readers want from a modern reviews section.