During the 20th century, U.S. publishers of scientific and technical books and journals moved out of the shadow of their European counterparts and began creation of a communications infrastructure designed to assist the dynamic expansion of the American research enterprise. In the resulting interlocking, concatenated system, for-profit and non-profit, private and public interests entwined. Publishers accommodated the scientists' demand for multiple revisions, cooperative editing reflecting the "team" organization of modern science, and "on approval" sales policies, and willingly cooperated in voluntary censorship during World War II; yet they paid only lip-service to scientists' expectations of control over content of popular science. This neglected area of the history of science raises many fundamental questions about the long-term relationship between research communities and the organizations that manufacture and disseminate the essential tools of their trade.

Marcel C. LaFollette is a writer and consultant in Washington, DC, and is affiliated with the Public Policy Program at George Washington University as Adjunct Professor. Dr. LaFollette is Editor Emeritus of the journals Science Communication (1991-1998) and Science, Technology, & Human Values (1977-1987), and now serves on the editorial boards for those journals, as well as on the editorial boards of American Behavioral Scientist and Accountability in Research. She has published six books, including Stealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing (University of California Press, 1992), and is currently working on a book which reassesses popular and political representations of science in the mass media.

Fall 1999