Centaurus (journal)

Centaurus (journal)
Title	Centaurus
Discipline	History of Science
Abbreviation	Centaurus
Editor	(see Editorial Structure and Peer Review)
Publisher	Cambridge University Press for the European Society for the History of Science
Country	United Kingdom
History	1950–present
Frequency	Quarterly
Issn	0008-8994
Eissn	1477-3064

Centaurus (journal) is a peer‑reviewed scholarly journal devoted to the history of science, technology, and medicine. It publishes research on the historical development of natural philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, and related fields, engaging with figures, institutions, instruments, and texts from antiquity to the contemporary period. The journal appears quarterly under the aegis of Cambridge University Press in association with the European Society for the History of Science.

History

The journal traces its institutional origins to post‑World War II scholarly reconstruction when practitioners associated with the Royal Society, the British Society for the History of Science, the International Academy of the History of Science, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin sought publication venues for historiographical work on figures such as Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Antoine Lavoisier, Carolus Linnaeus, and Charles Darwin. Early editorial boards included scholars connected to Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Warburg Institute, with contributions referencing collections at the Bodleian Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the Library of Congress. Over subsequent decades the journal reflected methodological shifts influenced by the Annales School, the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, the work of Thomas Kuhn, the archival turns championed at Harvard, Princeton, and Leiden, and the social history approaches promoted by the Science Museum Group and the Smithsonian Institution. Landmark special issues have been organized around anniversaries of the Royal Observatory, the Vatican Observatory, the Royal Society of London, and symposia connected to the History of Science Society and the British Society for the History of Science.

Scope and Focus

Centaurus publishes articles on the lives, manuscripts, instruments, and institutions tied to emblematic figures like Ptolemy, Hypatia, Alhazen, Johannes Kepler, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, and Rosalind Franklin. The journal also addresses archival collections such as the Newton Papers, the Royal Society Archives, the Galileo Galilei manuscripts, and holdings at the Wellcome Trust. The scope extends to histories of laboratories, observatories, botanical gardens, universities (including University of Padua, University of Göttingen, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge), museums, corporations like Rothschild banking family-sponsored initiatives, and imperial projects associated with the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, and Meiji Japan. Centaurus frequently situates scientific practice in relation to legal instruments such as patents filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, international exhibitions like the Great Exhibition, and landmark publications including the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and On the Origin of Species.

Editorial Structure and Peer Review

The journal is governed by an international editorial board with an editor‑in‑chief and associate editors drawn from institutions including Harvard University, University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley, University College London, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Max Planck Institute, and the University of Tokyo. Submissions undergo double‑blind peer review coordinated with reviewers affiliated to the History of Science Society, the European Society for the History of Science, the International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences, and specialist groups such as the Society for the History of Technology and the British Society for the History of Science. Editorial policy emphasizes archival research, philological rigor, historiographical awareness (engaging scholars like Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, Joseph Needham), and methodological plurality including biographical study, material culture analysis, and digital humanities collaborations with projects at the Wellcome Library and the Bibliotheca Hertziana.

Publication and Access

Published quarterly by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Society for the History of Science, the journal is available in print and online through university libraries at institutions like the British Library, Harvard Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and national research libraries in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Access models include institutional subscriptions, individual subscriptions, and hybrid open access options in line with European research funders such as the European Research Council and national funding bodies in the United Kingdom and France. The journal complies with indexing policies used by CrossRef, ORCID integration for authors, and archiving through Portico and CLOCKSS alongside library consortia in North America, Europe, and Australasia.

Abstracting and Indexing

Centaurus is abstracted and indexed in major bibliographic services and citation databases used by historians of science and adjacent fields: Historical Abstracts, Scopus, Web of Science (Social Sciences Citation Index), JSTOR, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, ERIH PLUS, and the Directory of Open Access Journals for eligible articles. Abstracting coverage facilitates discovery through national bibliographies, union catalogues such as WorldCat, and specialist databases maintained by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health historical collections.

Notable Articles and Impact

The journal has published influential articles on paradigm shifts exemplified by Albert Einstein’s relativity debates, manuscript studies of Nicolaus Copernicus, archival revelations pertaining to Gregor Mendel and botanical experiments, reassessments of Robert Boyle’s corpuscular theories, and studies of scientific networks involving the Royal Society, the Académie des Sciences, and the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Its impact is reflected in citations in monographs from university presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton, and in lectures and symposia at venues including the British Museum, the Royal Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Max Planck Society. Articles from the journal have informed museum exhibitions on James Watt, the history of vaccination connected to Edward Jenner, and digital editions of the Corpus Christi College manuscripts.

Related Societies and Conferences

Centaurus maintains close links with learned societies and conference series: the European Society for the History of Science, the History of Science Society, the British Society for the History of Science, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and regional groups such as the Société Française d’Histoire des Sciences and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik. Special issues often arise from panels at annual meetings hosted by the History of Science Society, the British Society for the History of Science, the International Congress of History of Science and Technology, and symposia at universities including Cambridge, Oxford, Leiden, and Kyoto.

Category:History of science journals