Royal Society Archive

The Royal Society has today(Wed. 26 Oct. 2011) announced that its world-famous historical journal archive – which includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal – has been made permanently free to access online.

Around 60,000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive, with papers published more than 70 years ago now becoming freely available.


The Royal Society is the world’s oldest scientific publisher, with the first edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appearing in 1665. Henry Oldenburg – Secretary of the Royal Society and first Editor of the publication – ensured that it was “licensed by the council of the society, being first reviewed by some of the members of the same”, thus making it the first ever peer-reviewed journal

Articles to archive

As part of our recent website update we will be building a comprehensive online archive of local history. This will be found under the 'People, Buildings, Landmarks & Events' section.
We invite everyone with an interest in archiving their own piece of history to contact us to find out how to contribute.
Your entry may be a small but fascinating piece of family history, a fact about your house or street or a topic you have been researching. If it's of interest to you, it will be of interest to us ! This is your chance to help build easily accessible history for the community.
Please get in touch via the 'Contact Us' page.