This Symposium focuses on the importance of communication in making knowledge work, for it is through communication that individual facts become public knowledge. We are intentionally collapsing the usual dichotomy between scientific communication and popularisation, by including contributors interested in the communication between scholarly specialists, as well as those who focus popularisation activities, whether by scientific experts or others.

The printed word has dominated scientific communication for several centuries in the form of books, learned journals and popular magazines. The editorial and commercial practicalities of the publishing trade have shaped the communication of scientific knowledge as much as authorial intentions, and our contributors will all devote careful attention to the ways in which scientific communication was shaped by publishing practices.

The Symposium takes advantage of the opportunities offered by the international Congress, by bringing together scholars from many national communities, to enable comparative, trans-national discussions to take place. Our papers address topics from Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece and the Ottoman Empire. We are linking scholars from STEP (Science and Technology in the European Periphery) with those who work on the better-known British context, to try to create a truly European vision of science publishing activities.

We have also made a point of including speakers representing a long timeframe. The 19th century is clearly the heart of the Symposium, but we have sought to extend our chronological coverage in both directions and hope that this longer durée will enable a more nuanced picture of the development of the spectrum of scholarly and popular publishing activities.