The English word "journal" was first used in the 16th century according to various authoritative sources, but most Western scholars agreed that the existence of the journal in its original meaning as a daily record can be traced back to Acta Diurna (Daily Events) in ancient roman cities as early as 59 B.C. Other scholars argued that the earliest journals existed in ancient China between 800-700 B.C. This article follows the trace of some earliest writing in the human history: the Daily Events in ancient Rome, the Sumerian Tables, the Pyramid Text in Egypt and the Court Chronicles in ancient China. The article concludes that only the Daily Events in Rome and the Court Chronicles in China were produced in serial formats and they intended to preserve and disseminate the information.
There were several important events in the evolution of journals and other scholarly manuscripts and publications. The most important ones include the papermaking and the movable type printings in China and later the Gutenberg's Press. After its invention in 105 A.D. in China, paper dominated the market as the preferred writing material for nearly 2000years. But another invention, movable type printing in the 1040s by a Chinese commoner, was not followed up in the East. It was Gutenberg's invention of typography 400 years later in Germany that made the mass production of identical texts possible. The combination of reduced cost for paper and Gutenberg's Press was the necessity condition for the mass production of scholarly materials.
In the mid-17th century, the scientific revolution in Europe created sufficient demand for scholarly journals to cover the gap between daily newspaper for entertainment and the books for well-established theories, and the earliest scholarly journals came into existence in Europe around 1660s for the educated elite. After the industrial revolution in the 18th century, the number of print publications as well as scholarly journals expanded greatly since the 19th century. This article analyzes all records in the OCLC database by data range, and concludes that the rate of print publications in the 20th century, except during the two world war periods, has been exponential.
During the digital age beginning in the 1960s and exploded in the 1990s after the invention of the World Wide Web, computers and laser printers have brought changes to the publishing industry. In the 1990s, most journals are created on and issued in some kind of electronic form. However, the distribution and sale of those journals are still in the paper format. The article concludes by asking the question whether paper publications will still be the dominant media in the 21st century.