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With the emergence of Olympic internationalism, scholarly networking in East Central Europe came to be dominated by the idea of scholars representing their nations, which replaced the previously leading pattern of private elite scholars with extensive international contacts. This also formalised trans-border contacts, which became increasingly seen as international. In this article, we trace the relationship between these formal and informal networks from the late 19th century to the end of the socialist period, showing that even as formalisation grew, it depended heavily on a variety of informal connections. Even during the period of socialism, when the state sought to control international exchange, scholars used informality to circumvent politically determined constraints. Nevertheless, these informal contacts were not outside the system, but were an integral part of it and depended on formal preconditions. Concentrating on Czechoslovak-Polish relations we argue that in addressing the issue of the relationship between the formal and the informal, a combination of sources must be used, which should then be scrutinised for the stories their authors wish to tell. While archival sources are used for the formal part, oral histories or memoirs reveal the informal part. In East Central Europe, formal sources are likely to ignore informality, especially when it was associated with illegality, whereas ego-documents, especially those produced after 1989, are likely to ignore or downplay connections to the state and overemphasise informality as a means of acting outside politics. Thus, writing the history of informality in socialist scholarship, not only in terms of international contacts but also in terms of everyday practices, is a way of developing counter-narratives to the state-centeredness of current research, which must be linked to a critical study of the contemporary memory of socialist scholarship that shapes the narratives told in oral history., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

long as scientists discuss scientific problems and communicate with each other, scholarly communication is an essential part of scientific activities. In the very ancient time the scholarly communication was only an oral tradition, a face to face communication. Later on, the written form of communication has taken place. Since the invention of movable printing types by Gutenberg the scholarly communication was preferable in written and printed form. Since 15 years the revolution has taken place with the digital information, which is now available for scholarly communication. There was a paradigm shift from the printed and oral tradition to a new digital electronic science communication. In the future the traditional printed book information for scientific communication will be replaced by problem solving portals with all electronic and digital tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses early modern botanical nomenclature, the practices of identifying and publishing synonyms in particular, as a collaborative "information science". Before Linnaean nomenclature became the lingua franca of botany, it was inevitable that, over time, the same plant was given several names by different people, which created confusion and made communication among botanists increasingly difficult. What names counted as synonyms and actually referred to the same plant had to be identified by meticulously comparing living and dried specimens of this and similar plants as well as relevant illustrations und descriptions in the botanical literature. Identifying synonyms required and generated an ever-expanding mass of data, which was used continuously to adjust and rearrange plant names. Despite the greatest care, judgements on synonyms were not definitive, which meant that published lists of synonyms for individual species of plants were in a state of flux and had to be constantly updated, corrected, and rewritten. This required long-term international collaborations, the accumulated results of which were not published once but consecutively, in augmented and corrected editions of a book. As a result of this networked approach, synonyms are networked names that reflect the epistemic interconnectedness of the botanical community. These questions will be discussed with a focus on the Dutch botanist Johannes Burman (1706-1779), who placed synonyms at the centre of his work as posthumous editor-and co-author-of the botanical manuscripts that were left behind by other botanists.

: The American Otological Society (AOS) has been on the forefront of advancing the science of auditory and vestibular physiology, and art of ear medicine since its founding in 1868. For 150 years, through its publications, the AOS has provided a critical forum to debate these advances, highlighting treatment successes and failures, and served a place to celebrate its history. This historical review provides an overview of the publications of the AOS since its founding: the Transactions of the annual meeting from 1868 through 2006, Treatises on Otosclerosis (1928-1935), the History of the Society from the 100 and 125th anniversary, and the sponsored Society journals-American Journal of Otology (1879-1883, 1979-2000) and Otology & Neurotology (2001-present).