Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
The scientific periodical begun in 1665, cited in the essay as the origin of peer review, which later scholarship disputes.
Periodical · 1665Sources & confidence: High confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Institutional history distinguishes founding from formal refereeing.
- Royal Society: History of Philosophical Transactions
Oldenburg launched the journal in March 1665; Society takeover in 1752 and more systematic expert review in the 1830s.
- Royal Society: 360 years of publishing
Dates systematic peer review to 1832.
- Wikidata entity API: Philosophical Transactions
Inspected entity label and description for identifier matching only; does not validate the work’s argument.
What this check doesn’t establish
- This is a check of the Society’s historical account, not archival research or validation of a single origin for all peer review.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
The essay lists it among the institutions that emerged after printing to solve for credibility, and says it "established the template: claims vetted by experts before publication".
The journal's date is right and its significance is not in doubt. The peer review attribution is what Moxham and Fyfe were written to correct: refereeing developed over the following century and a half, and the term itself dates only to the 1970s.
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/works/philosophical-transactions.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25