MC:Notes

Despite significant advances in our communication technology, academic publication retains a model that is over two hundred years old. Monatliche Correspondenz was an early journal which assimilated letters from astronomers across Europe, and redistributed them in edited form through compiling the letters into volumes. Franz von Zach, the Hungarian astronomer performed the editing. In 1801 issues of Monatliche Correspondenz closely tracked the discovery, loss and rediscovery of the dwarf planet Ceres. It was through this rediscovery that Carl Friederich Gauss became famous. It was Franz von Zach himself that was able to recover the planet at the co-ordinates that Gauss predicted. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the journal is that the discovery, loss of the planet, computation of its orbit and its rediscovery was carried out in a single volume within a single year at a time when Europe lacked good roads or canals or railways and was engaged in war. The volumes of Monatliche Correspondenz were presumably transported around Europe in postal satchels on the back of mules. And yet publication and communication was able to occur at such rates. Gauss took six weeks to compute the orbit. He invented a host of techniques to do so, including least squares, and eventually wrote up these ideas in Theoria motus in 1809.

MC Notes is inspired by the observation that many of our publication processes have actually become slower since then. The original motivation for publication was communication, but after von Zach no other astronomer was able to perform the enormous labour of editing and collating the letters and eventually the journal failed. A new model for journal communication emerged involving peer review and editorial boards. This made journals more sustainable, and they also began to be used as a form of academic currency.

MC Notes is a reimagining of the journal driven by trying to picture what von Zach would have done today with access to the modern tools of the internet. We have tried to create a sustainable model of submission based around Jupyter notebooks and Github. Our aim is for rapid turn around and communication of ideas. In a nod to our inspiration, MC Notes is named for Monatliche Correspondenze, with notes attempting to emphasise the informality of the communication. Work will be peer reviewed using the Github issues tracker.

See How To Submit of how to submit to our journal.