Tatiana D. Sokolova

Science communication studies is a subject of research for a whole range of scientific disciplines: epistemology, philosophy and history of science, STS, linguistics, media studies and many others, that is, they are a complex interdisciplinary system of various approaches and theories that can both complement and contradict each other. In this article I will try to highlight several possible theoretical directions for the study of scientific communication concerning one of its specific aspects – scientific periodicals in their historical formation. The main distinguishing criterion of scientific articles, unlike other types of scientific communication, is a set of relatively rigid formal requirements for structuring the information that the authors are trying to communicate to their colleagues. Through the history of scientific periodicals, it is possible to determine how these requirements have been formed and shaped epistemically and technically; how exactly a scientific article acquires the status of the main unit of scientific communication. Here I would like to outline several theoretical and methodological options that can be later applied to the analysis of empirical material (series 1–4 of the journal Commentarii Academiae scientiarum imperialis Petropolitanae).