Journal of Scientific Temper
The Journal of Scientific Temper, abbreviated JST, is an English-language quarterly journal published from New Delhi, India, by CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (CSIR-NIScPR). Its first volume appeared in January 2013. Uniquely among the journals in its publisher's stable, it is not devoted to a branch of the natural sciences or engineering but to the relationship between science and society: it publishes original research on scientific temper and the public understanding of science. It is a platinum open access journal, charging neither authors nor readers. Its print ISSN is recorded as 0222-5678 and its electronic ISSN as 2278-2796.
What scientific temper means
The journal's subject is a concept with a distinctively Indian history. The term scientific temper was first used in India by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1946, in The Discovery of India, and Nehru, who became independent India's first prime minister in 1947, expanded and promoted the notion relentlessly. As an article in the journal's first volume, Subodh Mahanti's survey of the concept, explained, the discourse is older than the term: social reformers, scholars and scientists before Nehru had urged the spirit of scientific enquiry, even without the label.
The concept was later written into India's Constitution. The 42nd Amendment of 1976 inserted Article 51A, whose clause (h) makes it a fundamental duty of every citizen to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. In 1981 a group of eminent individuals issued a Statement on Scientific Temper, which drew both support and criticism; in 2011 the statement was revisited, producing a revised statement known as the Palampur Declaration, followed by international conferences and workshops on the concept. A journal founded in 2013 thus entered a live, decades-old national debate — and gave it, for the first time, a dedicated scholarly periodical.
Founding and founding editor
The journal began with Volume 1 in January 2013, published by what was then CSIR-NISCAIR, the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources. Publisher biographies identify Gauhar Raza — former Chief Scientist at NISCAIR, with some thirty-five years of experience in survey research on the public understanding of science and scientific temper — as the journal's founding editor. Raza's work, including the cultural distance model developed from longitudinal surveys carried out in India over some thirty years, exemplifies the research tradition the journal was created to publish, and he remained one of its most visible contributors.
The first volume set the tone. It carried Mahanti's perspective on scientific temper in India and a comparative paper on reason, unreason and indigenous knowledge systems in India and Africa, alongside other foundational discussions — research and argument about the concept itself, rather than science news or popularisation.
Scope and subject coverage
The publisher describes the journal as devoted to original research in public understanding of, and attitudes towards, science and technology. Its listed areas are wide: survey studies; scientific and extra-scientific belief systems; science and education; science popularisation; science fiction; the history and philosophy of science; science and the media; the role of science exhibitions, science centres and science museums; and science and technology in developing countries. The articles it publishes are, the publisher says, strong advocates of developing scientific temper among various sections of society across the globe.
That scope makes JST a journal of science studies as much as of science communication. A paper may measure what school students and teachers expect from a laboratory visit, survey public knowledge and attitudes during a pandemic, revisit the Scientific Policy Resolution that India's parliament passed in 1958, or analyse twenty-five years of public understanding surveys through the cultural distance framework — all topics that have in fact appeared in its pages.
Contents in practice
Examples from the journal's own archive show how the scope works out. Gauhar Raza's article on scientific temper as an arena of contestation in a globalised world, developed from a keynote at the 2012 International Conference on Science Communication in Nancy, France, and from his editorials in the journal, argued that science communication should aim at a scientifically tempered society. A later survey article by Raza and colleagues examined scientific knowledge, perception and attitudinal change during the coronavirus pandemic, analysing 2,223 valid questionnaires from respondents across India on the information communicated to the public, its absorption, and the perceptions and superstitions that resulted. A study of a CSIR institute's lab-visit and open-day programme, at which more than 650 school students from about 17 schools visited an exhibition, used student and teacher feedback to assess lab visits as a route to motivating students towards science. These are empirical, argumentative and historical papers — research about science's place in society, published in the society's own journal.
Publisher and institutional setting
JST's publisher, CSIR-NIScPR of Dr K. S. Krishnan Marg, New Delhi, is the institute formed on 1 April 2021 by the merger of NISCAIR with NISTADS, and it specialises in science communication and science, technology and innovation policy research. The journal sits naturally in that institute: its editorial board pages list the institute's director as publisher-side head, with Dr Meher Wan as editor in a recent volume. The journal's contact and subscription functions have been handled through the institute, and its correspondence address is the institute's New Delhi campus.
Frequency, access and publishing model
The journal is issued quarterly. Its run has continued steadily under the new publisher: the old portal listed Volume 11, No. 1 in 2023, and articles assigned to Volume 14 have since appeared on the new system carrying DOIs in the journal's own series — evidence, for a directory reader checking currency, that JST remains an active title rather than a completed experiment.
It is a platinum open access journal: the publisher states that it levies no article processing charges on its authors, and all issues are available on its website without subscription charges. Once published, copyright in a paper transfers from author to publisher under the journal's stated policy. As with the other CSIR-NIScPR journals, a new manuscript submission and processing system was introduced in March 2023, with the old portal retained for manuscripts already in process.
Free availability suits the journal's purpose. Its subject is the public relationship with science, and its potential readers include teachers, museum and science-centre professionals, communicators and policy researchers — many outside institutions with journal subscriptions. A paywall would contradict its mission.
Audience and international dimension
Although the concept of scientific temper is Indian in origin and constitutional status, the journal's stated ambition is global: its publisher says its articles advocate developing scientific temper among sections of society across the globe, and its scope expressly includes science and technology in developing countries and the public understanding research of other nations. Its pages have carried authors and subjects from beyond India — including contributors associated with institutions in China, Switzerland and South Africa in the material surveyed for this profile — reflecting the international public-understanding-of-science community to which its founding editor belonged.
Significance
The Journal of Scientific Temper occupies a niche no other Indian journal fills: a quarterly, peer-oriented, open access periodical devoted entirely to research on scientific temper and the public understanding of science. Founded in 2013 by India's national science communication institute, under a founding editor who was himself a leading researcher in the field, it connects an older national tradition — running from Nehru's 1946 formulation through the constitutional duty of 1976, the 1981 Statement and the 2011 Palampur Declaration — to contemporary empirical research on education, media, museums, belief and public attitudes. For this directory, it is the key Indian periodical for the study of how societies understand, and misunderstand, science.
