The Genesis of a Scientific Article as a Form of Scientific Communication

The paper considers the transformation of scientific communication in the process of the genesis of an article as its specific form. The main goal is to analyze communication in a scientific article. The main tasks of the research concern reconstruction of the genesis of the scientific article, the analysis of the communicative situation of a scientific article, studying of author and reader as well as text transformation in a scientific article at all stages of its development. By means of the textual analysis, the origin of a scientific article in the epoch of the first scientific journals is derived from the epistolary genre. The functional continuity of these formats of scientific communication is noted. A scientific letter became less important, but remained among the means of informal communication, losing the informative theoretical content. In the process of further institutionalization of scientific communication, one can note a significant transformation of author, reader and text of the scientific article itself, while it is important to mention that the most significant changes occur in the second half of the 20th century. Communication opportunities that appear with the development of the Internet and Web 2.0 make it possible to outline some of the prospects and trends in the development of scientific communication, but it is noted that even in online communication, the form of the article remains a centering element of scientific communication. The results presented in the study suggest an interpretation of the genesis of a scientific article, which makes it possible to explicate the actual communicative component of a given text format. This interpretation can be used for further analysis of the transformation of communication within individual scientific disciplines, as well as for the study of the newly emerging communication formats.