Isis (journal, 1816)

Isis was an encyclopedic journal that focused on articles on natural science, medicine, technology, economics as well as art and history. It also published important articles on science policy and the organization of science. Edited by Lorenz Oken and published by Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, Isis was the first interdisciplinary journal in the German-speaking world.

The 41 volumes of the journal named after the Egyptian goddess Isis were nominally published from 1817 to 1848. However, the first issue appeared on August 1, 1816, while the printing of the last issue was delayed until February 1850. Until 1832, Isis bore the title Encyclopädische Zeitung. After the focus of the articles published in it had changed, Oken changed the title to Encyclopädische Zeitschrift, vorzüglich für Naturgeschichte, vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie in 1833. Initially printed in Jena, the journal was banned in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and from the summer of 1819 was produced in nearby Rudolstadt in the court printing works of the Principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. The magazine's original print run of 1,500 copies fell rapidly in the first few years of its existence and amounted to around 200 copies in the last few years.

Originally conceived as a non-political journal, Oken was forced to vehemently defend the freedom of the press in the first years of Isis' existence. This resulted in numerous lawsuits against Oken, some of which overlapped in time, which led to temporary bans on Isis in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. In the run-up to the Carlsbad Decrees, this led to Oken's dismissal as a professor at the University of Jena at the end of June 1819 under pressure from the states of the Holy Alliance.

From 2006 to 2013, a project funded by the German Research Foundation at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena studied the significance of Isis for scientific communication and the popularization of the natural sciences in the first half of the 19th century.