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Welcome to our peer-reviewed journal where authors from across the world publish on what matters in science museums today.

The Science Museum Group Journal presents the global research community with peer-reviewed papers relevant to the work of science museums everywhere. It is completely Open Access and freely shares the research of our five national UK museums while warmly inviting contributions from international museum professionals, academics and researchers to form creative conversations.

 

Issues

24

Autumn 2025

Current Issue

Issue 24 is particularly interested in research practices, and asks important questions about how the research performed by museums might best be decolonial, safe, and ethical. Karen Baker and Mike Esbester discuss the collaborative research conducted through the Railway Work, Life & Death project, highlighting the way collaborative research working across disparate resources (personal histories, […]

23

Spring 2025

In the Spring 2025 issue of the Science Museum Group Journal, we step into our second decade of publication with an exciting suite of articles and reviews, with a special emphasis on research that considers future developments in museum practices. This issue features a keynote paper presented by Colin Jones at the conference accompanying the […]

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0 Years

The Journal has been publishing the work of academics, curators and scholars for eleven years.

0 Articles

the Journal has published 266 articles as of its Autumn 2024 issue.

0 Annual visitors

The Journal is grateful for each of our 42,000 readers.

Highlights from our recent issue

Silence in the collections

In this article, Hartman Deetz and Milly Mulcahey-Knight collaboratively interpret two objects made of birchbark in the care of the Science Museum Group (SMG).

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Museum-led repatriation of Second World War human remains

This article explores how the remains of Preben Holger Larsen, a Danish resistance member killed in the Holocaust, came to be discovered in a museum collection and repatriated to Denmark.

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Industrial museums and the potential of anniversaries

Oliver Betts (Research Lead, National Railway Museum) reflects on the opportunities for new research opened up by significant museum anniversaries.

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Collaborative working with challenging histories

Mike Esbester and Karen Baker discuss the strengths of collaborative working in the Railway Work, Life & Death project, especially in dealing with challenging aspects of railway history.

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Featured content

Two images of a man's hands holding wood carving tools.
By Paul Craddock, Anna Harris and Film contributor: Cal Murphy Barton

Tracing embodied knowledge in the history of science and medicine: expanding the role of film in historical research

Paul Craddock and Anna Harris trace embodied knowledge in the history of science and medicine, arguing that historians might develop filmmaking methods to engage with historical or re-enacted practices of making and performance.

By Annie Thwaite

A history of amulets in ten objects

By Yuen Ting Yiu

‘Contemplative wonder’: the potential for learning in museum open storage

This article uses the Open Store in the National Railway Museum as a case study to explore the impact of contemplative wonder on visitor learning in museum open storage facilities.