The Archiv für Ohrenheilkunde (Archive of Otology): a structural analysis of the first 50 years (1864–1914)

In 1864, Anton von Tröltsch in Würzburg, Hermann Schwartze in Halle/Saale, and Adam Politzer in Vienna founded the Archiv für Ohrenheilkunde (Archive of Otology), the ancestor of the European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology and Head and Neck. It was the world’s first journal solely devoted to otology, and thus to otorhinolaryngology. The aim of this study was to analyse the structure of this journal and its contents during the first 50 years of its publication, until it definitively became an otorhinolaryngological journal in 1915. A total of 2,271 articles were registered during this time. They were classified according to content topic, article type, and the number of figures and graphs that they contained. Almost three-quarters of the articles were related to purely otological topics, as implied by the journal’s title. Until the turn of the twentieth century, the majority of the articles were original papers or case reports. The number of original papers declined over the decades in favour of case reports. One-third of each volume usually consisted of a vast variety of items, such as congress announcements, conference proceedings, and book reviews. The journal also maintained a wide variety of scientific and current social and political subjects. Otological reviews and conference proceedings were key landmarks of the journal. All of these various papers provided an overview of the historical organisation and development of otology between 1864 and 1914. At that time, the Archiv für Ohrenheilkunde was a leading national and international journal.