JSTOR on Presidential Scholarly Publishing

President Obama this week joined the exclusive club of presidents who have also published in scholarly journals. Obama penned an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association on his signature legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, and how lawmakers should build on it. While Obama may be the first sitting president to publish in a scholarly journal, the book and journal database JSTOR on Thursday published a blog post on some other presidential publishing pursuits. The tradition goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, whose "A Memoir on the Discovery of Certain Bones of a Quadruped of the Clawed Kind in the Western Parts of Virginia" appeared in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society back in 1799, while he was still vice president. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan also published scholarly articles at various points in their political careers.