The Journal des Sçavans was the first academic periodical and first appeared in January 1665. The Nouvelles de la République des Lettres first appeared in March 1684, providing a potential rival to the Journal des Sçavans. Both were basically made up of book reviews, and the two most frequent subjects treated in both were religion and history. Analysis of process types and semantic categories of themes in a sample of articles from these areas shows that, while the two periodicals had much in common, they differed insofar as the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres highlighted communication and those who were communicating, whereas the Journal des Sçavans placed emphasis on the content of the communication.