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Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION

In introducing the Area 2 panel discussion, Dr. Elmer Hutchisson first defined an ideal abstracting service as one which would cover all articles in its own and borderline fields, would condense to infinitesimal length the significant contents of these articles, would provide unambiguous abstracts and indexes in every reader’s own language with zero (or negative) time lag, and would cost nothing. Recognizing that such specifications are not likely to be met, he pointed out that compromises must be made and said the panel had decided to organize the discussion around two basic functions of an abstracting service, with each member speaking briefly on a particular aspect or problem in relation to one of these functions. The functions and sub-topics were as follows:

Function 1: To assist scientists in keeping abreast of scientific progress

A. Promptness of publication

B. Quality of abstracts

C. Per cent of condensation

D. Classification

E. Subject coverage

F. Economy in abstracting

Function 2: To assist scientists in retrieving specific information

A. Coverage for retrieval

B. Indexing

C. Economy of space

D. Monetary economy

The Chairman closed his introductory remarks by reminding the audience that panel members are likely to be more difficult than subject matter to organize and predicting that these panel members would use considerable freedom in deciding what to discuss under the assigned topics. Summarized below are each panel member’s remarks and those of the registrants who spoke from the floor during the discussion periods.

Promptness of publication

The Chairman of the Panel discussed the first sub-topic. To point up the problem of promptness in abstracting, Dr. Hutchisson presented a scatter diagram of representative data on time lags (a) from receipt of a paper by an

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

editor to its publication and (b) from publication to appearance of the abstract. The former varied from two or three months to a year to two; the latter, if a new abstract is written, from three to six months. He contrasted these delays with the hour or two required by a newspaper, or the seconds needed by television, to report the latest murder.

He then mentioned three current approaches to improving promptness. One is to airmail proof to abstract journals; this is being done in the physics field and is discussed in the paper by Dr. B.M.Crowther. A second is exemplified in the new Physical Review Letters in which its editor, Dr. S.A.Goudsmit, attempts to report recent research within two weeks; in fact, by including some abstracts of papers still to appear in the Physical Review, he is achieving a measure of negative time lag. The third approach cited by Dr. Hutchisson is the use by abstracting services of the so-called “author” abstract—that is, the abstract which appears with a paper when it is first published. He noted that this third method raises a controversial point of long standing and one about which much more undoubtedly would be heard during the afternoon.

Quality of abstracts

Dr. S.H.Gould limited his remarks on this sub-topic to one phase of quality in abstracting, that of subject slanting as discussed in some detail in the paper in which Mr. Saul Herner reports on his analysis of abstracts of the same paper appearing in two or more of nine major abstracting journals. For the more than 200 papers studied, no significant slanting occurred toward the particular subject field of the abstracting journal and, in fact, seldom did the abstracting journal’s product differ appreciably from the original abstract. Dr. Gould said he found considerable encouragement in these results because he frequently “borrows” abstracts from other journals for use in Mathematics Reviews. He noted that this practice might itself appear to introduce considerable delay, since he ordinarily does not obtain such an abstract until it has appeared in its regular journal. Actually it does not do so, however, because he indulges in such borrowing only after he has been unable to get the abstract from one of his own abstractors. He felt that the results of the Herner study indicated that multiple use of good author abstracts will not seriously reduce abstracting quality.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Sir Herbert Howard referred first to statements made in the morning session to the effect that scientists do not make a great deal of use of abstracts. He then said that his organization (Commonwealth Agriculture Bureau) issues 14

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

abstracting services, the production of any one of which requires perusal of several thousand serials in some 30 languages. Since he believes no single scientist, working entirely on his own, could possibly keep abreast of this much material, he suggested that the morning statements indicated either bad abstracts or bad scientists.

Apropos of Sir Lindor Brown’s emphasis the previous evening on the importance of liaison between the producer, the distributor, and the user of scientific information, Sir Herbert described the manner in which this problem is handled in his organization. Each editor of an abstracting journal, and as far as possible the abstractors also, must be versed in its subject field. Each individual bureau is located in a research institute dealing with its subject. Each journal is aimed at a particular set of readers and liaison is encouraged between scientists, editors, and bureau directors. Further, official correspondents, also familiar with the particular subject field, are established in the various countries of the Commonwealth.

Dr. J.E.L.Farradane, referring to the Herner paper mentioned by Dr. Gould, said he believes that there should be some degree of subject slanting in a specialized abstracting journal and that this is why readers go to a particular journal. Therefore, if the Herner findings are correct, he thinks something is wrong with abstracting. Also, he thinks that one should not think of an author abstract as being unslanted. Dr. Farradane believes instead that it usually is slanted in what seems to him to be the worst possible way—toward what the author hoped to do and thinks he wrote, but not necessarily toward what he did do and write. Therefore, in Dr. Farradane’s opinion, a specialized abstracting service never should lift an abstract directly from the original journal.

Per cent of condensation

Professor J.D.Bernal began his comments on this sub-topic by saying he would make his per cent of condensation as large as possible. He then mentioned two aspects of “keeping up” with science—one, staying abreast on a contemporary basis and the other, catching up. He suggested that the time lag in issuance of abstracts may equal or exceed the “half life” of the material abstracted; in which case abstracts can be of little use for the former function. For the latter aspect, however, they can be very valuable to researchers starting new projects, to teachers, to writers, and the like. He believes the typical scientist uses abstracts to bring his knowledge within about three years of the present and then goes on his own, searching journals, talking to and corresponding with scientists, and so forth. For this kind of use, Professor Bernal finds the present abstracting pattern fairly adequate.

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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Regarding scope, he would argue for the indicative (or descriptive) type of abstract in general journals and the informative type in special journals with the latter always being subject slanted. He said that in the special abstract journals with which he is familiar, the abstracts are slanted. Finally, Professor Bernal raised the question of whether abstracts are needed at all. Referring to the papers by Dr. Isaac Welt and Mr. Eugene Garfield, he suggested that the need is not for lists of publications but for well-indexed lists of facts. He believes such indexes might well take the place of indicative abstracts while providing an important supplement to informative abstracts. In closing, Professor Bernal suggested that careful consideration be given to varying the length of the abstract with the importance of the paper.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Dr. Chauncey D.Leake strongly urged condensation of abstracts through use of a telegraphic style, saying he believes at least 50 per cent reduction in length could be achieved with no loss in reader comprehension.

Dr. S.R.Ranganathan urged publication of abstracts in a strictly and minutely classified subject sequence. He believes abstracts then could be limited to new facts and ideas with much of the material that now appears in them being taken care of by the subject headings.

Dr. Farradane said, “Heaven save us from the telegraphic abstract.” His experience as editor of an abstract journal indicates that people do not get adequate information from such abstracts and he strongly urges complete sentences, logical sequence, and readable style.

Dr. John W.Tukey suggested that for most people keeping abreast means trying to be (1) fully informed on the literature in a field of zero width and (2) progressively less well informed as the field grows wider. He proposed that papers be given a “surprise” rating with abstracts of those having a high rating appearing in general journals and those with zero surprise being published only for narrow specialists.

Dr. Hutchisson pointed out that very few of the papers in the ICSI preprint volume carry abstracts.

Classification

Dr. George Shortley introduced the sub-topic of classification. He noted that much of the material involving storage and retrieval in papers of Areas 4, 5, and 6 is relevant to the classification problem. He then raised the question of what role the major abstracting services should play in the classified organization of scientific information. He asked, “Who better than the abstractor

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

can classify an article according to any given scheme or select the key words for any system of correlative or coordinate indexing?” He suggested a pattern whereby abstractors would supply such information along with the abstracts, with the key words then providing the basis for clerical selection of papers and abstracts to be indexed by specialized laboratories and libraries, or to be routed automatically to individual scientists. In closing, Dr. Shortley referred to an Area 5 paper by Dr. E.J.Crane and Dr. C.L.Bernier which points out that multitudes of users of present documentation are in the future, many yet unborn. He then asked what plans the editors of today’s abstracting services are making, looking toward systems of information retrieval that will meet the needs of the future.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Dr. Crowther stated it to be his very strong feeling that a wide classification scheme suitable for use by a major abstracting journal can serve as only the first step in any useful retrieval system. Individual users have a vast variety of specialized needs which the abstracting service is unaware of and therefore cannot meet.

Dr. Ranganathan disagreed strongly with the idea that the abstractor is the best classifier, suggesting that each has a highly specialized task and should be a specialist in it.

Three speakers dealt briefly with the matter of education in the use of scientific literature. Mr. Gerald Estrin urged that greater emphasis upon such education would be one of the most useful ways of helping the scientists of the future. Sir Alfred Egerton mentioned that this was one of the recommendations of the 1948 Royal Society Conference in London. Mr. Herner cautioned against overemphasis on uniformity in education for the use of literature lest the needs of the scientist be subordinated to the vagaries of the systems and “1984” arrive even before 1984.

Subject coverage

Mr. G.Miles Conrad began the discussion of this phase of abstracting and indexing. He noted first that when users are asked what is most important in the abstracting field they invariably reply, “Complete, prompt coverage, and prompt indexing.” He then spoke briefly about five phases of coverage. First, he pointed out that any statement regarding percentage of coverage by an abstracting service implies knowledge of the total size of the literature in that field. Only if one knows what exists can he determine whether or not adequate coverage is being achieved. Here, he complimented Miss Estelle Brodman and

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

Mr. Seymour Taine on their paper, a quantitative survey of medical literature, and urged that similar studies be made in other fields. Knowing what literature exists, one then can start trying to acquire it—his second point. Mr. Conrad stated that conventional periodicals present no acquisition problem. Where language or obscure origin poses difficulties, interservice cooperation can be employed effectively along lines described for exchange domestically in the paper by Dr. Otto Frank, internationally in Dr. Crowther’s article, and within a subject field in Dr. A.B.Agard Evans’ discussion of building literature. An acquisition problem of increasing seriousness is presented by unpublished documents such as conference papers and reports of various kinds. A paper by Mr. Felix Liebesny suggests that a large proportion of the former is destined to be lost. Mr. Smith’s paper discusses the latter type of literature at some length as to nature, scope, and availability.

Third, Mr. Conrad pointed out the increasing importance of the cost factor as complete coverage is approached. Here he found particularly pertinent the cost analyses for different levels of coverage presented in the paper by Dr. and Mrs. Malcolm Rigby. There is, of course, the question of whether complete coverage is desirable—his fourth point. Here he cited two papers which seemed to a degree to debate this matter. In one, Dr. C.S.Sabel, after reviewing numerous unclassified reports, stated, “The references in an incomplete list of documents are unlikely to indicate more than a small proportion of the remaining documents.” However, the Lykoudis, Liley, Touloukian paper suggests as an adequate approach, obtaining leads from abstracting services and then approaching bibliographic completeness from the references in the primary articles so located.

In considering his fifth point, promptness, Mr. Conrad referred to the Herner paper on subject slanting mentioned above. He emphasized the great saving in time that can be achieved by using author abstracts and suggested that these can be made acceptable if authors are required to submit them with the manuscript and if journal editors take editorial responsibility for them. He noted that the ICSU Abstracting Board has urged primary journals to follow this procedure.

In closing, Mr. Conrad emphasized that deficiences in coverage by abstracting services almost without exception are due to insufficient resources of personnel and funds and not to indifference to the growing literature.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Dr. Hutchisson suggested that someone might wish to comment on whether abstracting services should cover some journals completely and others partially, or only the important papers in a large number of journals.

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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On this point, Dr. Farradane commented that type of coverage is a function of whether or not the abstracting journal claims to be complete. He then went on to suggest the danger of too much coverage—that perhaps the larger abstracting journals are becoming so large as to be almost unreadable and that maybe the day of the comprehensive abstracting service is over. He suggested that the reader might be better served by smaller, special-field services which cover borderline material reasonably accurately and adequately.

Dr. Crane commented that whether all or part of a journal should be covered is wholly a function of subject matter. Regarding Dr. Farradane’s suggestion, he pointed out the overlapping that necessarily would occur if, say, 20 abstracting journals were replaced by 100 highly specialized ones. He recognized that some journals are getting very large and the time may come when division is necessary but said a single journal still is the most economical way to serve the many people working in a field as broad as chemistry.

Dr. Russell Ackoff cited the following data from a Case operations research study: That in 1957 the average industrial chemist read 0.5 per cent of the articles abstracted in Chemical Abstracts and about 1.5 per cent of the abstracts themselves; and that if he had devoted all his reading time to abstracts, he would have read 13 per cent of them.

Sir Herbert Howard spoke briefly on author abstracts. In the 14 abstracting services issued by the Commonwealth Agriculture Bureau they occasionally use author abstracts but mostly find them unsuitable. The principal reasons he gave for this are that good scientists frequently are poor abstractors and sometimes even put things in an abstract that are not in the parent paper. He stated that in his journals the abstracts definitely are subject slanted with three or four differing abstracts of the same paper frequently being prepared for different journals.

Dr. Leake commented that in his opinion abstracting services do a very good job on the facts published in their fields, but to a considerable extent ignore the concepts which are so important to scientific progress.

Economy in abstracting

Professor G.A.Boutry began this part of the discussion by observing that the extensive and intense criticism one hears of abstracts at least indicates they are widely used. He suggested that it may be unrealistic to expect both a perfect abstract and high speed of issuance. Any processing of information introduces some deterioration in quality and, other things equal, the greater the speed the greater the loss in quality. He then traced briefly the history of abstracting saying that it originated as critical reviewing which, for the most part, evolved

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

into non-critical abstracting because of the shortage of competent reviewers, that is, reviewers who know as much or more about a subject than do the authors of the papers in the field. He admitted the validity of the criticism that author abstracts often are not very good, and then asked why this is so. His own answer was simply that authors in general lack education in writing abstracts. He referred to the rules for the preparation of synopses (or abstracts) which came out of the Royal Society conference and re-emphasized a point made earlier—that author abstracts might become quite satisfactory if editors of primary journals would promulgate such rules and then take as much editorial responsibility for the abstracts’ adequacy as they do for that of the papers.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Supporting Professor Boutry’s remarks, Mr. Joseph Hilsenrath suggested that if a scientist is competent to judge and abstract other scientists’ papers, it should be possible to train him to abstract his own. He then directed a question on this point to Dr. Crane.

In reply, Dr. Crane agreed that such might be true for many scientists but doubted whether such training could be adequately given to, say, 200,000 authors of papers. He went on to say he believes an author abstract should accompany every published paper. Chemical Abstracts uses these as a starting point and then adds whatever further information is necessary for satisfactory indexing. He pointed out that author abstracts mostly should not be this inclusive. For example, if a paper mentions 100 compounds, obviously the accompanying abstract in the journal should not also list all of them. If, however, they do not all appear in the Chemical Abstracts abstract, the material will not be adequately indexed and the bibliographic record of chemistry will not be complete.

Dr. Ranganathan commented that it is an over-simplification to assume that an author who can abstract other scientists’ articles is competent to abstract his own. He suggested an analogy here with the doctor who diagnoses the illnesses of others but does not try to diagnose those of himself or his children.

Dr. Crowther observed that much misunderstanding is caused by the use of the term “author abstract” and reminded the group that the resolutions of the 1948 Royal Society conference referred to summaries which accompany papers and urged editors to take responsibility for the quality of these. As a case in point, he spoke of one U.S. physics journal whose “summaries” he finds almost wholly satisfactory for Physics Abstracts and whose editor does take particular care to see that they are adequate.

Dr. Bentley Glass stated that the U.S. Conference of Biological Editors has gone on record recommending that an abstract be considered an integral part

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

of every published paper and that the journal editors take as much care with the abstract as with the manuscript itself.

Commenting on Dr. Glass’s statement, Dr. Tukey suggested that the recommendation of the biological editors does not go far enough. It implies simply an editorial responsibility with respect to the author-written abstract; he believes the basic responsibility to provide good abstracts should lie directly with the editors. Also he would prefer the term “journal abstract” to either “author abstract” or “summary.”

Mr. Paul Lykoudis suggested that there may be disadvantages in too nearly perfect abstracting. He would like to see surveys made (a) of all the ideas that have been lost because comprehensive abstracting seemed to tell everything and so killed initiative, and (b) of all the unnecessary research that has been performed because of the exhaustive abstracting of papers containing misinformation. He favors some specific fraction of failure in efforts of our good abstracting organization.

Coverage for retrieval

In introducing this sub-topic, Dr. Maurice B.Visscher first referred to two Area 1 papers. One, by Dr. Bentley Glass and Mrs. Sharon H.Norwood, indicates that only about 5 per cent of the scientists they interviewed learn about work crucial to their research by reading abstracts. The other, by Mr. R.M.Fishenden, placed the figure at 6 per cent for pure research scientists but at some 15 per cent for applied researchers. Dr. Visscher suggested, first, that one should not infer from the basic research percentages that abstracts are not worth bothering with. Personally, he finds he uses abstracts for two principal purposes—to lead him to very specific data and to provide him with general information in scientific fields other than those of his own research. The fact that abstracts may be the source of a relatively small fraction of new ideas directly pertinent to his personal research in no sense means they have not been immensely valuable to him as a working scientist.

Apropos of the Fishenden findings, Dr. Visscher said one might expect different kinds of scientists and researchers to use abstracts to varying degrees. In this connection, he cited the Smith paper which reports on a series of 50 bibliographic searches and states that not nearly all of the information that was found could have been located if numerous abstracting and indexing journals had not been available.

Next, on the question of the period of usefulness of scientific information, Dr. Visscher cautioned against being too strongly influenced by data cited earlier indicating that the “half life” of scientific research knowledge is very

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

short. He suggested that this varies greatly with subject field and cited examples from biochemistry, biology, genetics, and pharmacology of papers published 40 or more years ago which still are extremely useful.

He said the fundamental question is not whether we need abstracts and indexes—he believes it is obvious that we do. Rather, he thinks the question is what degree of extensiveness and completeness of coverage is necessary, reasonable, and feasible. Here he pointed out the importance of distinguishing carefully between specialized and general abstracting services. To be most useful the former should be complete for the particular area dealt with and function served. The latter cannot be complete and, indeed, should not try to be lest they become so large and unwieldly as to lose their usefulness. In closing, Dr. Visscher urged that economic considerations not be permitted to be limiting factors in provision of good abstracting. He believes that after hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to obtain research information, no rational society will permit a small fraction of this amount to stand in the way of dissemination of the knowledge.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Mr. R.A.Fairthorne said it was his impression that a special abstract was being thought of as one which attempts to express the relevance of a paper to a certain field, and a general one as a description or condensation of a paper’s contents. He suggested that the former objective is relatively hopeless of achievement, since it implies a kind of omniscience on the part of the abstractor. He urged that abstracting efforts be concentrated on the general type.

Professor Pierre Brygoo said he sees two basic uses for abstracts: (1) to acquaint a reader with the contents of an article without him having to read it; and (2) to steer him to articles which he should read. He questioned whether present informative abstracts fulfill the former function very well and suggested that the problems involved in doing so are much more formidable than is commonly recognized. The ratio between reading times for an article and its abstract is not necessarily the same as that between their lengths. He has found occasionally that reading the abstract even required an appreciably longer time than did perusal of the entire paper. He then made two suggestions: (1) That if abstracts serve only to direct users to papers they should read, the indicative type, which is both cheaper and faster to prepare, should suffice (except where articles may be impossible or very difficult to obtain); and (2) if actual summaries of contents are to be provided, the informative abstract is not the best way to organize the material.

Dr. Hutchisson referred back to previous remarks on the “half life” usefulness of research data and pointed out that this must vary greatly depending

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

upon whether one is thinking of researchers directly in the field concerned or of those working in borderline areas.

Indexing

Dr. Crane restricted his remarks on this phase to subject indexing, regarding which he stated the following principles: (1) that indexing is fully as big and important a job as abstracting; (2) that indexing frequently has been seriously neglected in the planning of information services; (3) that good indexing is based on subjects, not on words; (4) that good indexing is not classification. The Chemical Abstracts staff devotes half of its over-all effort to indexing and finds that from two to five years are required to train a good indexer, starting with a Ph.D. in chemistry. They believe only very complete indexing can insure adequate retrieval. CA indexing averages at least six index entries per abstract.

In closing, Dr. Crane said he recognizes the need for and importance of mechanization in indexing; however, he cautioned that if speed is gained at the sacrifice of quality, the final bargain will be a bad one.

Economy of space

Dr. Williamina Himwich introduced this sub-topic by summarizing some of the advantages and disadvantages of microfilm and similar space-saving developments and suggested that perhaps the principal reason problems in this area have not been more completely solved is that the space situation has not yet become really desperate. She outlined the advantages of distributing abstracts on cards which permit the recipient to weed out the “duplicates” received from different services, as well as cards of no interest to him, thereby permitting him to retain in a relatively small space a collection of useful abstracts. She pointed out that such a system allows the retention of peripheral field items with a minimum of difficulty; she then went on to discuss the importance of such material.

She suggested that enabling a scientist to see and review information in fields other than that of his immediate research concern may be the most important function of abstracting and indexing services. In his own narrow-area of research the scientist knows the principal workers, attends meetings, corresponds with colleagues and may be able to “keep up” quite satisfactorily without much outside help. It is in borderline areas of possible, but not always obvious, significance to him that he particularly needs bibliographic assistance. Here interpretation of information bearing labels other than that of his per-

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

sonal research is all important; abstracts and indexes can bring this material to his attention.

Monetary economy

Dr. Allen J.Sprow in discussing monetary economy first pointed out that one cannot realistically discuss retrieval of scientific information without bringing in monetary economy and that, whether one likes it or not, the question “For how much?” often has to take precedence over “For what?” and “For whom?” Apropos of this statement he cited the large fraction of Area 2 papers which deal in some degree with cost—either primarily or in part. A number of these discuss procedures in which greater economy is either a principal objective or a by-product. Such approaches include cooperation and coordination among services as considered in the papers of Drs. Crowther, Evans, and Frank and national centralization as dealt with in Professor Mikhailov’s paper. Dr. Sprow then went on to discuss briefly the recently formed National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services, the mission of which is to improve the abstracting, indexing, and analyzing of the world’s scientific and technological literature in such a manner as to make it readily and promptly available to the scientific community. The Federation hopes to achieve this objective through cooperation among its members in exchanging their several outputs, in conducting mutually-beneficial studies, in discussing common problems, and in jointly preparing various bibliographic tools needed by all.

DISCUSSION FROM THE FLOOR

Dr. Jesse H.Shera mentioned two fallacies which in his opinion had permeated the afternoon’s discussion. The first, he said, was the assumption that an abstracting service can be all things to all men. He emphasized that this is not true—pointing out, for example, that abstracts are excellent for browsing but may be useless for retrospective searching, while a fully mechanized system may greatly facilitate searching but “you can’t do much browsing in a magnetic tape.” He suggested that some abstracting services have gone far beyond the point of diminishing returns in their attempts to do everything for everybody.

He said the second fallacy was more difficult to define but concerned the relationship of the whole to the sum of its parts. An abstract is a unit but in general we consult abstracts as a conglomeration of many such units which, as a “whole,” acquire characteristics that are not simple sums of the traits of individual abstracts.

He felt the Conference had been trying to reconcile things which are basic-

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
×

ally irreconcilable and suggested that before solutions to the problems of abstracting can even be approached, firm and realistic definitions must be established as to what abstracting services can do best. Then efforts should be concentrated to these ends.

Dr. Farradane returned to the question of indexing and suggested that if indexing requires half of the effort of an abstracting service, this is an area in which research definitely is needed. He then took issue with Dr. Crane’s earlier statement that indexing is not classification. He made reference to faceted classification work of his own in which subject indexing is carried out purely by classification principles. He believes this approach achieves a much greater uniformity of style in a subject index than ordinarily is the case.

In reply, Dr. Crane reiterated his previous statement, saying, however, that to some extent indexing uses classification methods—that is, that classification is just one of the indexer’s tools.

Mr. J.J.O’Connor cited a statement in the paper of Lykoudis, Liley and Touloukian to the effect that in their work a cover-to-cover search had to be made of Chemical Abstracts. He asked whether some notification of the CA subject index might have made this unnecessary. Dr. Touloukian replied that while for their particular use, CA does not give them full coverage of what they require, they recognize it as being a most thorough journal which adequately serves the purpose for which it was designed.

Mr. Garfield, an Area 2 author, said that since no one else had criticized his paper on citation indexes he wished briefly to do so. He then mentioned two weaknesses in the universal applicability of such indexes—both stemming from the possible selection of references by the author on bases other than strict scientific pertinence. One is the possible desire on the part of an author to protect his own priority in the publication of certain research results. The other concerns the desire a scientist might have not to jeopardize his avenues for obtaining grant funds to support his research. Mr. Garfield suggested that foundations and other agencies providing research support should perform more thorough literature searches before making grants.

In closing the session, Dr. Hutchisson expressed his appreciation and thanks to the authors of papers in Area 2, to the panel, and to those who participated from the floor in the discussion of the function and effectiveness of abstracting and indexing services.

DWIGHT E.GRAY, Rapporteur and Area Program Chairman

ELMER HUTCHISSON, Discussion Panel Chairman

Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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Page 534
Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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Page 535
Suggested Citation:"Summary of Discussion." National Research Council. 1959. Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10866.
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Next: Area 3: Effectiveness of Monographs, Compendia, and Specialized Centers: Present trends and new and proposed techniques and types of services »
Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information: Two Volumes Get This Book
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The launch of Sputnik caused a flurry of governmental activity in science information. The 1958 International Conference on Scientific Information (ICSI) was held in Washington from Nov. 16-21, 1958 and sponsored by NSF, NAS, and American Documentation Institute, the predecessor to the American Society for Information Science. In 1959, 20,000 copies of the two volume proceedings were published by NAS and included 75 papers (1600 pages) by dozens of pioneers from seven areas such as:

  • Literature and reference needs of scientists
  • Function and effectiveness of A & I services
  • Effectiveness of Monographs, Compendia, and Specialized Centers
  • Organization of information for storage and search: comparative characteristics of existing systems
  • Organization of information for storage and retrospective search: intellectual problems and equipment considerations
  • Organization of information for storage and retrospective search: possibility for a general theory
  • Responsibilities of Government, Societies, Universities, and industry for improved information services and research.

It is now an out of print classic in the field of science information studies.

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