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OCR for page 411
COMMUNICATION IN THE LIFE SCIENCES 411
Informal Publications and Correspondence
Between the forum of a meeting and publication in primary journals lies a
spectrum of informal routes of communication that includes correspondence
and manuscript exchange among scientists, "invisible colleges," publication
of newsletters, technical reports and book reviews, and listings of research
in progress. Attempts to formalize manuscript exchange before editorial
acceptance have met with considerable opposition, and unreviewed papers
are probably best left out of formal information systems. The criterion
recently established for primary publication by the Council of Biological
Editors offers a realistic base line in deciding whether or not to include
nonjournal materials in a storage and retrieval system. Citable publications
are those in which sufficient details are given to enable peer scientists to
assess the probable soundness of the results, to repeat the experiments if
necessary, and to retrace the lines of reasoning that led to the conclusions.
Book reviews may be valuable if they contain new ideas or offer a critical
analysis of the subject. An instance of how the content of book reviews can
be extracted is provided by the annual Mental Health Book Review Index,*
which includes reviews in some relatively remote fields that are abstracted,
however briefly, and stored in the information system.
Listings of research in progress serve the purpose of alerting scientists
to research projects under way, but not yet published, that may overlap,
duplicate, or even conflict with their own. Such listings are provided in
special fields, for example, through a collaboration between the American
Society of Plant Taxonomists and the International Organization of 'Plans
Biosystematists, and in a more general way through the federally sponsored
Scientific Information Exchange of the Smithsonian Institution. The latter
records both federally and privately sponsored research projects actually
ir1 progress and covers much of primary life sciences research, distributing
abstracts upon request to scientists, policy-makers, administrators, and
reporters. However, while invaluable to federal science administrators, this
service is rarely used by working scientists.
PRIMARY PUBLICATION
Advent of the computer age augurs a day when scientific publications will
be recorded on magnetic tape; however, for the next several decades the
~ Menta/ Health Book Review Index: An Annual Bibliography of Books and Book
Reviews in the Behavioral Sciences. Council on Research in Bibliography, Inc.,
Flushing, New York. 1956.
OCR for page 412
412
THE LIFE SCIENCES
printed journal will remain the most economical and common form of
publication. Nevertheless, contemplated solutions to the current informa-
tion deluge should take the future into consideration; a log jam in a com-
puter network is no more tolerable than one in printed material.
The Journal
Not only has the number of journals in biological sciences (13,000) out-
paced the ability of scientists and teachers to read them, but also the number
of pages per journal has expanded. Most scientists are frustratingly aware
that, however diligently they try to keep up with the literature, they can
never read all that is potentially valuable or germane to their own inter-
ests. Although they may be concerned, few bench scientists are actually
alarmed by this situation; most consider that they remain reasonably au
courant with the leading edges of their own disciplines through a combina-
tion of regular reading, attendance at meetings, seminars in their own insti-
tutions, and the informal operation of "invisible colleges." This is
particularly true of those whose research can be confined to a relatively
narrow specialty, be it renal disease, virus structure, or resistance to smut
infection. For the biological generalist seeking new insights into the forces
directing evolution or behavioral adaptations to the environment, for
example, the task is overwhelming, and no available information system
meets his needs.
Some quantitative aspects of this enterprise may be illuminating. In
1966, of our sample of respondents, 8,801, or 72.4 percent, published one
or more full-length articles describing original research in journals with
national or international circulation. A total of 24,573 articles were re
ported, for a mean annual publication rate of 2.0 (including those who
failed to publish), with 7 percent of the group publishing more than five
articles a year. Eighty-eight percent of our respondents contributed at least
one publication of the types listed in Table 64. Meanwhile, they also con-
tributed 1,134 major reviews, 489 books and monographs, and 2,41 6
chapters that appeared in books edited by others! Figure 46 shows the
proportion of biologists producing the various types of publications.
Improvement of the quality of primary journals, with the reader in mind,
is a paramount need. Such improvement demands changes in the editorial
process, a rigorous look at standards, considerations of cost, and some
commitment to the education of scientists as authors as well as investi
gators. Many scientists are notoriously poor writers. A modest program
of instruction in scientific writing during graduate training could lessen
much of the future editorial burden. Some faculty time should be invested
OCR for page 413
COMMUNICATION IN THE LIFE SCIENCES 413
TABLE 64 Publications Reported in 1966 by 12,364 Life Scientists
TYPE OF PUBLICATION
INVESTIGATORS AVERAGE a
REPORTING ONE NUMBER NUMBER PER
OR MORE PUBLISHED RESPONDENT
TOTAL, ALL TYPES10,72750,8584.1
Full-Length Research Articles8,80124,5732.0
In-House Publications2,5277,6840.6
Books and Monographs442489<0.1
Chapters in Books1,7102,4160.2
Major Reviews8871,1340.1
Abstracts of Original Research4,6689,6740.8
Other Publications -2,0284,8880.4
a Average numbers based on 12,364 respondents to individual questionnaire.
Source: Survey of Individual Life Scientists, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research
in the Life Sciences..
in teaching a manner of data presentation and analysis that will be service-
able for a lifetime.
In selecting manuscripts for publication, editorial boards necessarily
engage in value judgments. Publication priority generally goes to those
manuscripts presenting significant advances in the understanding of nature.
Methodology that could assist others in making important advances and
work that is competent and fills gaps in understanding or knowledge but
does not pave the way for new theoretical or practical advances are as-
signed lower priorities. The editor's task is to decline work that is
duplicative, incompetent, incorrect, or totally pedestrian. This set of edi-
torial judgments is the backbone of the scientific information system; it
protects the inexpert reader and those who provide research funds while
assuring scientists in the field that published work has been performed with
competence and that the Endings are probably reliable.
In almost every scientific subfield there is a hierarchy of journals that
reflects the relative quality of published papers. Although it does not exist
overtly, this hierarchy is known to all sophisticated scientists within the
field. Occasionally, a paper is consecutively submitted to journals of
diminishing quality until it finds acceptance.
Some of the deficiencies of journals can be attributed to the fact that
editors usually serve on a voluntary basis, their editing competing for time
with their own scientific work. Failure to provide editors with adequate
assistance in handling the technical details of publishing a journal usually
because of the cost of such assistance is a false economy. Such assistance
OCR for page 414
414 THE LIFE SCIENCES
All Types of
Publication
Full-Length
Research Articles
In-House
Publications
Books and
Monographs
Chapters
in Books
Ma for
Reviews
Abstracts of
Original Research
Other
Publications
::~ ~ ~ :17
hi: ~ :: ~
~::
~ ~ ~38~
0 20 40 60 80 100
FIGURE 46 Percentage distribution of 12,364 respondents reporting various types of publication.
(Source: Survey of Individual Life Scientists, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Re-
search in the Life Sciences.)
could not only lead to improved quality but could also eliminate some of the
time lag between submission of a manuscript and its publication.
Still unrealized is an appropriate mechanism for defraying the continually
increasing costs of journal publication. These costs have risen drastically
in the last two decades and, if built into subscription rates, would almost
eliminate any but institutional subscribers, few of whom have the resources
to purchase, bind, and store more than a small fraction of the 13,000
biological journals. The alternatives are to subsidize journals, either di-
rectly en bloc, or, as is frequently the case, by an assessment, per page,
levied against authors. Since federal granting agencies have agreed that
publication is intrinsic to research projects, these charges are legitimately
defrayed from research grants, thus lessening the burden upon institutional
OCR for page 415
COMMUNICATION IN THE LIFE SCIENCES
and individual subscribers while serving as an incentive to investigator-
authors to prepare tight, pithy manuscripts. In view of this policy, we find
it absurdly contradictory that these agencies, as another matter of policy,
consistently negotiate down requests for such page charges while awarding
the research funds that support the research to be reported.
For many years, sale of reprints to authors has been a major source of
revenue to journals. Again, rising costs, passed on to the authors, have
become an inordinate drain on research funds. In the future, however, as
photocopying equipment becomes more generally available, this practice
should subside and the drain on authors' research funds should diminish,
but the financial plight of the journals will become still more acute. Federal
research-supporting agencies should give serious consideration to these
problems while there is yet time and before journals either become bank-
rupt or price themselves out of business.
New Forms of Primary Publication
Current experiments in handling the overwhelming volume and costs of
published material include the use of microcards, microfilm, and microfiche,
selling individual journal articles to scientists who may have no use for
entire volumes, and selling abstracts and indexes separately from journals.
(The journal, Wildlife Disease,* for example, which must print long names
of species or geographic locations that may be of interest only to select
readers, now publishes exclusively in microfiche. ~ As the number of papers
in a single issue of a journal that are of special interest to a given reader
diminishes, consideration is being given to the provision of only those few
he wants, although complete journal issues would continue to be bound for
libraries. An attractive alternative is publication of volumes containing
only summary abstracts, as tried by the new publication, Communications
in Behavioral Biology~; after scanning the abstracts, readers order com-
plete texts of the articles of interest to them.
Future Forms of Primary Publication
Rapid development of computer technology and the prospect that scientists
eventually may have computer consoles on their desks suggests that the
days of printed journals are numbered. There is no question that electrical
Wildlife Disease. Wildlife Disease Association, Ames, Iowa. 1965.
~ Communications in Behavioral Biology. Academic Press, Inc., New York, New
York. 1968.
415
OCR for page 416
THE LIFE SCIENCES
transmission of information will be faster than the U.S. Mail, but the cost,
at least for the foreseeable future, is high. Computer networks being
planned at Project MAC (Machine-Aided Cognition) and EDUCOM
(Interuniversity Communications Council) may take 10 years to construct
in such a way as to place one or two terminals in each major research insti-
tution in the United States, another 10 to provide terminals for small groups
of scientists, and another 10 to link with other continents. But even when
such a network is complete, the role of editors and reviewers will remain
unchanged; indiscriminate release of unedited reports to a computer net-
work could well be even more disastrous than indiscriminate publishing
would be today.
The International Literature
Science is an international venture. Each piece of information, regardless
of where it is learned, is fitted into the total intellectual framework. The
volume of the biological literature and its range of subject matter are such
that, without some qualitative judgments, a simple count of the number of
primary journals or the number of papers is an insufficient criterion of the
contribution of the life scientists of a given nation to the development of the
science. To make some assessment of the American contribution to the
world literature, the Biological Sciences Communication Project of the
George Washington University was commissioned to undertake a limited
study, some of the results of which are summarized in Tables 65 through
68.
A group of 3,100 journals was identified, and the frequency with which
publications are cited therein was used as a criterion of significance. Of
these, 2,377 are published in 15 nations, as shown in Table 65. The United
States publishes about one fourth of the world total of these journals.
TABLE 65 Number of Primary Journals in the Life Sciences Published
in the 15 Leading Nations
United States 797 Netherlands 67
Japan 284 India 65
France 186 Spain 62
Italy 165 Norway 59
U.S.S.R. 150 Argentina 54
United Kingdom 143 Switzerland 53
West Germany 143 Brazil 52
Canada 97
Source: Data from the Biological Sciences Communication Project of the George Washington
University, Washington, D.C.
OCR for page 417
COMMUNICATION IN THE LIFE SCIENCES 417
i,400
1,300
1,200
1,100
1,000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
/
I t
/ I
/ I
/ /
I
/
~1
/
~/
.
/.Aq u ati c
Biology
, ~
~ -
Pharmacology
and
Toxicology
Pediatrics
..
, · ~
e.e'
· an.
Biochemistry
1900- 1910- 1920- 1930- 1940- 1950- 1960
1909 1919 1929 1939 1949 1959 1964
ti~UKk 4/ Comparative growth rates of serials in the fields of aquatic biology,
biochemistry, pharmacology/toxicology, and pediatrics, ten-year periods, 1900-1964.
(Source: Biological Sciences Communication Project, George Washington University,
Washington, D.C.)
Spot checks were made in four disciplinary areas: aquatic biology,
pediatrics, biochemistry, and pharmacology and toxicology. Figure 47
shows the comparative growth rates of the numbers of serial publications
in these four areas from 1900 to 1964; this figure does not reflect the
numbers of actual papers published, nor does it include any qualitative
OCR for page 418
418
THE LIFE SCIENCES
judgments. Some light on the forces behind the tremendous growth is
provided by Table 66, which compares the sponsorship and/or ownership
of journals in the four areas. Twenty-eight distinct patterns of sponsorship
were found, of which only four are considered in this table. Whereas
scientific societies predominate in sponsoring biochemical and pediatric
journals, government agencies are the chief sponsors of journals devoted to
aspects of aquatic biology, and industrial organizations contribute heavily
to sponsorship of serials concerned with pharmacology and toxicolo~v
A. .
one survey committee selected three leading journals cnn~.rn~.~1 with
biochemistry and molecular biology, pediatrics, and ecology and population
biology, published in each of the following countnes: the United States,
England, France, West Germany, Japan, and the U.S.S.R. The biblio-
graphic citations reported in all issues of these journals published in 1966
were then examined. The bibliographies of American journals were in-
spected for references to journals published in the United States and in
the other five countries (Table 671; the bibliographies cited in the foreign
journals were examined for references to American work (Table 681.
In this set of selected foreign journals, citations of American references
constituted one third of the bibliographies of all papers concerned with
biochemistry and molecular biology and pediatrics, whereas American
papers contributed only one sixth of the bibliographies of articles concerned
with ecology and population biology. Figure 48 shows that the pattern
of citation did not vary significantly from country to country.
American biochemists and pediatricians found it appropriate to cite
publications from the other five nations decidedly less frequently than the
~J _ ~^ A^~^V _~^J._~4 ~At ~ ~11
TABLE 66 Sources of Sponsorship of Journals in Selected Fields
SPONSOR
AQUATIC
BIOCHEMISTRY PEDIATRICS BIOLOGY PHARMACOLOGY
No. % No. % No. % No. %
TOTALS 177 100.0 194 100.0 696 100.0 829 100.0
Societies 65 36.7 92 47.4 196 28.2 348 42.0
Government 18 10.2 18 9.3 450 64.7 53 6.4
Commercial
Publisher 83 46.9 71 36.6 49 7.0 258 31.1
Relevant
Industry 11 6.2 1 3 6.7 1 0.1 1 70 20.5
Source: Data from the Biological Sciences Communication Project of the George Washington University, Wash-
ington, D.C.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
communication project
