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Breaking the Motivation Barrier lowly but surely, the literature of chemistry and chemical engineer-
S ing is coming to grips with the effects on its utility and value,
its fragmentation into specialties, and its exposure to the capabilities of the computer. Chemical Abstracts Service, for example, is far along the route to computerization, offering the prospect of tailored search of the abstract literature for almost any subject of chemical significance (CMEN, Jan. 23, page 78). Computer composition of the primary literature, already being carried out by the ACS on an experimental basis, promises eventually to offer to the primary as well as the abstract literature the speed and total recall of the computer. Many other approaches also are under way. I n all these approaches, however, there seems to be a common oversight; namely, there is no attempt to affect the individual’s fundamental behavior pattern (or motivation) when faced with a problem whose solution could be facilitated through use of the literature. With the exception of a small, highly motivated percentage, scientists and engineers have an “activation energy” barrier which is high enough to dissuade them-most of the time-from mining the uncollected literature, on the one hand, or from sifting through a stack of uncollated abstracts or articles collected for them by assistants, on the other. There are many reasons for this behavior pattern, and it is undoubtedly more pronounced among engineers than among scientists. But it does exist and is a major reason for the growing suspicion that there may be too few markets for computerized literature services. The critical review article is, as we have indicated before (November 1966, page 7), a reader-oriented editor’s response to both the problem and the energy barrier. Continuing education, repositories of evaluated data, and correlations, meetings, and seminars are equally important programs. But despite the obvious necessity of some of these activities and the desirability in principle of others, there still remains the one apparently essential component-the individual mind that must relate all the information available to it-in the form of abstracts, research papers, short reviews, comprehensive reviews, and general awareness through other avenues-to its own immediate context so that this vast mass of fact, theory, and insight can be brought to bear on the problem a t hand. The missing link in this impressive chain is an effective means of motivating these individual minds more than is now done. For the facts indicate that, whether from intellectual limitation, inertia, lack of funds, or some other reason, most individuals fail to relate available relevant knowledge as effectively as the ideal would indicate is possible. The person or group who finds the key to that problem will (or certainly should) go down in history among the great benefactors of man.
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