EDITORIAL
WE NEED MORE RESEARCH PAPERS
In a moment of critical self-analysis. members of the Division of Chemical Literature Program Committee, during their planning of future programs a t the recent A4CSNational Meeting in Los Angeles. concluded that past programs have had too many symposia papers and too few research papers. Their first expiatory action was to turn to me (I a m also a member of t h e Program Committee) and suggest that I write a n editorial. Before I do what I want to do anyway. and on a thesis I have advocated for the many years I have been involved in the Division’s program planning, it is also important that you know the Program Committee will be taking other actions to encourage the submittal of more papers reporting on research and scholarship relevant to chemical documentation. Although literature chemists and chemical librarians for many years. and information scientists for about two decades, have been practitioners in some area or areas of chemical documentation, relatively few have been oriented toward the potential research and scholarship phases of chemical documentation. These practitioners, historically. have been products of an experto credito heredity and environment. Thus, many chemical librarians classify their book holdings by the L.C., U.D.C., or Dewey system, regardless of how specialized the book collection is and how nonrelevant the classification system is to t h e collection. Thus. many literature chemists and information scientists have adopted the Uniterm system as the ultimate for indexing, keyword-in-title as the ultimate for SDI. and WLN as the ultimate for chemical notations, regardless of how nonrelevant a system may be to current concepts in chemistry or t o t h e chemists t h e system is supposed to serve. There is nothing basically wrong in adopting a traditional system, providing it is a reasonable solution t o a document storage or information problem a n d providing it is relevant to the needs of the potential users. But wholesale adoption without consideration of the effects on the user does nothing to advance the a r t and science of chemical documentation. Because so many have become overly occupied with doing what can be done easily, what should be done has been grossly neglected. T h e consequence of this imbalance has been a literature dominated by trivial papers and by authors who have not questioned their premises.
Traditional systems, and also services, are a n important component of chemical documentation, and I do not mean to denigrate them or their champions. But we also need innovative research and relevant paradigms flowing into our literature. As editor of this Journal, I take seriously m y responsibility to be aware of the past and evolving literature pertinent to chemical documentation, information science, and library science. Consequently. m y reading includes journals, books. and Government reports. Reading most of this literature is like wending m y way between the Scylla of descriptive banality (e.g., “this is how I run m y library,” “microfilming our collection,” and “ I use a computer too”) to the Charybdis of number-counting research (e.g., “the information explosion.” “a survey of readers of my bulletin.“ and “profiles per scientist per science for S D I ” ) . These titles are fictitious, yet I almost fear that one or two may be uncomfortably close to some in the literature. I n bygone years, descriptive and number-counting papers were essential and provided us with a relatively rich harvest. Furthermore, we still need papers in these areas, but they should now constitute only a minor part of our literature. M y plea is really that we pause t o reflect on the nature and scope of our activities-the possibilities and potentialities of chemical documentation and its philosophical place in the future of chemistry and chemical technology. I think that on critical reflection t h e adoption process may become one of adaptation and, hopefully, for some of us of innovative creativity. Adaptation, a t least, implies the invoking of intelligent evaluation of a known system vis-a-vis t h e information needs of a n environment. A d a t a collection paper is more meaningful when conceptual thought and statistical analysis supplant finger counting. And innovative creativity can yield a rich harvest of new indexing. classification, and notation systems in harmony with the needs and modern concepts of chemistry. Our intellectual poverty has not been caused by a shortage of funds. For I can name quite a few organizations t h a t have received Government funds in the five a n d six figures, but have yet t o publish a research paper. Our malady really has been lack of commitment t o research and too many unimaginative practitioners. Yes, we definitely need more research papers.
HERMAN SKOLNIK
66
Journal of Chemical Documentotion, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1971
