editorial
Recording Research Lectures
T
his editorial is about research presented orally at major chemistry conferences such as ACS national meetings. Such presentations ideally follow the spirit of advancing science by previewing recent results and placing them in context with current knowledge and, accordingly, have some unpublished content. Knowledgeable attendees and specialists have a rightful (but sometimes frustrated) expectation that they will learn more from the presenter than has been written in his or her published articles. Many attendees, often students, are there just to be stimulated by learning and to acquire ideas for their own future research. Conference audiences are thus somewhat bimodal: the lecture promotes the cutting edge of the chemistry on the one hand and is lucidly tutorial on the other. Both are important goals. The best research talks are an interweaving of each and yield the best results for the conference. Remove either and part of the conference’s purpose is lost. This discussion is prompted by some experimentation at ACS national meetings, at which, as I understand it, the talks of selected symposium speakers (who have agreed in advance) are recorded (as audio and slides) and made web-available after the meeting for a fixed period of time to members of the ACS divisions sponsoring the symposium. This procedure would be a service to members unable to physically attend the national meeting and to attendees who encounter scheduling conflicts. It should enhance the scope of the talk’s audience, albeit by an unknown factor. The files of the talk are ACScopyrighted to try to ward off piracy. Recording talks is a noble and potentially effective idea, especially for dissemination of tutorial materials by master lecturers. Recording talks is at the same time ignoble from the viewpoint of presenting unpublished research at meetings because
10.1021/AC801838M 2008 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
Published on Web 09/11/2008
it could prompt speakers to reduce or not include it. The expert scholars present are thereby disappointed, and the conference’s contributions to progress are diluted. The speaker would surely be concerned about hard-won, new data being downloaded and examined in leisurely detail by a broadened and essentially anonymous circle of virtual attendees, as well as about the specter of journals refusing to consider the work. Journal editors can be sensitive to prior publication; presentations to fixed groups of people at meetings and seminars are traditionally not regarded as publications because there is no disseminated record of words and visually presented data. Experimentation in the dissemination of knowledge, both current and new, is to be encouraged, including at ACS national meetings. Disseminating high-level tutorial content in symposia designed to do so could become an important service if targeted at topics of wide scientific interest, such as the chemistries of food safety, modern nuclear power generation, capture of solar energy, permafrost, and climate-sensitive seawater constituents. Materials from short courses could be more widely and inexpensively distributed. Divisions could require both long and short abstracts; the longer would provide more information to nonattendees and (when read ahead of time) enhanced comprehension by attendees. But, just as in the research laboratory, there are good ideas, there are wildbut-interesting ideas, and there are ideas with recognizable flaws. One should always strive for experimental success.
OCTOBER 1, 2008 / ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
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