J. G. Tolpinl American Oil Company
I
k i n a Russian TechnitaI hfoim+ioion
Sc~entists . . m.
. thls country paid little attention to the Russian scientific literature and held uninformed opinions of it, until recent continued successes in space and some other fields convincingly demonstrated the potential importance of their pnblications to science and technology. Even now, few American scientists can benefit from them. Only 1.6% can read Russian ( l o ) ,and it is hard enough to keeo no with information ~ublishedin English. Gaiiliar agencies have tried to helpthe harassed researcher. Chemical Abstracts and, in the petroleum field, the American Petroleum Institutes' LLAbstracts of Refining Literature" promptly report on new research done all over the world. The Office of Technical Services and other public and private organizations provide translations of selected Russian papers, but abstracts can not accomplish the meeting of minds that results from study of original papers, particularly the introductory parts that reveal the motivation of research, and the discussions and references that contribute to evaluating it. Coverage by translations is also incomplete, especially for older Russian literature. Because the Soviet economy differs so much from ours, evaluating Russian research is not easy. New approaches to assimilate their literature can he helpful. - Environment of Soviet Research
The Soviet state supports all basic and applied research. It is the duty of scientists to work tirelessly for t,he utilization of their results. For this reason. almost all successful technically trained people have more than one assignment; every important researcher is teaching, and every important person in academic life is also a consultant in industry. Research institutes that do not maintain effective contacts with industry are scorned ( I d a ) , and speedier utilization of research is frequently demanded (14). Partly as the result of emphasis upon applications, the Soviet planned economy has expanded rapidly. Production and refining of oil, for example, have been organized to take advantage of techniques developed in the United States. Annual production of oil passed one billion barrels in 1960, and has exceeded 40% of ours. Research in oil refining has advanced to the point where problems and methods of attacking them are similar to ours. A large expansion of petrochemicals is under way. Although consumer goods now receive more attention than they did previously, capital goods and heavy industry are still favored. Quality of goods is often sacrificed to meet quantity objectives. Presented before the Division of Petroleum Chemistry, 139th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, St Louis, Missouri, ~areh,~l961. Present address: Northwestern University,Evening Divisions, 339 East Chicago A m . , Chicago 11, Ill.
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Research conducted in the Soviet environment resembles that in the United States in its emphasis upon applications. But the differences are just as significant. Overcoming shortages of raw materials and making commodities rather than buying them often leads to applied research that supplements rather than duplicates ours. Making soaps for greases by oxidizing hydrocarbons to fatty acids, for example, is a much busier field in Russia than it is here. Publication of Soviet Research
The Soviet scientist and engineer contribute increasingly to the literature. The percentage of Russian papers in C.A. has gradually climbed to 14%; in the post war period the number of chemical publications and patents throughout the world has doubled, hut the Russian share has more than doubled (5). Further increases are likely: in 1960 the USSR reportedly had 354,000 scientists (7); the USA bad 201,000 and in 1959, the USSR awarded 108.6 thousand endneering degrees (. 7 ~ . the USA awarded . ) whereas 46thousanld. Publication is all-important to the Soviet scientist for several reasons. Patents are also important but bring less prestige. The inventor usually applies for an "authorshiu certificate." which assigns his invention to the ~ t a & organization that employs him, and which pays him, if it is used, in proportion to its profitability. Recognition of Soviet contributions in papers published abroad is regarded as a vote of confidence in their research and is a oowerful motivation for prompt publication. Since the Soviet industry operates, in a sense, as one huge concern, documents intended primarily for internal information may appear as publications. However, not everything is either published or made available, if published, to other countries. No doubt some subjects are "classified." The Russian abstracting journal "Referatinvyi zhurnal" comprising thirteen divisions for the different sciences, does not cover medicine, transportation, or food and agriculture (1). Transactions of research institutes and proceedings of scientific meetings are customarily published in books, rather than in periodicals; although they can sometimes be bought readily in Russia, not enough are printed to be sent abroad. I n general, however, one can get as much information from the Russian technical literature as by visiting the USSR (11). Demands are sometimes made for stricter control of publication of data that may benefit the United States (19). One of the most perplexing aspects of the Russian literature is the absence of business literature, or %Thelast given number includes only those scientists who reported to the National Register of Scientific and Technical Pemonnel. No comparison is made here of the qualifications of the scientists in the two countries concerned.
"trade journals"; assaying the success of applied research becomes most difficult in consequence. Science and engineering in the USSR is certainly subject to broad political control. Theories, programs, and conduct are affected alike. Despite the improvement of Soviet technical information facilities the busy Soviet scientist occasionally overlooks pertinent Soviet contributions (19). Recently, a Russian study of oxidation of cyclohexane overlooked a Soviet process which had already accomplished the objective (6), and two Soviet laboratories independently published the same work on polymerization of phenylacetylene in the same journal (8). Following the Russian Literature
If Soviet research work occasionally duplicates, the problem of researchers elsewhere in following the Russian literature is far more serious. Shortcuts must he taken, and the few who can read Russian must help the many who cannot. But neither English abstracts of all Russian papers, nor complete translations of a few, will suffice. One may justifiably suspect the widespread opinion that only that literature less than ten years old is really useful in chemistry and physics (6). The history of penicillin argues to the contrary (4),and older literature has led to profitable research in the USSR (9). Per-. haps the opinion simply reflects a preference for recent journals when faced with lack of time. Nevertheless, abstracting publications and their indexes now appear to he used primarily for retrospective searches (15). Translation of even a part of the Russian Literature is expensive. It is estimated that only 5% of the output of Soviet scientific and technical journals are translated into English (Sa); only a small fraction of that now translated is bought by scientists. Brief abstracts and occasional translations are a poor substitute for the original literature. Only in this way can the contents be critically analyzed, the contrihutions be identified and distinguished, and finally applied. But the better approach raises new problems of corn-. municating the findings to others. One method of communication that worked well two decades ago is illustrated by the "Survey of Foreign Petroleum Literature" sponsored by a group of petroleum refiners. Between 1937 and 1946, the writer systematically reported such segments of the thenmodest Russian scientific literature as bore upon petroleum research in this ~ o u n t r y . ~The service represented a significant part of the data that nourished the growing organism of knowledge in petroleum techuology (16). Today, with larger journals and research organizations, the broadcast method is less satisfactory. Within a single research organization, a specialist in the Russian literature can provide a dual service that more closely applies to the various areas of interest. The first makes the scientists generally aware of Soviet researches and the environment under which they are conducted. The second contributes both the new and the old information that applies to some problem of current interest. The latter service has come to be known as "information research" (9). Using the findings of information research emphasizes T h e entire survey is on microfilm in the Library of Congress.
the need for effective communication. Personal contacts are fast and efficient, and several telephone conversations and visits a day help to define the pertinency of new documents and the direction that literature research should take. Such contacts with scientists a t all supervisory levels further assure better reoeptionof the later conventional written report. Sometimes a single document, written either individually or collaboratively, and not necessarily limited to Russian information, best serves the purpose, but probably more often a series of memoranda, covering from five to twenty-five articles, each, are preferable. They are faster, and permit separate treatmeut of various aspects of the subject. The pattern for the specialist in Russian literature is therefore to cover continuously and systematically a wider area than is involved in the research program, and to report as explicitly as possible only information that is likely to be useful. Not until these steps have been taken need the expense of translation of the key documents be incurred. Scanning the Russian Literature
These services nearly adequate today, will become less so as the level of Soviet research activity continues to rise. One new approach that has proved surprisingly successful involves ~ r e ~ a r i scientists ne to follow Russian contributions in their areas without actual knowledge of the language. Everyone has had the experience of studying a document in an unknown language and finding, despite the strangeness, that some information comes through. Rather than to build a knowledge of Russian from the ground up, the intent is to equip the scientist to recognize the value of a Russian paper. Groups of research scientists were first familiarized with the thirty or so Russian journals in which the major contributions to the science and technology of petroleum appear. Typical papers were then analyzed to demonstrate that the presentation follows a conventional format, but that the general trends in various fields differ from those in English, and differ among themselves in Russian, as they do in English. Prominent authors and the organizations with which they are affiliated were briefly described. The groups were then taught the mechanics of reading Russian together with enough phonetics to aid recognition. Common scientific terms were listed and pronounced to further tie down the actual similarity to English, despite the superficial differences. Finally, a hare minimum vocabulary of 5&100 common Russian words was learned, and the pattern of inflectional forms was explained. Within the span of only ten weekly classes of somewhat more than an hour each, most of the scientists learned to scan effectively. They could survey new journals rapidly, and pick out the few papers that should be translated. With a little help, they were able to decide the borderline cases. They were most successful in the pure sciences such as organic chemistry and chemical physics, and least successful in applied fields like engineering and process economics. A
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Foreign Information in the Future
During the past generation, use of Russian technical information has thus passed through several stages. Volume 40, Number 8, August 1963
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At first, it was ignored except by those who could read Russian or for an occasional paper that was reprinted in a more familiar language. For a time thereafter, one person could survey the entire literature well enough to supply the information wanted by an entire industry. Now it is becoming difficult for one person to cover the fields of interest of a single large research laboratory. I n the future, either many scientists must gain a first-hand smattering of knowledge of Russian or some cheap new way of handling foreign information must be developed. The same pattern may be applied to other languages less known and more difficult than Russian and to other fields. Appreciation by scientists of the use of their research seems to be much the same everywhere. Reviews of Russian developments in technology often appear in United States publications. Eventually they are found there by Russian readers, and perhaps commented upon. Russian authors have never taken exception to occasional criticism of their researches but have referred to them objectively in the spirit in which they were meant. Literature Cited
(1) ANONYMOUS, Vesfn.Akad. Nauk SSSR, 30, 124 (1960). (2) D'OUITLLE, E. L., SCHMITKONS, G. E., AND MOALMAN, 3. W.,
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Special Libraries, 49,427430, (1958); Petroleum Refiner, 37,259-262,1958. (3) EMERY,A. H., Chem. Eng. News, 87, June 20,1960. (3al FEINSTEIN, P., Special Libraries, 53, 26 (1962). (4) FINDLAY, G . M., Chem. and Ind., 819-21, (1949). (51 FURMAN, M. S., ET AL., Khim. Prom., 1960, 265-72. (61 FUSSLER,H. S., The Library Quarterly, 19, lZQ, (1949);
American Institute qf Physics Dncumenfation Newsleller, January 2,1960. (7) KELDYSH,M. V., Vesln. Akad. Nauk SSSR, 31, 34-39 11961). , DEWITT,
N., "Education and Professional Employment in the USSR," U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1961, p. 341. (8) K ~ R S H A K N., N., ET AL., Vysokomolekul. Soedin. 2, 12468,
(7s)
,.""",. iloc.n!
(91 For example, M o ~ o a v s a ~ ;B. , L., ET AL., Zh. Ob~ch.Khim., 16, 427-34, 1946; Zh. Prikl. Kh., 32, 2771-6, (1959); 33,417-20 (1960). (10) National Science Foundation, Report on the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, 1962. (11) See, for instance, New York Journal of Commerce, September 26, 1960, pp. 2, 6; Oil Daily, September 26, 1960, p. 1; "U.S. Oil Men Take A Look at Russia," bmed on the
observations of the first U S . Petroleum Industry Exchange Delegation to Russia, August 2-31, 1960. (12) TOLPIN,J. G., Chem. Eng. Pray., 56, 6-10, September 1960. (13) TOLPIN.J. G.. Science., 132. 1679-80., (1960). , , (14j See, fa; instance, TOPCHIEY, A. v., Vestn. Akad. auk SSSR, 30,l-9 (1960). (14al ANONYMOUS, Ekonomicheskaya gareta, p. 1, July 31, 1960. (15) VOIGT,M. J., Libn, 9,177-93, (1959). (16) WEISS,P., SCi~nce,131, 1716, 1960.
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