Water chemistrv: seekina information Any literature search involves hard, time-consuming work. For one field, at least, here's how such work can be made easier Joseph J. Delfino University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wis. 53706
Water chemistry is a scientific discipline that originated from a variety of basic and applied science and engineering fields. Among those fields are chemistry, geology, limnology, oceanography, soil science, public health, and civil-environmental (sanitary) engineering. Because of these multidisciplinary roots, water chemistry is a difficult specialty to define. However, an appropriate description has been offered (see box).
water chemistry education to some degree, but those listed above are particularly known to the author. The curricula of water chemistry are as diverse as the institutions and professors involved. Nevertheless, they provide the student with a strong background in chemistry and a broad familiarization with the collateral disciplines that were cited in the beginning of this article.
Water chemistry education The education of water chemists in the United States reflects the diverse background of this discipline. Very few university chemistry departments offer more than one or two courses; by comparison, environmental science and engineering programs, schools of public health, and the like, provide the strongest support. However, at least one chemistry department (The University of Maryland, College Park) has made a commitment to the field of environmental chemistry, and offers instruction in water chemistry as well as atmospheric chemistry, geochemistry, and other pertinent subjects. Part of the reluctance of traditional academic chemists to get involved in water chemistry programs is apparently caused by uneven funding patterns, although there are also some significant conceptual difficulties involved. Among the universities having programs housed in departments of environmental science and engineering and schools of public health that have substantial offerings in water chemistry are the Universities of California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Similarly strong programs are operating at the California, Illinois, and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology and at Harvard and Rutgers Universities. Other institutions are no doubt involved in
Water chemistry liiterature The multidisciplinary roots of water chemistry have resulted in a variety of publication outlets for the research performed in this field. There is no "Journal of Water Chemistry," per se, which would be anillogous to the Journal of Organic Chemistry, or Inorganic Chemistry, for example. Also, prior to 1967, there was no American Chemical Society (ACS) journal committed entirely to the chemical aspects of the environment. The initiation of Environmental Science & Technology in 1967 gave water chemists their first formal chemical publishingoutlet. To be sure, other ACS journals such as Analytical Chemistry, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, and a few others have always published some papers in the field of water chemistry. But in €S&T it became possible to have many more articles concerning environmental and multidisciplinary aspects of water chemistry research published. €S&T, though, is not a surrogate for a "Journal of Water Chemistry." It must serve all environmental chemical disciplines equally, and thus share its space allocations among water, air, and waste chemistry articles and papers. It must also consider the broader policy questions involved in environmental matters. It is premature to suggest the establishment of a journal deVolume l l , Number 7, July 1977
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voted exclusively to water chemistry. The coverage would necessarily be so broad that it would eventually have to be divided into more specialized journals, thereby defeating its originally intended purpose. Thus, an important question arises: "Where does one find the published information of interest to, and most often needed by, water chemists?" In an effort to answer this question, a survey of the literature available to water chemists was made. The material was initially collated for use in a senior-graduate level course that the author teaches in the Water Chemistry Program at the University of WisconsinMadison. The utility of the material to water chemistry students, librarians, and colleagues led to this article. Texts and reference books The acceptance of water chemistry as a recognized chemical discipline was enhanced by the publication of one of the few authoritative and comprehensive texts on the subject. Appropriately titled Aquatic Chemistry (Wiley-lnterscience, 1970),the book was authored by Professors Werner Stumm (the 1976 ACS Monsanto Award winner) and James J. Morgan (€S&Ts first editor). The text includes examples of recent environmental research applications that illustrate basic aquatic chemical principles. A 1967 reference work, edited by Samuel D. Faust and Joseph V. Hunter, and based on the proceedings of the Fourth Rudolphs Conference, held at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, N.J.), is one of the few other relevant texts that were available to water chemists before the publication of Aquatic Chemistry. There are also a number of reference books available that deal with specific aspects of water chemistry. Many of these are based on papers presented at scientific meetings, or are collections of topically-related articles assembled by editors. Readers are referred to the catalogs of publishing houses or to the most current Books in Print (R.R. Bowker Co., New York, N.Y.) for listings of these works. A number of analytical reference books for use by water chemists-analysts are also available. These are published by governmental agencies, professional organizations, and others, and include such well-used works as StandardMethods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater (APHA et al.). Bibliographic resources The literature of water chemistry, and of chemistry in general, is expanding rapidly. The annual volume of newly published chemical and chemical engineering literature is doubling approximately every nine years. It is almost impossible for water chemists to go to a single library (except, perhaps, the Library of Congress) and expect to find all of the journals that they might need in a broad-based research program. Even if all of those journals were locally available, few individuals have the time to scan each and every one. Therefore, one solution is to utilize some of the current awareness (tables of contents or titles) services that are available. A few of these are listed in Table 1. By selecting an appropriate combination of current awareness services, water chemists can optimize the time and expense of their coverage of the current literature. In addition to the current awareness services, water chemists can subscribe to the Automatic Subject Citation Alert (ASCA) provided by the Institute of Scientific Information. This is a subscriber-specific service that is tailored to an individual's own interest areas. The ASCA system is not available in libraries but its data base, that is, the Science Citation lndex (SCI), is available in many locations. By utilizing the SCI data base, water chemists can make their literature-reviewing activities more efficient, since SCI is well suited to multidisciplinary research topics. An advantage of SCI is that every paper published in the journals covered by the data base is indexed and cross-referenced. In contrast to the above approach, abstracting services (Table 1) provide a more selective review of the literature needs of water chemists. Journals that are surveyed by the abstract services are not given complete coverage, and the papers se670
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lected depend on the acuity of the abstractors. Nevertheless, the abstract services do provide an additional dimension in information dissemination, since the actual abstracts are published along with citation information. This assists abstract readers in selecting articles that may merit further and more thorough reading. Journals Regardless of how comprehensive or encompassing the standard reference texts and the current awareness or abstracting services may be, the real strength of water chemistry is manifested in the primary literature of its published research. Water chemistry research papers are presently published in a wide variety of journals. Many of these journals are assembled in Tables 2 through 7 according to topical categories such as analytical techniques, environmental engineering and science. The journals in each table are ones that the author has selected as being among the most useful to a wide spectrum of water chemistry practitioners and their diverse research interests. The author recognizes that the lists are not necessarily complete, and that they reflect some of his own interests and biases. The lists are not based on computer analyses of citation frequencies, although such an analysis might serve to confirm or reject some of the selections solely on a numerical basis. Another factor in the choice of journals was a desire to have each journal covered by at least two of the bibliographic resources discussed earlier (Table 1). This criterion has been satisfied to a large extent, with only a few exceptions. Tables 2 through 7 should be used by persons seeking to assess the breadth of research in the water chemistry field. By routinely screening the journals in these tables, readers can readily determine the publications that are most useful for their own research area. In time, individual researchers, teachers, and students will be able to reduce their journal screening to a core list that might be substantially smaller than the lists in Tables 2 through 7. ACS publications In addition to journals such as €S& T and AnalyticalChemistry, the ACS also publishes books that often include water chemistry topics. These are represented in the Advances in Chemistry and Symposia in Print series. The ACS frequently updates listings of those titles still in print. Moreover, the ACS- Division of Environmental Chemistry publishes preprints (four-page extended abstracts)of papers presented before the Division at the semiannual ACS National Meetings. These preprints are distributed to about 1500 Division members and are also available in certain libraries. Remaining copies from earlier press runs can be purchased from the Publications Committee of the Division (contact ACS for this information). Reference materials in both the Government and ACS publications categories are frequently abstracted by some of the
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of water chemistry and the environmental science field in general, making literature reviewing difficult. There are many aquatic scientists, research institutes, state and federal agencies, and corporations developing conceptual papers, or generating research and monitoringreports that do not follow the editorial style of established journals. Often, these unpublished manuscripts and reports contain information that is valuable to others, but they never become widely available because of a very limited distribution pattern. Many of those reports contain a considerable amount of environmental data that never reach computer storage and retrieval systems. This has led to the development of an “invisible data bank.” The matter of limited availability of conference “proceedings” and other unpublishedmaterials is an important one that should be addressed by concerned aquatic scientists and information retrieval specialists. It is reasonable to suggest that some of the research efforts presented by these unpublished materials have been duplicated by other researchers who were genuinely unaware of the original work. In this time of stricter cost-accounting of research programs, it is imperative that as many of these unpublished materials as possible be disseminatedwidely, with appropriate coverage by the various bibliographic resources discussed above. bibliographic resource organizations (Table 1). The coverage is not always complete, however, but at least it provides water chemists with an overview of the materials available.
Proceedings, unpublished articles, and reports One of the most frustrating aspects of the water chemistry literature is the matter of conference “proceedings” and nontraditionally published articles. How are they generated? Many conferences of interest to water chemists are held each year. Some of these gatherings result in “proceedings” that are distributed to attendees. Unfortunately, distribution to other inter’ested persons, libraries, and abstracting services is often on random basis. Consequently, when some of the attendees use these limited distribution “proceedings” as literature citations in their own published papers, others have a difficult task in trying to locate these “proceedings” for further, in-depth reading. Conference organizers might ensure that widespread distribution of these “proceedings” is provided for in the conference budget. At least, complimentary copies might be made available to libraries of institutions that have large aquatic research programs, and also to the relevant abstracting services, and the Institute for Scientific Information, which is now indexing nonjournal publications. Additioiially, notice of the existence of the “proceedings” might be made in appropriate journals. One useful technique in this regard could be the preparation of summary articles that highlight the conferences, and identify adthors and their respective research findings. Chemical & Engineering News does this on a selective basis for ACS National Meetings, and f S & T has published such articles in its “Features” department on a variety of conferences related to the water chemistry field. The preparation and distribution of mimeographed, photocopied, or otherwise unpublished manuscripts is another feature 672
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Many places to look The literature of water chemistry is extensive; it appears in a wide variety of journals; and it is covered in varying detail by bibliographic resources. Scholars desiring to pursue research in the field of water chemistry should be aware of these facts, in order to utilize the literature in an efficient, systematic, and comprehensive manner. Some of the journals listed in Tables 2-7 were originally collated by Prof. G. F. Lee as part of unpublished course materials distributed at the University of Wisconsin. Prof. Lee (ES&T,April 1976, p 334) is now at the University of Texas-Dallas.
Additional reading Stumm, W., Morgan, J. J., Aquatic Chemistry, Wiley-lnterscience,New York, 583 pp, 1970. Faust, S. D., Hunter, J. V., Principles-and Applications of Water Chemistry, Wiley, New York, 643 pp, 1967. Giefer, G. J., Sources of lnformation in Water Resources, Water Information Center, Inc., Port Washington, N.Y., 290 pp, 1976. Ralston, V. H., Water Resources-A Bibliographic Guide to Reference Sources, Institute of Water Resources, Report No. 23, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 123 pp, 1975.
Joseph J. Delfino holds a joint appointment at the University of WisconsinMadison. He is associate professor in the Water Chemistry Program and is also Chief, EnvironmentalSciences Section ai the Wisconsin Laboratory of Hygiene. Coordinated by JJ
