Communicating Research (Library and Information Science)

Communicating Research

Library and Information Science

Consulting Editor: Harold Borko

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

University of California, Los Angeles

Harold Borko and Charles L. Bemier

Abstracting Concepts and Methods

F. W. Lancaster

Toward Paperless Information Systems

H. S. Heaps

Information Retrieval: Computational and Theoretical Aspects

Harold Borko and Charles L. Bernier

Indexing Concepts and Methods

Gerald Jahoda and Judith Schiek Braunagel

The Librarian and Reference Queries: A Systematic Approach

Charles H. Busha and Stephen P. Harter

Research Methods in Librarianship: Techniques and Interpretation

Diana M. Thomas, Ann T. Hinckley, and Elizabeth R. Eisenbach

The Effective Reference Librarian

G. Edward Evans

Management Techniques for Librarians, Second Edition

Jessica L. Milstead

Subject Access Systems: Alternatives in Design

Dagobert Soergel

Information Storage and Retrieval: A Systems Approach

Stephen P. Harter

Online Information Retrieval: Concepts, Principles, and Techniques

Timothy C. Craven

String Indexing

The list of books continues at the end of the volume.

Communicating Research

A. J. Meadows

Department of Information and Library Studies

Loughborough University

Loughborough, Leicestershire, United Kingdom

Academic Press

San Diego London Boston New York Sydney Tokyo Toronto

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 1998 by A. J. Meadows

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information

storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Academic Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meadows, A. J. (Arthur Jack)

Communicating research / A.J. Meadows.

p. cm. — (Library and information science)

Includes index.

ISBN 0-12-487415-0 (alk. paper)

1. Research—communication systems. 2. Communication in science.

3. Communication of technical information. I. Title. II. Series:

Library and information science (New York, N.Y.)

Q180.55.I45.M43 1997

001.4'01'4-dc21 97-23432

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

97 98 99 00 01 02 QW 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

1

Change and Growth

Early Communication 3

The Advent of the Research Journal 5

The Role of Societies 8

Journal Layout 11

The Accumulation of Research 13

Rapid Growth and Its Implications 18

Specialization and Research 21

The Professionalization of Research 24

Amateurs and Others 26

Information Growth and the Researcher 29

The New Electronic World 32

2

Research Traditions

The Development of Disciplinary Divisions 39

Subject Development 43

The Conceptual Basis in Science 48

Science and Other Disciplines 52

Knowledge Divisions 56

Examining Subject Differences 61

Subject and Communication Differences 66

Communication to a Wider Public 70

Information Technology and Subject Differences 74

v

Preface ix

VI Contents

3

Who Does Research and with What Results?

The Reason Why 79

Psychological Factors 82

Productivity 85

Quality 89

Leading Researchers 93

Age 98

The Research Community 101

Collaboration 107

The Impact of New Technology 111

4

Channels for Communicating Research

Design for Reading 116

Readability of Text 120

The Act of Reading 122

Publishers 125

Libraries 129

Oral Communication 133

Conferences 137

Human Networks 139

Information Flows 143

Electronic Channels 149

Electronic Networks and Readers 153

5

Making Research Public

Types of Publication 160

Different Publication Outlets 164

Writing for Publication 170

Editors and Referees 177

Referees and Authors 183

Particular Problems 189

Quality Control of Books 194

Research and the Media 199

Electronic Publishing 200

Contents Vii

6

Finding Out about Research

Seeking Research Information 205

Information Requirements 209

Organizing Personal Information 214

The Scatter of Information 217

The Age Distribution of Information 220

Implications of Literature Usage 224

Electronic Retrieval of Information 227

Electronic Communication 232

The Mass Media 237

Postscript 239

References 243

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Preface

Communication lies at the heart of research. It is as vital for research as

the actual investigation itself, for research cannot properly claim that name

until it has been scrutinized and accepted by colleagues. This necessarily

requires that it be communicated. Again, the support of research is costly.

Such funding is wasted unless the results of the research are presented to their

appropriate audiences. Whichever way one looks at it, efficient and effective

communication is an essential part of the research process.

I first became interested in the nature of research communication back

in the 1960s. Research activity, especially in science, was then expanding

rapidly in the Western world. The question inevitably arose—how much

longer can this expansion continue? Extrapolation suggested that by the end

of the century—where we are now—something would have to give. Growth

in funding, and consequently in the number of researchers would have to

slow down. The follow-up question, though asked less frequently at the time,

was this: Given that funding would be affected, how could the money avail￾able be used to produce the maximum amount of high-level research? At

that stage, I was working in the Department of Printed Books and

Manuscripts at the British Museum (now a part of the British Library) in

London. What interested me was a particular aspect of this problem: How

could the communication of research be handled most efficiently as funding

slowed? The answer again seemed obvious. Computers were already being

used for information handling in the 1960s. Their future development would

surely allow the rapid manipulation of large quantities of information and

make them increasingly effective tools for the communication of research.

After the British Museum, I returned to academic life, working in

astronomy, the history of science, and, finally, information and library studies.

The first two fields provided an interesting contrast in how researchers in the

sciences and those in the humanities handle information. Researchers in

these two fields see the world from different angles; their ideas on the nature

of acceptable knowledge differ, and their research communities are organized

IX

X Preface

differently. Consequently, their handling of information is dissimilar. Changes

affecting the world of research as a whole do not necessarily have identical

impacts on research communication in the sciences and on that in the

humanities. Such differential change influences, and is influenced by, the

activities of intermediaries in the communication chain—publishers, librari￾ans, information scientists, and so on—who try to link authors and readers.

They, more than anyone else, need to be aware of new means for improving

the efficiency of communication between researchers and their audiences.

Exploring this theme—changes with time acting differentially across

research fields—provides my main motivation for writing this book. We are

near the end of the 20th century. The expectations of the 1960s are being

fulfilled, and research and its communication are under increasing pressure.

The essential question that needs answering has now become this: How can

the communication activities of researchers best be catered to in a rapidly

changing technological environment? The following pages outline some of

the main themes of communicating research: what its position is at present

and how it has been reached, what factors have been at work, and how these

factors can interact with developing information technology to enhance the

future of research communication. The main emphasis throughout is on aca￾demic research. This bias derives in part from my own background, yet there

is some justification for it. In the first place, it is only in the academic envi￾ronment that all branches of knowledge are pushed forward together, so that

a proper comparison is possible. Second, the academic marketplace is both

more open and more complex than others in terms of communicating

research. It has, correspondingly, been the subject of more intensive study.

Several such studies are mentioned throughout the book. It should be

remarked, however, that they are used primarily as examples. No attempt has

been made to provide a comprehensive survey of what is now a very large

and widely scattered literature.

We are currently in a period of transition, which may be interesting,

but is rarely entirely pleasant, for those involved. Decisions made now can

help or hinder the transition to a more effective handling of research infor￾mation. Making helpful decisions depends on an understanding of the fac￾tors at work. The purpose of this book is to provide some of the background

needed for that understanding.

A. J. Meadows

1

Change and Growth

The way a researcher conveys information depends on the medium

employed, the nature of the information, and the intended audience. As these

change with time, so do the formulation and packaging of the information.

For example, the lecture is a traditional way of conveying information: it

seems totally uncontroversial. Yet today's lecture is not identical in form to its

equivalent of two centuries ago. In terms of medium, lecturers have such

newer aids as overhead projectors, microphones, and now, increasingly, com￾puter displays. In terms of information, the theoretical underpinning and the

jargon have both changed. In terms of audience, listeners are much more

likely to be specialists, so the lecturer will make assumptions about their

background. The medium, the information, and the audience interact to pro￾duce the package we label a "lecture." Listeners from two centuries ago who

arrived to listen to a modern lecture would need time to adjust from the old

package to the new. Until that adjustment had been made, they would find

it difficult to assimilate information.

Two strands are taken as of prime importance here for discussing these

trends—the nature of the medium used for transmitting information and the

needs of the research community both as generators and as recipients of

information. One obvious question regarding the medium concerns what

happens when a new medium appears. Can we assess what has been the

impact of printing on the communication of research over the past few cen￾turies? What sort of impact are new electronic media beginning to make?

Research information in printed form has been available for many years, but

an examination of the physical products—especially scholarly journals and

books—shows that their appearance has changed considerably with time. As

we shall see, technical changes have often been a less important factor in such

changes than the evolving needs of the research community. An understand￾ing of the forces at work when researchers use print for communication may

1

2 1. Change and Growth

provide some insight into how the research community will react to a shift

to an electronic communication medium. This is one of the themes running

through the book.

The medium available and the nature of the research community affect

not only the way information is presented but also the amount of informa￾tion in circulation. A small group of researchers living in the same city can

clearly use different methods of communication from a community of sever￾al thousand researchers distributed throughout the world. Creating a coher￾ent picture of research communication today, including some idea of how it

has reached its present position and where it might go in the future, involves

an examination of a range of factors such as these. W. H. Auden once referred

to history as "the operator, the organizer." We can rephrase this for our pur￾poses as—how has research communication come to be organized so that it

assists the operations of the research community?

To answer that question requires some insight into what motivates

researchers. For example, why do research? Here is the answer of Sir Francis

Bacon, writing around the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The mind is the man, and knowledge mind. A man is but what he

knoweth .... The truth of being, and the truth of knowing, is all one ....

Is truth barren? Shall we not thereby be able to produce worthy effects and

to endow the life of man with infinite commodities?1

In effect, he is saying that new knowledge is worth gaining for two

reasons—for its own sake and for the sake of its applications. These, no

doubt, would also be the main reasons offered today. But Bacon

goes on to add that the increase of knowledge is inextricably linked with

its communication, not simply to contemporaries, but to subsequent

generations.

the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from

the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they

fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in

the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in

succeeding ages.2

The concern of this book is with the communication of research. Yet that

cannot be entirely separated from the why and the how of doing research.

These matters are therefore explored as necessary: in particular, the question

of motivation is examined in Chapter 3.

Early Communication 3

Early Communication

No one can say when research first started and was consequently first

communicated. The answer depends not least on your definition of

"research." But the earliest activities that made an impact on modern

research communication were undoubtedly those of the ancient Greeks.

Research can be communicated in various ways, the two most important

being speech and writing. The Greeks were involved in both. Thus our "aca￾demic" discussion harks back to the Academy, the place just outside Athens

where people met in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. to discuss philosoph￾ical questions. Similarly, the original "symposium" was a Greek party at

which both debate and drink flowed freely (some things change little).

In terms of the written research tradition, it is the works of the Greeks,

headed by Aristotle, which have again contributed most. Their discussions,

often precariously preserved in repeatedly copied manuscripts, affected first

Arabic culture and then Western Europe. In Europe, exploration and inter￾pretation of the new ideas led to that revival of learning from the fourteenth

to the sixteenth century which we label "the Renaissance." Chaucer's Oxford

academic, who wanted to have at his bed's head "twenty books clad in black

or red, of Aristotle and his philosophy," was far from unique. The introduc￾tion of printing into Europe in the fifteenth century made the fulfillment of

such wishes much easier. The availability of printed texts increased rapidly. It

has been estimated that average book production per year worldwide

increased from 420 for the period 1436-1536 to 5750 over the next 100

years (1536—1636).3

Such a change in a relatively short period had a major

impact on the dissemination of information. As one author remarked in

1613:

One of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so

overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle mat￾ter that is every day hatched and brought forth into the world.4

Most of these books were not, of course, concerned with research, but

the importance of the printed book from the time of its origin for convey￾ing research cannot be doubted. The year 1543, for example, saw the publi￾cation of both the founding work of modern astronomy—De revolutionibus

orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the celestial bodies) by Copernicus—

and the first modern work on human anatomy—De humani corporis fabrica

(On the structure of human body) by Vesalius. The latter, in particular, repre-

4 1. Change and Growth

sented a step forward in the presentation of research, as it included accurate,

detailed illustrations. Works of this sort were often printed under the direct

supervision of the author or of a fellow-scholar. Such people were frequent￾ly associated with universities, so it happened that some universities set up

their own printing and publishing operations. One example is Oxford

University Press, which, with some stretch of the imagination, can trace its

origins back to the latter part of the fifteenth century.

The ability to multiply copies of a book was a major step toward bet￾ter and more rapid dissemination of research. It was matched by better trans￾portation of written and printed material, at least throughout Europe. Copies

of Copernicus s book, for example, were soon found in major libraries every￾where. Official couriers traveling along regular routes on state business had

long existed, and they often carried private correspondence along with the

official communications. In the sixteenth century, however, this transmission

of nongovernmental mail became increasingly formalized, and postal systems,

in the sense we understand them today, began to emerge. Initially, this had

only a minor impact on research; though for someone like the Danish

astronomer, Tycho Brahe, who tried to establish a network of corresponding

astronomers in the latter part of the sixteenth century, good communication

facilities were important.

What these facilities especially stimulated was the passage of news.

Indeed, postal systems and newspapers can be said to have grown up togeth￾er. Soon after printing started in Europe, news-sheets were produced,

officially or unofficially, to describe events of particular interest. These were

mainly local products dealing with a single event, but they soon became

intermeshed with existing arrangements for transmitting handwritten news

items round Europe. Various news systems connected the leading centers for

trade and commerce. A major banking family, such as the Fuggers, regularly

supplied customers and friends with newsletters containing information col￾lected via their commercial contacts all over Europe. By the early seventeenth

century, demand for this type of information had reached such a level that it

was often cheaper and easier to use print for dissemination rather than hand￾writing. At the same time, the often sporadic distribution of newsletters was

made more regular. The publication that resulted from these trends was rec￾ognizably the ancestor of the modern newspaper. It also provided a basic

model for the development of the research journal.

The transition from manuscript to print did not occur instantaneously.

Manuscript newsletters, particularly where a small audience was involved,

continued to be produced throughout the seventeenth and into the eigh-