DRAFT PLAN FOR THE PUBLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026060 |
| Published date | 01 January 1945 |
| Date | 01 January 1945 |
| Pages | 26-30 |
| Author | N.W. PIRIE |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
DRAFT PLAN FOR THE PUBLICATION OF
SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
by N. W. PIRIE
Rothamsted Experimental Station
OUR
present habits in scientific publication are comparatively recent and
have sprung from the interaction of many different factors that have operated
differently in different countries. At first a book was the principal medium,
but it was backed up by copious letter writing. Letter writing remained
necessary in any field that was moving rapidly but,
as
the number of scientists
increased, it became unwieldy and was replaced by a set of privately owned
journals that supplemented and copied to some extent the already well-
established Proceedings of the learned societies. By 1800 many journals
were being published and many more appeared during the next fifty years.
The papers seem as a rule long-winded by modern standards, but this is
always necessary when a subject is so young that there is still legitimate
uncertainty about the significant facts in a set of observations. As each
science develops there develops with it a more or less standardized type of
paper, and this now represents an uneasy compromise between an attempt
to give so much information that anyone repeating the work will never be
in doubt whether he is observing the phenomenon described or a new one,
and the terseness that appeals to
a
worker in a neighbouring field who wants
the conclusions with just enough experimental detail to gauge the reliability
of the author. The essential incompatibility of these two aims is probably
more apparent in biochemistry and the biological sciences than it is in pure
chemistry and physics, but to some extent it pervades the whole of science.
Individual scientists usually subscribe to one or a few journals because the
subscription to the journal is inseparable from membership of a society or
because a few of the papers published in that journal are of permanent
interest to them. It is exceptional to find a scientist who reads carefully even
half the papers in the journals he is buying, and a wish to keep them per-
manently is still rarer. On the other hand, papers of value to him appear
regularly in other journals, and the wish to have a copy for personal reference
can only be satisfied by asking for a reprint. With many scientists there is a
natural, and commendable, diffidence in asking for these reprints, and even
when this is overcome the supply is often found to be exhausted. For the
probable demand for a paper is hard to predict.
Two schemes that have been proposed to improve the technique of
publication may be referred to: that of Bernal1 and that of Troy2. Both
schemes call for the abolition of journals as at present known: they would
1 The
Social
function
of
science
(1939),
passim and appendix 8.
2 Special
libraries
(1943),
xxxiv. 278.
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