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Summary of Discussion
Pages 523-536

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From page 523...
... time lag, and would COSt nothing. Recognizing that such specifications are not likely to be met, he pointed out that compromises must be made and said the panel had decided to organize the discussion around two basic functions of an abstracting service, with each member speaking briefly on a particular aspect or problem in relation to one of these functions.
From page 524...
... Saul Herner reports on his analysis of abstracts of the same paper appearing in two or more of nine major abstracting journals. For the more than 200 papers studied, no significant slanting occurred toward the particular subject field of the abstracting journal and, in fact, seldom did the abstracting journal's product differ appreciably from the original abstract.
From page 525...
... Apropos of Sir Lindor Brown's emphasis the previous evening on the importance of liaison between the producer, the distributor, and the user of scientific information, Sir Herbert described the manner in which this problem is handled in his organization. Each editor of an abstracting journal, and as far as possible the abstracters also, must be versed in its subject field.
From page 526...
... Dr. Farradane said, "Heaven save us from the telegraphic abstract." His experience as editor of an abstract journal indicates that people do not get adequate information from such abstracts and he strongly urges complete sentences, logical sequence, and readable style.
From page 527...
... He noted first that when users are asked what is most important in the abstracting field they invariably reply, "Complete, prompt coverage, and prompt indexing." He then spoke briefly about five phases of coverage. First, he pointed out that any statement regarding percentage of coverage by an abstracting service implies knowledge of the total size of the literature in that field.
From page 528...
... S Sabel, after reviewing numerous unclassified reports, stated, "The references in an incomplete list of documents are unlikely to indicate more than a small proportion of the remaining documents." However, the Lykoudis, Liley, Touloukian paper suggests as an adequate approach, obtaining leads from abstracting services and then approaching bibliographic completeness from the references in the primary articles so located.
From page 529...
... Sir Herbert Howard spoke briefly on author abstracts. In the 14 abstracting services issued by the Commonwealth Agriculture Bureau they occasionally use author abstracts but mostly find them unsuitable.
From page 530...
... which came out of the Royal Society conference and re-emphasized a point made earlier that author abstracts might become quite satisfactory if editors of primary journals would promulgate such rules and then take as much editorial responsibility for the abstracts' adequacy as they do for that of the papers. DIS CUSSION FROM THE FLOOR Supporting Professor Boutry's remarks, Mr.
From page 531...
... Tukey suggested that the recommendation of the biological editors does not go far enough. It implies simply an editorial responsibility with respect to the author-written abstract; he believes the basic responsibility to provide goof!
From page 532...
... to steer him to articles which he should read. He questioned whether present informative abstracts fulfill the former function very wed and suggested that the problems involved in doing so are much more formidable than -is commonly recognized.
From page 533...
... -She pointed out that such a system allows the retention of peripheral field items with a minimum of difficulty; she then went on to discuss the importance of such material. She suggested that enabling a scientist to see and review information in fields other than that of his immediate research concern may be the most important function of abstracting and indexing services.
From page 534...
... · ~ · 1 1 · ~ .1 1 1, abstracting, indexing, and analyzing ot the worlds scientific and technological literature in such a manner as to make it readily and promptly available to the scientific community. The Federation hopes to achieve this objective through cooperation among its members in exchanging their several outputs, in conducting mutually-beneficial studies, in discussing common problems, and in jointly preparing various bibliographic tools needed by all.
From page 535...
... Dr. Farradane returned to the question of indexing and suggested that if indexing requires half of the effort of an abstracting service, this is an area in which research definitely is needed.


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