Scientific Information Transfer: The Editor’s Role

It was Faraday who in 1821 said that there are three necessary stages of useful research. The first to begin it, the second to· end it, and the third 1 to publish it. There has since indeed been so much research and publication that we have become increasingly alarmed by the galloping proliferation of scientific information produced in relation to the user's ability to retrieve and consume it effectively, conveniently and creatively. In 1948, to deal with this concern, the Royal Society Scientific Infor­ 1 mation Conference held in London spanned the whole realm of scientific in­ formation. Sir Robert Robinson, President of the Royal Society, in his open­ ing address noted that "the study of scientific information services in all its ramifications has enormous scope", and the London conference dealt with scientific publication, format, editorial policy, subject grouping, organiza­ tion, abstracting, reviews, classification, indexing and training of infor­ mation officers. It was about this time that information science began to develop more on the retrieval end, so it seems logical that the first editors' group founded in 1949 was ICSU AB, the International Council of Scientific Unions Abstract­ ing Board. In 1958 the National Academy of Sciences International Conference of 2 Scientific Information in Washington limited its interests and expanded on the later phases of the life cycle of information - storage and retrieval.