Importance Of The Scientific Society As A Journal Publisher In The Late 20th Century

3 Pages 837 Words

Before the advent of the Computer Age and digital technology, most scientists kept abreast of the latest advances in their field by means of journals in libraries, reprint requests or use of Current Contents. Researchers, whereby having private, public or university affiliation, were often involved in one or more scientific societies. These societies, acting as an information-exchange medium, are chiefly responsible for the gathering, dissemination and sharing of current research in their respective content area. Karen Levitan, an information scientist at the MITRE Corporation in Virginia, hypothesized in 1975 that American scientists did not consider the publishing role of these societies to be as important as traditionally assumed.
In order to test her hypothesis, Levitan polled 60 random biomedical scientists from the six societies in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)2. To note, her choice for biomedical scientists versus other genres of scientists depended only on the fact that most previous work focused on the communication systems of the physical sciences, chemistry or psychology. Of the 60 polled, 46 scientists responded. It is quite obvious that this sample size is statistically insignificant, a point Levitan concedes, and may be largely biased in the FASEB society. However, there does exist three3 interesting trends supporting Levitan’s hypothesis worth considering in future analyses.
First, the majority of scientists did not join the societies primarily to receive publications. Levitan points out that the membership to the societies in the FASEB being considered were “selective” as opposed to “open”. She queried the scientists that if publications were to cease by the society and controlled by other groups, what effect would that have on their enrollment. The respondents were evenly divided, with proponents citing the quality of the publication was based more on the a...