24 THE BIOLOGICAL LITERATURE 



is such a general periodical. It contains some original technical reports 

 but also two or three reviews in each weekly issue, along with editorials, 

 news of science, news about scientists, book reviews, and advertisements. 

 Nature is a British publication similar in coverage. 



Letters to editors have become an important means of communication, 

 many periodicals reserving a section of each issue for such letters. The 

 usual technical paper requires a fairly long time for editing and pub- 

 lication and may not appear in print for six months or a year after 

 the manuscript is submitted to the editor. If for any of several reasons 

 an author wishes to have information published much faster, he can 

 write a letter to the editor. This letter is not subjected to the same edi- 

 torial scrutiny as the formal paper, so new data or interpretive discussions 

 can be printed earlier than if a technical paper were written. Presumably, 

 the letter to the editor will be followed at some later date by the com- 

 plete technical report. Unfortunately some people have a tendency to 

 publish all their work as letters to editors, and they never get around 

 to publishing the full details. This practice is not acceptable, of course, 

 but it is very difficult to regulate. 



Some other parts of the literature, not the work of individual scien- 

 tists, but useful as sources of information, will be described in a follow- 

 ing section. 



Searching the literature 



Anyone working in a scientific field must keep himself aware of 

 other work in that field. The scientist just entering a new area has a 

 particularly difficult task because the whole literature is unfamiliar 

 to him. Anyone who does not bother to read the previous literature, but 

 instead goes into the laboratory and starts experimenting, faces the very 

 real likelihood of an unnecessary duplication of effort. He must realize 

 that his mental processes are not unique and that someone else has had 

 or will have ideas similar to his own. 



No one can hope to read all the literature, even in a fairly small 

 segment of science. In fact, new literature is appearing more rapidly 

 than one individual can list it, let alone read it. Biological Abstracts 

 is now presenting abstracts of almost 100,000 papers each year. Chemi- 

 cal Abstracts provides coverage of about 7000 journals. Even reading 

 these two abstract periodicals from cover to cover is impossible or at 

 least is a full time job. 



