12. ABSTRACTING AND REVIEW JOURNALS 



{by Claudius F. Mayer) 



For the historian of any branch of science the so-called abstracting journals are 

 very convenient indicators, first-aid tools in a quick approach to past decades or 

 centuries. While they help him in his effort to revive the contemporary ideology 

 of a chosen subject and to re-create the scientific atmosphere of any era of his 

 choice, they are not more than indicators to be used with proper criticism. The 

 information that they convey should never be accepted without an ultimate recourse 

 to the original sources. For the historian who is engaged in specific bio-bibUograph- 

 ical studies the abstracting journals are especially valuable because they may help 

 him to detect many details in the literary activities and in the fife histories of even 

 the lesser stars of science. 



The historian has to be reminded, however, that the Uterature of any scientific 

 subject is much wider and the literary production of any man is much larger than 

 it could be revealed by any abstracting journal. Repeated statistical studies showed 

 that it is not more than about 20% of the world's current scientific literature which 

 the current abstracting journals are able to comprehend. The percentage of ab- 

 stracted literature may be higher and the value of older abstracting journals may be 

 greater for earher decades and centuries when the bulk of scientific pubfishing has 

 been small. The value of these journals as secondary sources for the historian 

 to prepare bio-bibliographies depends also upon the professional education of the 

 makers of the abstracting journals and subject bibliographies. If the compiler or 

 editor was a scientist, expert in his subject, the historian may be assured of the com- 

 pleteness and accuracy of the subject bibliographies and the abstracts though they 

 are secondary records only. 



The abstracting journal is by no means a 20th century innovation of scientific 

 journalism, though this century may have an increased demand for it. Indeed, the 

 precursors of the modern abstracting journals could be retraced to the earliest printed 

 magazines, and, even beyond those, to the medieval encyclopedias, formularies, pan- 

 dects, furthermore to the various written collections of scientific knowledge made 

 already a couple of thousand years B.C. 



The earhest scientific periodicals as well as many publications of the first scientific 

 societies in the 17 th and 18f^ centuries either consisted exclusively of abstracts and 

 digests or included much of these to form a large part of an issue. Many of the 

 general scientific periodicals fisted above in this chapter do the same. In Chapter 

 20 there are special journals for the historian of science; many of them abound in 

 abstracts of articles related to the history of sciences. At the end of Chapter 20 

 ( p. 246-48 ) there is a short appendix of journal titles; in a way, most of those jour- 

 nals were chiefly filled with abstracts. 



There is a steady growth in the number of journals that are devoted exclusively 

 to abstracting the contents of other scientific periodicals. At the begiiming of 1951 

 there were some 300 of them. A correct count is almost impossible, and not needed. 

 Many more may be in existence, and many are defunct now. Recently, D. E. Gray 

 fisted 145 current abstracting (and indexing) services for the field of physics alone 

 (Am. J. Physics, 1950, 18: 274-99; 417-24). Yet, only two of these journals have 

 been used by more than 90% of the people he questioned. 



Besides Gray's article there are very few other publications for fisting such 

 journals. A fist was prepared by Ruth Cobb with the title Periodical bibliographies 

 and abstracts for scientific and technological journals of the world (Washington, 

 U. S. National Research Council, 1920). The Library Association of Great Britain 

 has pubfished a Class Catalogue, &c. (Lond., 1912; 38p.). The latest of such fists 

 is a document of the International Federation for Documentation, under the title 

 List of current specialized abstracting and indexing services (The Hague, 1949). 



