144 



NATURE 



[September 29, 192 1 



Letters to the Editor. 



[T^e Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by hts correspondents. Neither can he undertake to 

 return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manu- 

 scripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.'i 



Scientific Publication. 



Dr. Brierley (Nature, September 8, p. 41) makes 

 several incontrovertible statements and some sugges- 

 tions that one is less willing to accept. Possibly the 

 views of one who has been an editor off and on for 

 fort\- years, as well as writer, publisher, and re- 

 searcher, may assist Dr. Brierley and other struggling 

 colleagues. 



It is, as Dr. Brierley says, only the worker going 

 over the same ground who needs to read the details, 

 and I agree that he needs more numerous and more 

 accurate details than he generally gets ; for other 

 readers a good summary should be provided. It is 

 also true that those "other readers" are the more 

 numerous, and yet they vary in their requirements 

 so that no single summary is likely to suit them all ; 

 each may wish to refer to the full text for the elucida- 

 tion of some point in which he is interested or ill- 

 informed. It would therefore be unsatisfactory to 

 confine papers to summaries, or even to what one 

 may call "large type matter." But, apart from this, 

 even in abstruse subjects the number of original 

 workers is surely greater than Dr. Brierley allows 

 for. There may not be many in one country, but 

 they are dispersed throughout the world. The 

 Japanese and the American and the New Zealander 

 cannot come to London every time they wish to refer 

 to a manuscript. The proposal to make a few copies 

 by some cheap process is, I suspect, illusory. At the 

 moment compositors and pressmen may be sucking 

 our blood, but normally linotype printing is as cheap 

 a process as any. I therefore advocate printing papers 

 in full, with all necessary detail and adequate illus- 

 tration. 



This, Dr. Brierley will reply, leaves us worse off 

 than before. What, then, are the remedies? Dr. 

 Brierley tells us that a lot of papers are only to mark 

 time or make a show. He is an editor. Does he 

 accept such papers ? The remedy is in his own hands. 

 Or has he lost his blue pencil ? But even the better- 

 class papers can stand some editing and condensation. 

 A large number of scientific workers are far too 

 lengthy (I do not mean too long); they use six 

 words where one will do, and, like the bad speaker, 

 take up space with telling us how brief they propose 

 to be and what a heap of good cargo they have been 

 compelled to jettison. These faults will increase as 

 linguistic training, especially in Latin, decreases in 

 our schools. 



Many of our scientific journals, especially those 

 started in years of prosperity, are needlessly 

 sumptuous. No journal need cut out matter so long 

 as it allows a quarter of a page or more to the 

 author's title and titles. The illustrations in these 

 journals are often on an absurdly large scale, and 

 there is too much printer's "fat." Footnotes are 

 generally a sign of undigested matter and chaotic 

 thought. They add to the expense, and should be 

 suppressed (this is a hint to Dr. Brierley as editor). 

 Sensible and succinct inethods of referring to litera- 

 ture are being adopted and enforced by modern editors, 

 but there is room for improvement. On this and 

 similar matters there are the Reports of the British 

 Association Committee on Zoological Bibliography and 

 Publication, which I shall be glad to send to inquirers. 



Some authors have a habit of writing a separate 

 paper on each aspect of a single subject ; and three 



NO. 2709, VOL. 108] 



such papers may appear in one number of a journal, 

 each with irs quarter-page heading and half-page blank 

 at the end. This habit is much in evidence in the 

 modern journals to which I have referred. There are 

 other authors who write slight variants of the same 

 article for several periodicals. Since they are not 

 paid for their trouble they have no excuse for thus 

 inflicting themselves on a weary public. Suppress 

 them, Mr. Editor ! The preliminary notice is fre- 

 quently a form of this self-advertisement. 



We must look at this question as men of business. 

 Does the world want our stuff or does it not? There 

 is a public undoubtedly, though not a very large one. 

 If you give it good value it will pay the price. It is 

 the editor's duty to increase the value of his wares 

 and to cut down the unnecessary costs. His publisher 

 must advertise with the right people and get the right 

 people to advertise with him. If everyone concerned 

 does his duty, I believe a scientific journal, even 

 the purest, can be made to pay its expenses. Heroic 

 remedies are not wanted. F. A. Bather. 



Natural History Museum, South Kensing- 

 ton, S.W.7, September 12. 



Dr. Brierley's communication on this subject in 

 Nature of September 8 (p. 41) is well worth reading 

 again, and my sole object in writing this letter is to 

 direct attention to it, for it appears to me that Dr. 

 Brierley indicates how the problem may be attacked 

 upon sound lines. The method he suggests is "to 

 make a radical change in the format of our scientific 

 journals, with or without an alteration in the exist- 

 ing structural relations of the learned societies." 

 Any "lumping together" of the publications of our 

 scientific societies would undoubtedly meet with much 

 opposition ; sentiment, vested interests, and natural 

 conservatism stand in the way. The proposal that 

 only well-digested summaries of papers should be pub- 

 lished would certainly lead to saving in mone)- and 

 time, with little countervailing loss. 



Dr. Brierley has stressed the saving in money, but 

 the saving in human energy and time is of equal, if 

 not greater, importance. No scientific worker can or 

 dare limit his reading to the confines of his special 

 subject, and "that inundated feeling " is fast becom- 

 ing a, prevalent complaint. 



In a new world there will be established for each 

 branch of science in each country a single publication 

 in which all original work will appear ; it will be 

 administered by the societies and institutions devoted 

 to that branch of learning, and all progressive work 

 will be entitled to a place in it in the form of a full 

 summary. Subordinate branches of the same subject 

 will be accommodated in separate series as they grow 

 in importance. The monthly, quarterly, or annual 

 indexes of the publication will provide a complete 

 current guide to the subject, and the worker will know 

 exactly where to go for his information. A good 

 national and international sale will be assured ; and as 

 all the volumes will be of the same size, there will 

 be a considerable saving in space, material, and 

 temper. 



Meanwhile, the innumerable journals that live by 

 advertisements, discussion, and abstracts will continue 

 to fulfil their function and will survive according to 

 their' merits ; the scientific worker will take in those 

 that are most useful. But for original papers he will 

 turn only to the British publications for British results 

 or to the corresponding French ones for those of France, 

 and so on. In Januarv each 5'ear he will be in pos- 

 session of part I for that year, and by December 31 

 he will have the annual volume complete with indexes, 

 just as in any well-managed journal of to-day. 



