10 



gineers, Trans, of Society of Automotive Engi- 

 neers, and Trans, of American Foundrymen's 

 Association. The abstracts now being provided 

 by these journals are prepared as a rule by the 

 authors and vary greatly in quality. It would 

 be relatively easy for those journals whose ab- 

 stracts are not as useful as is desirable to 

 change their rules so as to require abstracts of 

 the quality of analytic abstracts. 



The directions and rules which have been 

 formulated for the guidance of authors in the 

 preparation of analytic abstracts may be found 

 in current numbers of the Astrophysical Jour- 

 nal and also, somewhat abbreviated, in those 

 of the Physical Review and of the Journal of 

 the American Ceramic Society. With slight 

 modification they would serve for any science. 

 But while some authors will take the trouble 

 to master the technique and prepare satisfac- 

 tory abstracts, a uniformly high standard can 

 not be maintained im.less all the abstracts for 

 each journal are checked and revised by a 

 competent abstractor. Therefore, after decid- 

 ing to require analytic abstracts, the first 

 step taken by a journal should be the selec- 

 tion of a suitable man as abstract editor. If 

 the man appointed should care to get in touch 

 with me, I should be glad to give any assis- 

 tance I can in getting the new policy started. 



In conclusion, attention should be directed 

 to the fact that those journals which provide 

 analytic abstracts may easily combine an in- 

 dex of the subtitles in the abstracts with the 

 usual index of author's titles, and thus greatly 

 increase the completeness and precision of 

 their subject -indexes and hence the value of 

 the journal for reference purposes. 



It may not seem of much importance whe- 

 ther any particular journal provides efficient 

 abstracts or not. Yet it is clearly the duty of 

 each to do so. For when all have adopted this 

 policy and the abstract journals promptly 



