Joint ICSU Press UNESCO Expert Conference on ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING IN SCIENCE UNESCO Paris 19 23 February 1996

Understanding and Shaping Scienti c Information Transfer

Joost G. Kircz

12

and Hans E. Roosendaal

Elsevier Science 1055 KV Amsterdam Communication in Physics Project WINS Faculty University of Amsterdam.
1

1. Introduction

1973 . It would go well beyond the scope of this contribu tion to describe the science process even in some detail. We will assume here that the science process consists of a system of related mostly competing research pro grammes Gholson et al. 1989 van Hezewijk in press Jasano et al. 1995 Lakatos 1978 . On this basis a number of di erent stages in the re search process from conceptionalisation of problems to theory to hypotheses to predictions and testing and nally interpretation of research outcomes can be distin guished van Hezewijk in press Lakatos 1978 . While we realise that there is no consensus on the above these di erent stages lead to a number of main communi cation needs as experienced by researchers in di erent elds see below. This structure of the science process has a number 2. Process and needs of social consequences which are discipline dependent. Most important are common standards resulting in spe ci c rules and ethics. Furthermore each scientist has 2.1 The science process to establish his own position and this is mainly done The main issue to be addressed in the context of elec through recognition of his contributions to science in the research process. These contributions can be infor tronic publishing is mal and formal and are to a large extent manifested in How can it support and enhance the science process publications Gross 1990 Merton 1973 . Communication is the essence of science and more particularly it is the engine of the whole science process Garvey 1979 Roosendaal and de Ruiter 1990 . The 2.2 Communication needs scienti c communication process is an object of inves tigation and it provides data for research programmes in a variety of science studies Garvey 1979 Gholson et Generally the communication needs result from re search needs in the di erent stages of the science pro cess. Analysis van Rooy 1995 indicates the following c 1995 1996 ISCU Press and individual authors. All rights reserved. needs In this presentation we report a two fold approach to the issues and opportunities modern electronic media pose for scienti c information. The rst part of this paper addresses a number of elements in the process of information needs transfer and disclosure in academic environments and discusses results of in depth interviews with a number of scientists from various elds. In the second part we discuss the changes electronic publishing will induce in scienti c information handling. We try to analyse the di erent cognitive components leading to a variety of ways in which information is pre sented and we brie y discuss recent research towards a better understanding of the fundamental changes elec tronic publishing will introduce. 105

al. 1989 Gross 1990 van Hezewijk in press Jasano et al. 1995 Kuhn 1970 Lakatos 1970 1978 Merton

106

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

awareness of knowledge both in the researchers own research domain as well as in other mostly related research domains. Though of particular importance in the earlier stages of the science pro cess it is a conditio sine qua non throughout all stages. awareness of new research outcomes new devel opments have to be followed closely and need to be accounted for in the research process at the earliest possible stage. speci c information this means relevant theories and detailed information on research design in strumentation and methodologies. and also scienti c standards scienti c standards are grad ually being developed within a research program me and are an important element in the social structure of the science process. platform for communication the researcher should have at his disposal a fully edged com munication platform satisfying his needs from the very informal private discussions to convenient formal interactions with colleagues. ownership protection throughout the entire re search process the researcher wants to claim pri ority of his contribution to the research elds and needs protection at a variable degree depending on the stage of this ownership this ownership extends to how the information is communicated and disseminated.

... in some disciplines it is easier to repeat an experiment than it is to determine that the experiment has already been done.

This is pure destruction of invested capital and as research funding becomes more and more an issue to the political agenda in many countries the e ectiveness and e ciency of scienti c communication is becoming crucial. The ine ciency is partly due to the fragmented information over the many di erent information sources we have. at the same time there exists an increasing com petition in science not only competition arising from the dynamics of the competing research pro grammes but also for economic and funding rea sons this competition leads in turn to upward pressure on the communication and information system.
3. Research

In the previous section we have formulated a number of theses on the communication process as an important engine for the science process. Communication needs are seen to be related to and have di erent impact on the di erent stages in every research process. The main question then is how can we increase the e ectiveness and e ciency of the communication process for the in dividual researcher What are the main elements what are the main expectations and desires a researcher has For our research we identify as key issues The information needs whereas the system is now more fragmented and segmented what expecta tions do researchers have with respect to a more integrated system The infrastructure of the system are we moving from the present more closed system to an open distributed and fully transparent system where transparency is de ned from the users end

2.3 Developments
It is inherent to science and to the science process that both are in constant ux or growth. In this contri bution two aspects of this constant growth are worth mentioning despite the fact that science has been growing at a rather constant pace for more than 300 years Schauder 1994 there is the general feeling that this accumulated growth has lead to an unman ageable pile of information and that the growth of information leads to less e ective and e cient communication threatening in turn the e ective ness and the e ciency of the science process itself. Recent publications of Maddox and Bell Nature 376 address this issue but in 1979 William D. Garvey already stated

3.1 Research design

The above mentioned key issues are being addressed in eld research comprising a number of in depth inter views with individual researchers. In our heuristic model there is a tendency to an open infrastructure and an integrated system. This model is being investigated on a strati ed sample of individual researchers in the following scienti c disciplines high energy physics

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

107

When looking for speci c information researchers are not interested in the quality of the refereeing process

Table 1.

Discipline All Clinical medicine Neuroscience Organic chemistry Mechanical engineering High energy physics

Opinion 2.4 2.3 0 2.1 0 1.9   2.9   2.7  

Expectations on infrastructure 1.9 1.7 0 2.1 0 1.6   1.9 0 2.5  

Desires on infrastructure 2.0 2.1 0 2.5 0 1.5   1.8 0 2.2 0

Researchers will more and more use on line information services that select sources on the basis of their own personal pro le in order to ful l their own speci c information needs

Discipline All Clinical medicine Neuroscience Organic chemistry Mechanical engineering High energy physics

Numbers indicate agreement with statement and scale from 1 to 5 1 is strong disagreement 5 is strong agreement. Brackets denote di erence of discipline from average ranging from signi cant   to signi cant  .

Expect. on Desires on Expect. on infrastructure infrastructure information needs 4.2 4.4 4.3 4.4 4.7   4.6 0 4.7   4.6 0 4.5   4.8   4.6 0 4.8   4.2 0 4.2 0 3.9 0 4.2 0 3.8   4.6 0 4.4 0 4.6 0 3.7   4.2 0 4.0 0 4.2 0 Opinion

Desires on information needs 4.3 4.7   4.6 0 3.8   4.5 0 4.0 0

organic chemistry mechanical engineering neuroscience clinical medicine

4. Results and conclusions

For this contribution we restrict ourselves to sum marising the main overall results and conclusions from our research. First we discuss the results in terms of the four main functions in scienti c communication section 4.1. Then we discuss more speci c needs behind these functions in detail section 4.2.

4.1 Main functions

The objective of the research is to identify the ex It is useful to distinguish four main functions in sci pectations and desires researchers have with respect to enti c communication. the above themes. A number of pertinent themes is probed on a structured way using so called provocative statements. Opinions of researchers are then further The certi cation function concerns the validation probed using expert interviewers from the publishing of research quality and has to do with scienti c departments of Elsevier Science. In that way we allow standards within a research programme. hypotheses and other issues to be put to test and to be criticised or falsi ed. Motives for certain opinions The registration function relates particular re expectations and desires can then be identi ed. A full search to an individual scientist who then claims description of the research method is given in Geurts priority for the research. This function is closely and Roosendaal in press . An example of a provocative connected to ownership protection and the re statement and some results for the mentioned disci ward system and to a large extent in uences the plines are given in Table 1. social dynamics within the system.

108

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

A third function is the awareness function which leads to disclosure and search needs such as e.g. browsing of the researcher. The last function we mention is the archival func tion and this function relates to storage and ac cessibility of information. Technological dynamics will clearly in uence all these functions however not conceptionally but much more in the way these functions can be performed in the fu ture. Recent technological developments allow novel ways of access to stored information and this again im pacts on the way information needs to be structured see below. Technological dynamics can then lead to a new architecture of scienti c communication provided this architecture is accepted by the scienti c commu nity. This scienti c community has in the past proven to be rather conservative in its acceptance of new tech nology as is illustrated in the following quote Garvey 1979

resistance to new media stems from scientists concern that the goals of the scienti c system would not be ful lled by these media.

4.2 Acquisition needs

The results of the survey show that researchers have rather well de ned expectations and desires with re spect to acquisition needs. We can separate acquisition needs into two parts demands with respect to the infor mation proper and demands with respect to the process of acquiring information.

4.2.1 Information needs Reliability is a conditio sine qua non for in

formation. Whereas some researchers may want to rely on their own judgement and then only when they are highly familiar with the research re ported the overall majority of researchers wishes to rely on an independent quality check that meets external known and accepted standards. The main reason is overall expediency and e ciency in the process as well as convenience. At the same time the present refereeing system is sometimes questioned. Smaller highly formalised research areas with a well de ned social structure such as high energy physics tend to move more towards self evaluation. Relevance related to subject scope and level of research. Relevance can only be judged by the 4.2.2 Process of acquisition There are a num individual researcher. Structuring of the informa ber of di erent strategies to select retrieve and process tion and linking of mutually relevant sources of information. The following main elements come to the fore information facilitates this process.

tion depends very much on the dynamics of the re search. Demands on timeliness therefore vary per research eld. Dynamic closed and formalised re search elds with a high demand for priority over certi cation lean towards self publishing either in an informal or formal way. Early access coupled to a proper refereeing system is however preferred. Presentation is related to e ciency of com munication and convenience. Presentation on pa per is still considered superior to screen presenta tion however this is not an impediment to accep tance of the latter as improvements are taken for granted. Storage this is probably the most important issue to be addressed for all agents in the publish ing chain. The scienti c community at large has strong expectations with respect to the following issues delocalisation of archives world wide acces sibility irrespective of location of researcher. This is in particular an interesting option for those researchers who now have very re stricted access. It is expected to open up new dimensions in the dynamics of research pro grammes and will a ect the social structures of science. transparency of the system disclosure should not be impeded or restricted to ar ti cial domains such as subject area geog raphy time collection etc.. standards standardisation is generally seen as an unresolved issue and beyond the realm of the researcher. while maintaining their distinction informal and formal communication will become much more intertwined. A division is likely to be based more on the di erent functions they have in the research process. the archive should allow the reader to inte grate all his information needs irrespective of the di erent information sources. responsibility for the archive is considered an open question beyond the realm of the re searcher. The archive needs not only to be designed but operated and maintained in a professional way.

Timeliness the desired time to access informa

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

109

time to access primarily an issue of e ciency and convenience. convenience in particular fragmentation of in formation is found to be a main obstacle. The structure of information is important in partic ular for those searching activities that cannot be outsourced to information specialists. The readi ness to outsource to information specialists de pends on the scienti c discipline. personal adjustment every researcher expects to develop his own individualised search pro le. comprehensiveness needs to be de ned from the researchers point of view i.e. the reader in tegrates the information. This requires an in tegrated information structure covering di erent sources see also section 5. transportability taken for granted. generative power this relates to serendipity in the acquisition as well as searching accuracy. transparency research ethics require an open transparent system. Open access to information is a main condition for progress in research. Trans parency requires an open infrastructure for dis semination. Whereas we now have fragmentation of needs by segmentation in di erent products integration of needs with optimum migration be tween products is being requested. Where increas ing specialisation now leads to speci city of in formation individuality of information that can cross borders and at the same time allows for the existing di erent communication cultures is being requested. costs acquisition of information involves costs. It involves costs for the creator of the information as well as for the value added to the information as supplied by the creator. Added value relates to selection processing structuring distribution and dissemination. This added value and resulting price has to be o set against the value information has for the research process. From a researchers point of view the price of information is not an issue according to our research results.

The research indicates that the following familiar is sues are considered as remaining important or to be coming even more important visibility retrievability time to reader convenience impact interaction this is particularly important for feedback. In general researchers have high expectations that more direct interaction using electronic facilities for in formal and formal communication will increase feed back and therefore e ectiveness and e ciency of the research process.

4.4 Summary of our rst results

In summary the research allows us to conclude the following researchers expect and desire a communication system allowing for the integration of needs as de ned from the readers viewpoint. Integration is not restricted to text but includes also data pictures lm sound etc. this requires an open infrastructure. This is not always appreciated by individual researchers. The agents in the publishing chain may well focus on the following main aspects content there is as before a clearly de ned growing need for reliable information that is eas ily accessible. Improved standards of certi ca tion and preparation of information are being re quested. structure dissemination of information requires structuring taking advantage of the modularity of information. infrastructure an open sophisticated infrastruc ture is in demand. information management personal information management tools need to be developed. These could be based on the internal structure of the information.

4.3 Dissemination needs

Dissemination of information is seen to serve two main goals Schauder 1994 recognition feedback

110

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

5. Design for the future

5.1 Introductory remarks

From the studies discussed in the rst part of this paper it is clear that scienti c information is contex tual in a double sense. Firstly the type of information is di erent in di erent elds. A geological chart is a to tally di erent object from a histogram of radioactive de cay rates though both can be displayed as large colour posters. Secondly the usage of di erent types of infor mation including the cutting and clipping is di erent. The emerging electronic tools already heavily in uence the way scientists think and represent their thinking and research results. These two contextual levels will be expressed di erently in di erent media. Present day digital information acquisition storage and handling techniques represent the apogee of the de velopment which started with the possibility of using electrical devices for information handling. Given the exibility of these techniques we see that reporting of scienti c research and its technical expressions will be further entangled. All this is not new in the early six ties Marshall McLuhans famous book Understanding Media McLuhan 1964 already heralded discussions on the deep in uences new technologies have in shap ing culture. Most of these discussions however were developed in departments of Mass Communication and Media Studies. Within the sciences we spent a lot of time and energy in developing these new tools but we hardly analysed the decisive role new technologies have in reporting our own results. In order to be able to un derstand shape and use the new media proper without losing the essential objectives of scienti c communica tions discussed in section 4. of this paper we have to dissect the various interacting levels and their compo nents.

technologies provide the technological infrastruc ture for novel methods. As interesting as they are as objects of scienti c research per se they are however not critical of the conceptual de velopments needed to address issues in scienti c information handling as outlined in section 4.

5.2 Preparing a research programme

Within the context of our research programme which aims at de ning and developing the employment of the new electronic media we would like to discuss here two di erent but intertwined components The research and development of di erent ways of presenting manipulating and storing information see section 5.2.1. The developments of methods and tools to en hance the disclosure of information see section 5.2.2. Within the following we take the burgeon ing development of sheer storage and transport bandwidth capacity as given. These exploding

5.2.1 Presenting and storing information. Over the last years we already saw a most promising develop ment towards a better structuring of information. The Standardised Markup Language SGML and Hyper text Markup Language HTML are well known and accepted working standards today Furuta and Quint 1989 . A quite di erent approach than just loading clas sical documents on electronic storage media leads to research to reveal and structure the inherent modular ity of information. Text pictures lms animations and sound are all separated and independent ways of presenting information. Until now technology has con ned the bulk of information presentation to text with illustrations. At the moment we see an explosion of technical possibilities which make available in addition to texts all non textual forms of information. The point is however that we do not need additions to texts but that we need integrated information systems as already discussed in section 4. Every kind of presentation of information has its own character and is a di erent expression of the re ported object phenomenon or theory. If we really want to value the possibilities of including sound colour movies etc. into regular scienti c reporting we have to analyse their speci c riles in the communication process see section 4.3. Historically communication is con ned to the printed journal with the result that text is now the most important ingredient. Pictures started as illustrations of the text as extensions. In the course of time visual display of quantitative information became a craft in itself the picture expresses more than a thou sand words can do Tu e 1983 1990 . In an electronic environment the picture might become a similar prime source of information whilst the text then becomes the explanation to the gure in complete symmetry with the gure as an illustration of the text. In the same way lms sounds animations etc. will become full expressions of scienti c results in their own right. We will deal with this point further on in the next section. 5.2.2 Disclosure. Within the Library Sciences in formation retrieval IR research is already a well estab lished eld. In this contribution we will not spend much time on these aspects. At the moment it is su cient to list the following fundamental problems IR research is facing Blair 1990 Kircz 1991 Tague Sutcli e 1996

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

111

1. In systems where we use the full text of articles so called free text searching systems the search pos sibilities are con ned to the words provided by the author. The manipulable information is restricted to the work as provided by the author. As already emphasised above research and hence the authors language is very contextual full of jargon and very much the expression of more or less closed social environments. For that reason free text search ing systems are very di cult to handle for read ers who are not conversant with the jargon of the particular eld. This might be readers from other adjacent elds but also readers within the eld but reading from another perspective be it ge ographically American scientist reading Russian science or temporally todays scientists reading old work in their own eld. From another point of view one can say that free text searching ap proaches the problem from the authors point of view. 2. In systems with controlled keyword lists and the sauri externally added keys we are confronted with the almost impossibility of mapping content onto a xed list of concepts. Whilst in the case of free text systems we are able to maximally ma nipulate the texts as given in the case of con trolled keywords we reduce or coalesce language into xed notions. However to be useful these notions need to be stable at least for some time. Thus controlled keywords and thesauri always lag behind the research language used. It is impor tant to note that opposite to free text terms con trolled terms express in a way the readers point of view. Unfortunately articles are now only indexed once and retrospective indexing of collections of articles in order to identify old work to new con cepts and vice versa never happens. 3. In cases where we use references to disclose works that we need we take the list of references as transmittal indicators. Not the works we have accessed but the cited works are wanted. The problem is that the reason a reference is given by the citing author is not always clear. Is it just to show the author knows his eld is it to atter a possible referee is the reference to the competi tion deliberately left out etc. What is needed is a better link between the cited work and the context in which the citing author deems this ref erence useful. Fortunately due to the speed up of the publication process by electronic means the time lag inherent in the use of references as dis closure tools will be reduced. The use of references as disclosure tools emphasise their context or em bedding of the wanted information.

Thus the research programme that we propose entails the development of domain speci c information repre sentating structures which link scienti c or related in formation concepts to the speci c context in which they are used. One way to do this is to create a collection of exible domain speci c thesauri. Even if terms in dif ferent thesauri within a collection are literally the same they do not necessarily represent the same concept. Ev ery term which will be put into context in a speci c domain is therefore a much more powerful tool. If we now allow the domains to overlap slightly we will be able to generate a collection of thesauri which like an atlas of road maps of di erent scale and lay out guide the searching researcher from one domain to another. A programme on overlapping thesauri in mathematics and physics starts soon. Here we try to develop a math ematical theory Hazewinkel 1995 to match overlap ping terms and there synonyms extracted from a large and coherent set of articles within well de ned elds in mathematics and physics. The ultimate goal of this re search programme is to develop techniques for the gen eration of an Atlas of contextual scienti c index terms.
6. First steps to a new architecture

Following the requirements and expectations on stor age retrieval etc. as resulted from our investigations reported in the beginning of this paper and in order to appreciate the new possibilities and t them into the framework of conscientious scienti c discourse we have to clarify and de ne the various characteristics of the di erent kinds of information.

6.1. Texts
The essay form of scienti c documents is a typical re sult of the use of print on paper sheets. The portability browsability and comprehensiveness of the paper prod uct is the end of a century long historical development process. In an electronic environment the characteris tics might well change. All components of the paper product which are repetitive can be deleted as recur ring objects as they are always retrievable from the archive when needed for the integration of information by the reader. For example it is customary or even obligatory to have an introduction which explains the authors goals and serves to embed the reported work into a wider context. In an electronic environment say a kind of hypertext structure introductions might be re duced to pointers which link reported work to a review article in which the whole context is fully explained. Furthermore repetitive reviews of ones own and other researchers work can be reduced if the structure of the reporting has a more modular build up instead of the

112

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

present linear story telling structure. The aim then is to structure texts in di erent types of modules in such a way that each kind of module has its own informa tion value. It is important to note that scienti c articles are already well structured according to well established rules and have familiar headings such as Introduction Methods Data Results Discussion Conclusion. How ever this does not mean that all sentences dealing with say methods can be found under that heading. Analy sis shows that linear texts are generally much less struc tured than section headings suggest. In our research programme we analyse a coherent col lection of scienti c papers in two di erent ways. Firstly we analyse the di erent types of information contained in the documents e.g. Goal Embedding Tools  Methods Results Data handling Apparatus Discus sions as a rst break up of the linear structure. We take this set of types as basic modules and try to t the original text therein. Of course such a simple linear set of modules is not su cient. Within every module we make a further subdivision which relates this module to others. So within the module Apparatus we can e.g. distinguish the description of the apparatus used the apparatus in context to other machines the embedding of the experimental set up the apparatus in contrast to apparatus used by others apparatus as part of the discussion. The main goal here is to reveal a possible modularity of information by analysing existing articles in order to come to a heuristic model for a non linear modular way of writing articles. This part of the analy sis is augmented by a linguistic study where the same set of articles is analysed as argumentative texts. According to well established models of the Pragma Dialectical ap proach in argumentational theory van Eemeren et al. 1987 1994 we try to reveal the line of reasoning in a scienti c article with the aim to use it as a tool for better structuring. The goal here is to develop a model for the relationship between the above mentioned mod ules. This way we can assign to each module not only a scienti c tag but also a rhetorical one e.g. a mod ule Goal has a completely di erent character than a module Data Handling. While in the Goal module the author can express all kinds of speculations freely the value of the module Data Handling demands very strict adherence to well established standards and pro cedures. Integrating both approaches will result in a model for a modular presentation of scienti c texts where each model has a well de ned scienti c as well as contextual character. The advantage of such a struc turing is clear for the following modes of use

text philosophy and transcend the present use of hypertext as a structuring on top of intrinsic lin ear essays. By putting the various components of scienti c discourse in context the refereeing standards can be improved as they can be de ned as a func tion of the module refereeing the module Data Handling demands more rigorous standards in contrast to the module Goal. In case of a modular build up the searching reader can con ne the search to particular modules and does not need to retrieve the entire communica tion as is the case with document retrieval e.g. if a researcher wants to know about the design of a particular detector only those parts of the work are of interest which deal with the detector inde pendent of how interesting and important the rest of the communication is for the original author.

6.2. Active mathematics and simulations

Although text based mathematics represents a to tally independent way of representing results. The re search in this eld is now aimed mainly at de ning a SGML grammar for mathematics which will enable manipulation of formulae and their use in calculation of symbolic manipulation packages. Simulations contain again an independent way of com municating scienti c ideas. Here the reader has to have the possibility to change the model and or the parame ters to develop ones own further research based on pub lished research. The publication of computer programs be it simulations or calculation packages demands the development of ones own standards and rules. Some experience is actually gained in the management of pro gram libraries such as the Computer Program Library from the Queens University of Belfast which is inte grated in the paper journal Computer Physics Commu nications.

6.3 Still pictures

The analysis of potential applications of non textual material still has to start. Pictures will be more than just illuminations of the text. Pictures have their own intrinsic value. At rst sight we can already appreci ate the great di erence between a graph in any dimen sion and a colour picture of an aberration of an op tical device. Interestingly in the peer review process no standards or rules are established to review pictures Modularly structured information ts the charac as independent objects. In the analyses of pictures and teristics of electronic media which are intrinsically their roles the results of textual studies will be helpful. more than linear. Modules t nicely in the hyper Important items are

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

113

There are di erences between data data handling and data presentation. One can imagine a hi erarchy of modules rst raw data a module a reader cannot change and which integrity is per tinent then a module data reduction and han dling a module a reader can change and replace and nally a module data representation a reader certainly can change use and manipulate. Similarly there are di erences between pictures of immutable objects and pictures resulting from e.g. calculations or recorded data. In the rst case the whole picture has to be preserved as well as possible e.g. a photograph of a phenomenon or the design of a chip. In cases where we deal with a digital picture e.g. a CCD camera picture the data instead of the picture can be stored. In the second case e.g. a non linear map or other struc ture which results from a calculation it might be advantageous to have the algorithm and parame ters stored as well. With the rising speed of data handling a reader might want to redo instead of view the picture.

munication process. It clearly points to a greater in tegration of various types of information as well as the capacity of the reader to manipulate this freely. This way social cognitive and intellectual demands can be met by the emerging technologies in a cross fertilising way. This user research is a starting point for our collaboration in various university projects under the umbrella programme Communication in Physics. In this programme we investigate the opportunities mod ularity of scienti c information o ers to make optimum use of electronic media. We also research sophisticated combinatorial techniques to develop an Atlas of over lapping controlled index term systems. Although the programme Communication in Physics is focused on physics as main corpus of investigation the results are expected to be applicable to other research domains as well. However in line with our conclusions speci c cul tural di erences should then be taken into account. Our main message in all this is that in order to go beyond the electroni cation of the classical publishing pro cess we need to have an in depth knowledge of the use needs and presentation requirements and possibilities of scienti c information.

6.4 Motion pictures

Apart from the items mentioned for still pictures the following extra features have to be tackled. Film or video a sequence of still pictures di ers from anima tion. In the case of lm and video we still have the dif ference between immutable and re creational pictures. In the case of animations however we can also think of including a tool for the readers adaptations and mod elling.

Acknowledgments. The work described in this paper is a collaboration of the Faculties of Arts and Mathematics Informatics Physics and Astronomy WINS of the Uni versity of Amsterdam the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science CWI and Elsevier Sci ence. The work is partly nancially supported by Sticht ing Physica Royal Academy of Science and Arts KNAW Royal Library KB Shell Research Amsterdam KSLA Elsevier Science.
References

6.5 Sound
The case of sound is special because digital sound is a very well developed eld with an almost total manip ulation capacity. Nevertheless the use of sound as an independent way of presenting scienti c results is hardly considered at present except in speech research or gen eral sound recording. The cognitive value of sound ob jects is so di erent from visible objects that a completely new eld can be opened up.

Andr e J. R. Furuta V. Quint eds.. Structured Documents. Cambridge University Press 1989. Bell C. Nature 376 p. 375. Blair D. C. Language and representation in information re trieval. Elsevier 1990. Garvey. W. D. Communication The essence of science. Pergamon Press Oxford 1979. Geurts P. A. Th. M. and H. E. Roosendaal. Mixed market research for strategic management. To be published. Gholson B. W. R. Shadish Jr. R. A. Niemeyer and A. C. Houts eds.. The psychology of science. Cambridge Univ. 7. General conclusions Press. 1989. Gross A. G. The rhetoric of science. Harvard Univ. Press Cambridge 1990. In this paper we rst try to de ne the role of in Hazewinkel M. Tree tree matrices and other combinatorial formation in the science process and describe investiga problems from taxonomy. CWI report AM R9507 April tions where we try to explain the communication needs 1995. of researchers in di erent elds. This information pro Jasano S. G. E. Markle J. C. Petersen and T. Pinch vides us with a backbone and yardstick for the devel eds.. Handbook of science and technology studies. Sage Publ. London 1995. opment of new ways of organising the scienti c com

114

kircz and roosendaal scientific information transfer

Kircz J. G. Rhetorical structure of scienti c articles The case for argumentational analysis in information retrieval. Jnl. of Documentation 474 pp. 354 372 1991. Kuhn T. S. The structure of scienti c revolutions 2nd en larged edition. Chicago Univ. Press. 1970. Lakatos I. Falsi cation and the methodology of scienti c research programmes. In Criticism and the growth of knowledge by I Lakatos and A. Musgrave Cambridge Univ. Press. p.135 1970. Lakatos I. The methodology of scienti c research program mes. In Philosophical papers J. Worrall and G. Currie eds. vol. 1 Cambridge Univ. Press. 1978. Maddox J. Nature 376 p. 11 p. 113 and p. 385. McLuhan M. Understanding Media The Extensions of Man. Routledge  Kegan Paul Ltd. London 1964. Merton R. The sociology of science theoretical and empir ical investigations. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1973. Panhuijsen G. and R. van Hezewijk. To be published Univ. of Utrecht. Roosendaal H. E. and A. P. de Ruiter The Journal at the cross roads of developments in scienti c information and

information technology. Paper presented at Conference in Helsinki 1990. Schauder D. Electronic publishing of professional articles Attitudes of academics and the implications for the schol arly communication industry. JASIS 452 73 100 1994. Tague Sutcli e J. M. Editor. Special Topic Issue Eval uation of Information Retrieval Systems collection of overviews JASIS 471 January 1996. Tufte E. R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Graphic Press Cheshire Conn. 1983 Tufte E. R. Envisioning Information Graphic Press Che shire Conn. 1990. van Eemeren F. H Rob Grootendorst and Tjark Kruiger. Handbook of Argumentation Theory A critical survey of classical backgrounds and modern studies. Floris Publica tions Dordrecht 1987. van Eemeren F. H. and Rob Grootendorst eds.. Studies in Pragma Dialectics. Sic Sat Amsterdam 1994. van Rooy F. The role of electronic media in scienti c com munication. Thesis University of Utrecht 1995.