Articles by Albert Henderson

The political movement led by Harold Varmus as described in "A Science Publishing Revolution,"1 displays an unfortunate disregard for the study of dissemination, information science. The PubMed Central advocacy is storming about, armed with rhetoric and anecdotes rather than carefully gathered evidence. Moreover, they have carefully avoided admitting that the institutions with libraries could easily pay more than they do to support access to the most esoteric reports. Research universities are v

Commerce Secretary William M. Daley intends to close the National Technical Information Service.1 NTIS is the federal government's central agency for the sale of scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information produced for or by the United States government. Its collection includes about three million publications representing billions of dollars of information paid for by taxpayers. It distributes more than 170,000 subscription issues annually, maintains online databases,

Editor's Note: For the past two decades, librarians have used citation data to rank journals. When library budgets were seemingly unlimited, journals published both by nonprofit professional societies and by for-profit publishers were purchased, often regardless of their intrinsic value or cost-effectiveness. In the past decade, under severe budget constraints, university librarians-with the advice of faculty-have had to "de-accession" hundreds of journals that, by one test or another, could

The Scientist, Feb. 21, 1994, page 1), leave the wrong impression, I would like to emphasize that many of my consulting clients since 1981 have been not-for-profit organizations interested in achieving performance objectives in terms of the marketplace and their mission statements. No publisher, commercial or otherwise, dictated my writing or speech. I have openly disagreed with and criticized many publishers, such as the American P

The Scientist, Feb. 21, 1994, page 1), leave the wrong impression, I would like to emphasize that many of my consulting clients since 1981 have been not-for-profit organizations interested in achieving performance objectives in terms of the marketplace and their mission statements. No publisher, commercial or otherwise, dictated my writing or speech. I have openly disagreed with and criticized many publishers, such as the American P

I read with interest the story by Paul McCarthy on the problem of redundant publication in the March 8, 1993, issue of The Scientist (page 1) and the commentary on the subject by Eugene Garfield in the April 19 issue (page 12). Garfield is right, of course, that there is a long-standing problem that could be solved by editors' and researchers' making better use of citation searches. However, I believe the emphasis on "publication" is misplaced. Duplication of the research itself is more i