Letters

Too Many Journals? Wheat from Chaff? Einstein's Office Regarding Eugene Garfield’s stalwart defense of the proliferation of scientific journals (March 7, 1988, p. 11): It would make as much sense for Garfield to argue otherwise as it would for the Pentagon to insist that its budget is overfed. Journals are meat and potatoes to scientific commerce, just as advertisements are to retail business and TV spots to politics. Quality control has nothing to do with it. William R. Hoffman 1848 Selby Ave. St. Paul, MN 55104 With all due respect, I take issue with Eugene Garfield’s curt dismissal of recent provocative reports about the proliferation of journals. I share with many of my colleagues a great concern about the consequences of the explosion in published articles that has occurred over the last several years. There are two reasons why I find the huge volume of scientific literature distressing. First, Garfield may not find it taxing to read carefully the contents of the no more than 25 titles that an individual researcher needs to follow regularly. But for the scientist who works a full day in the lab, attends meetings, writes manuscripts and grants, reviews manu scripts and grants, teaches, and advises students, just regularly reading the titles of papers in 25 journals is a considerable accomplishment. It simply is impossible for a working researcher to read every relevant paper thoroughly, and I think most of us simply ignore much of the work that is published, and focus on only the few, very good papers. This process of separating the wheat from the caff brings me to the second reason for distress: the chaff. I read William Broad’s article in the New York Times, copied it and gave it to some of my colleagues because I thought it had truth and substance. We agreed that, in contrast to Garfield’s interpretation, the article was focused not on the proliferation of journals, but of papers, and the reasons for the phenomenon. It has always astonished me that some scientists produce 50 or more papers a year. My colleagues and I discussed the realities of modern research and agreed that if a researcher does excellent, novel, important work, and contributes enough to be an author of a manuscript, the most publications he or she could produce in a year would be three. But since publications have become the coin of the realm, it has become political to get one’s name on as many as possible. Garfield suggests that gratuitous authorship and the publishing of trivial results are deviant behaviors. I disagree. We all know scientists who make a point of publishing a single story in multiple installments, publish the same work several times, bargain informa tion or favors for authorships, or accept or even solicit authorship for work they did not do. Such "deviant" behavior is not punished; it is the measure of productivity, and is rewarded with promotions and grants. My colleagues and I do not think the proliferation of scientific papers is nonsense. We are disturbed and alarmed at the clear trend toward quantity rather than quality. What is unclear is what can be done about it. We liked one solution we discussed: why not limit the number of publications accepted per author per year to a finite number, say three? If everyone were limited to three authorships a year, quality would have to become the major criterion for judging the worth of the work. Jeanne F. Loring 1740 Curtis St. Berkeley, CA 94702 In his review of my book "Who Got Einstein’s Office?" (January 25, 1988, p. 20), Robert Kargon wonders why I make such a fuss over the way in which the officialdom at the Institute for Advanced Study denied access to (and at times even the existence of) Beatrice Stern’s unpublished history of the place. Kargon says: "Even [Regis’s] own bibliography notes that a microfilm copy of Stern’s history is on file at the Library of Congress and yet another at Western Maryland College." The library at Western Maryland College holds a copy of the manuscript ("a carbon copy of the original," as my bibliography also notes) only because I placed it there after obtaining it from the author’s conservator in California. The microfilm copy on file at the Library of Congress was not indexed in the published register of the Oppenheimer papers, of which it is a part, until my formal request to James J. Hutson, chief of the library’s manuscript division, led to the placement of an appropriate notation in the Oppenheimer register. I make what fuss as I do over the institute’s denial of access to the Stern history to scholars and authors-even to gee whiz-magazine writers such as myself, because of the needless obstacles such denials place in the way of scholarly research and understanding. As Kargon himself says, "The scientific community needs a challenging, sound history and assessment of the institute."Well then, let’s have the fullest possible access to the materials by reference to which such a history must be written. Ed Regis 17302-D Harbaugh Valley Rd. Sabillasville, MD 21780 THE SCIENTIST welcomes your letters. Please include your name, address, affiliation (if you like) and a telephone number. Letters must be signed. Letters selected for publication may be edited for length. Send letters to Feedback, THE SCIENTIST, 3501 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.

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