Planning Helps Researchers Manage Information Overload

When Linus Pauling first began investigating vitamin C in the 1960s, it wasn't difficult for him to stay current with the latest findings--because he was the one doing most of the discovering. Now, he says, there are "probably 3,000 papers a year" that involve vitamin C. If anyone has the stamina to read them all, it would be Pauling, now 90. He is an avid reader, logging a minimum of five hours a day. Of course, Pauling's work goes way beyond the vitamin he claimed could cure the common cold and serve as a treatment for cancer. The two-time Nobel Prize winner's interests cover the whole spectrum of science, which means he is faced with absorbing an overwhelming amount of information. Despite his penchant for reading, Pauling says, "It's impossible to keep up with discoveries in science, even in a limited field such as vitamin C." Scientists everywhere confront the dilemma of information overload. With the explosion of new findings in science in the last decade, publication has accelerated and the number of journals and science-oriented publications has increased. Keeping up with even a highly specialized field has become akin to running the Boston marathon. A recent survey commissioned by ier Science Publishers, the Amsterdam-based journal publishing company with United States offices in New York, found that one in four scientists cited information overload as a specific area of concern. That percentage is likely to increase, for the simple reason that the wealth of information is only getting bigger. Time management consultant R. Alec Mackenzie suggests that researchers take the following steps to help them keep current with their reading: 1. Select what you are going to read--learn to use the computer, if you don't already, to access what's out there. 2. Prioritize--decide what you're going to read immediately and what can be filed for later retrieval. 3. Organize--Create a filing system that works efficiently for you. 4. Keep your desk clear of excess paperwork. Don't stack papers or journals on your desk; file them for retrieval when you need them. 5. Determine where excess information is coming from. Cut off the flow of all junk mail or unnecessary incoming information by writing to get your name off lists. 6. Give all incoming information immediate attention if at all possible. Try to handle every piece of paper once. Delegate it, relegate it, file it, or throw it out. 7. Define a schedule for your daily/weekly activities. Try to follow that schedule. 8. Set a regular, and realistic, amount of time for reading. Schedule reading at times of least interruptions. The problem of information overload knows no boundaries. It poses a dilemma for all scientists, from the young investigator just starting out to the distinguished veteran. Those who are still seeking the specific research niche into which they'll settle down for a while are literally bombarded with study results and papers from diverse sources. "There is so much stuff out there, particularly in microbiology," says Barry Trimmer, 33, an assistant professor of biology at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. "The rate of sequencing genes, for example, is absolutely phenomenal, but I'm also interested in electrophysiology. "And," he says with a sigh, "I'm fighting the battle to keep up." For the veterans, there is, perhaps, even more of a need to stay current. Tackling the volume of material that must be read becomes tougher as professional commitments increase. "As one gets older, one tends to assume more professional responsibility, and, of course, the fields are advancing, so there's forever more information and less time," says Jerome Friedman, who shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in physics. Friedman, an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaks from experience. In addition to his teaching duties and his experimental research on accelerators, he serves as chairman of the scientific policy committee of the superconducting supercollider being built in Texas and on the high-energy panel for the Department of Energy. He was also recently appointed to the National Research Council. Experts say that the battle to keep on top of all this information is Sisyphean, and they advise researchers to not even try. "Scientists often take their need to stay current too seriously," says Greenwich, N.Y.-based time management consultant R. Alec Mackenzie, author of Time Trap (revised ed., New York, American Management Association, 1990). "You're never going to be able to read everything. You just can't do it." Still, a scientist's life's work depends upon reading. With so much information coming at researchers from so many different directions, they're usually faced with sorting through massive amounts of publications to find the things they really need. And, as Ronald K. Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a consultant to the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp., says, "There is now, more than ever, a lot of garbage out there." So, the first order of business is selectivity--finding out what's out there that is relevant to one's own research. Most scientists--81 percent, according to the ier poll--stay current by reading papers in journals specific to their field. "I read as many journals as I can," says AIDS researcher Jay Levy, professor of medicine at the UC-San Francisco Medical Center. Levy's list is long, including Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Journal of Virology, and AIDS (for which he serves as editor). Friedman relies heavily on preprints (advance copies of journal papers). "When you've been around for a while, you tend to get on mailing lists," he says, "and you get a good number of preprints, which are very, very valuable for staying on top of what's being done." While books are usually dated by the time they hit the shelves, they are, nevertheless, important. Says Friedman: "Books are not so much important in terms of getting new information. But, books help you to understand the bigger picture, [comprehend] older information in a deeper way--the relationships between results, evaluations, interpretations, points of view--and [they help you in] catching up on what's happening in another field. To be a really good, well-rounded scientist, you need to read things outside your field, because you can always gain from thinking about what others are doing. It is absolutely vital to staying mentally alert to new trends and ideas, and books help you do that." Other standard reading for scientists generally includes Science and Nature. While many researchers regularly skim the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, or Time, it's not for new revelations, but to stay in tune with what is going on in the world. With so many journals publishing papers on a diverse range of topics, it's hard to know when and where an article relevant to one's research might pop up. Since scientists don't--nor could they afford to--subscribe to all the journals that might contain papers relevant to their research, accessing what's out there can be a major feat in and of itself. The computer, however, can come to the rescue. Computer services and university databases offer journal and publication listings, and publications like Current Contents (a weekly listing of journals' contents pages, published by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information) are now available on disk, allowing a scientist to easily find out what's out there. Text retrieval services can make life even easier, alleviating the need to physically go to the library to find and photocopy papers. Siegel uses Colleague, available from BRS Information Technologies, a division of Maxwell Online Inc. of McLean, Va. "I rarely actually go to the library anymore," says Siegel. "I just initiate searches when I need to know something, find the articles I want, pull them up on the screen, and then print them out." Once you have the material you want to read, "decide immediately what has to be between your ears and what can be filed for retrieval when you need it," suggests Mackenzie. All scientists have extensive files, but getting material into organized files can often be troublesome. Thomas F. Anderson, a biophysical chemist and geneticist associated for many years with the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, died August 11 in Philadelphia. Anderson, who was 80 years old, was internationally known for his pioneering research in virology and bacteriology and for his development of electron microscopy techniques. Anderson developed the "critical point" method of drying specimens for viewing through an electron microscope. In early studies, Anderson found that many delicate biological specimens were flattened and seriously deformed by surface-tension forces during the drying process. By adjusting pressure and temperature to eliminate the boundary between liquid and gaseous phases, he solved this problem, clearing the way for highly detailed and accurate electron micrographs. Anderson was one of the first scientists to apply electron microscopy to virology. He concentrated on bacteriophage, and made extensive contributions to the knowledge of how viruses infect cells, reproduce, and alter the cells they infect. His electron micrographs revealed intricate features of viral structures that had never been seen before. While on Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships at the Pasteur Institute from 1955 to 1957, he took now-famous electron micrographs of pairs of mating bacteria in the act of transferring genes from male to female types. Anderson received the Pasteur Institute's Silver Medal in 1957. Anderson completed his doctorate in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in 1936. He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1942. Following his two-year stay at the Pasteur Institute, Anderson joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center, and continued to serve on the Penn faculty as a professor of biophysics. He retired as a senior member emeritus of the center's scientific staff in 1983. In fact, one of the biggest symptoms of information overload, says Mackenzie, is a cluttered desk. "It's the worst interrupter of all, and it's depressing. The time you spend looking through stacks of papers on your desk for an article, or at the stacks of journals piled on your floor--saying you've got to do something and feeling overburdened--is a waste of valuable time. Remember, unless you need to absorb the information immediately, filing for later retrieval when you need it is better. That's because it's there when you need it, you know it's there, and no memory is that good." Some scientists instinctively set up a filing system that works for them. Friedman, for example, has developed a way of keeping his information under control. "I try to prioritize things into what I really need to know immediately, things I want to know in the next several weeks, things I want to know later, and things I want to have available when I need them," he says. "The things I have to know immediately I put on my desk, never to leave my desk until I read them." He uses a combination method when it comes to filing--reading first, then filing, and reserving for later reading. A few years ago, Friedman was forced to consolidate, because his journals, books, and papers were starting to crowd him out of his own office. "I used to like to keep all my journals--there's something very nice about having all your journals at hand. But, a few years ago I realized this was not possible and had to get rid of a good number of them." Now, he keeps journals for only the last 10 or 15 years. For Levy, staying organized is critical. That's because AIDS is a high-profile disease, garnering much attention and research. Staying current in a field like this could be overwhelming, but, he says, "I simply devote the time to it." He does, however, take a few shortcuts: "I'll skim an abstract to see if it has something new. If it's worth it, then I go to the discussion, and finally the methods and results. If [the papers are] worth keeping, I give them a topic heading and file them according to year." Siegel, on the other hand, follows a hard and fast rule: "Nothing stays on my desk." He skims articles to see if they're worth keeping for later reading, and, if so, he immediately files them. "I rarely will read a paper immediately in a careful way, unless it's relevant to the project I'm working on," he says. Siegel, who is currently researching methamphetamine use in the U.S., collects books, most of which he doesn't read, but uses for reference when needed. Those, he says, are filed by both subject and author. Similarly, Sidney Wolff, director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., and president-elect of the American Astronomical Society, says, "I tend to operate more on a need-to-know basis, and I use computer databases to help me find what I need. "But, the key issue for me is the pre-editing--deciding what I'm going to read and what I'm not. If you're going to stay current and read the things you decide to read, you have to dispose of the routine aspects of your job as efficiently as possible. You have to edit things out of your life." Since she writes astronomy textbooks, Wolff has to have a good, broad knowledge and understanding of the entire field. To stay current, she reads and files a wide range of review papers. "I've become very good at skimming things and getting the key points," she says. Olivia Pereira-Smith, an associate professor of molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine and a faculty associate at the Roy M. and Phyllis Gough Huffington Center on Aging at the college, reviews titles with her husband and colleague, James R. Smith, a professor of cell genetics and codirector of the Huffington Center. She then makes a decision as to which ones she'll get from the library and read. After that, she says, she places them in "priority files--1,2,3, and 4. Pile 1 is what I get to first," she says. "There is a filing cabinet next to my desk, and I suppose you could call it a filing system. But I call it a piling system." Barry Trimmer has a slightly different approach. "I focus on the journals that are publishing the highest quality of material that is most relevant to my work. It's very easy to get distracted and go off and read all these other articles in other journals, but it just takes too much time," he says. "Anything on the cutting edge in my field is most likely to be published in the Journal of Neuroscience." Trimmer has become something of a computerphile. "The first thing I do when I get in the office is turn it on, and I regularly check listings, or Current Contents, to see what's being published." Once he has secured articles of interest, he reads them, then files them if they're worth keeping. With journals, he says, "I put tabs on the articles I want to read and get to them when I can. But," he confesses, "they do sometimes tend to stack up on the floor." Linus Pauling regularly "looks at every article and reads some" in Physical Review Letters, Physical Review B and C, American Neurologist, Octacrystallographica, Science, and Nature. Additionally, he is forever receiving papers from colleagues and friends at his offices at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Pauling doesn't use a computer; indeed, he doesn't even use a typewriter, preferring instead to write his papers out longhand. But his associates' offices are computerized, and, he says, "I am just overwhelmed with the stuff they bring me. It certainly keeps me busy." While Pauling has a set schedule for reading--two hours in the morning before he gets out of bed and three at night before he retires, plus a few hours picked up during the day--few scientists have the luxury to devote that much time to it. "Reading for research is a high priority for scientists, but one that, because of all the other responsibilities, is usually given a low amount of time," says Mackenzie. "In fact, the relationship is probably more inverse in that area than in any others." Still, there's truth in the old adage: "Where there's a will, there's a way." Most scientists spend time reading in the evenings at home. In fact, Wolff says, she does nearly all of her reading at home after dinner. "As director of an observatory, I'm an administrator, so very little of my time during the day is my own," she explains. Wolff holds fast to one rule, however--she doesn't take administrative tasks home: "That protects my time at home from the routine aspects of my job, and that gives me the quiet, peaceful time when I can do a large block of reading." Nearly all scientists try to fit in some reading when they can. Trimmer, for example, spends his lunch hour reading. And Levy finds that "my best reading is done on airplanes. Since I usually travel every two weeks, I collect all the reprints, preprints, and other journals and articles I want to read and spend the five hours of flight time catching up." Friedman also travels frequently and reads on the plane. "Unfortunately, life is complicated, and one often has a family to be concerned with and many other things to do; consequently, I have no set routine," he says. "When I am in the experiment mode, it's very difficult to find time to read, and since I teach, I have a policy of leaving my door open for students." Friedman relies on slow times, usually during the summer, to catch up on reading. Siegel also has no set reading schedule: "It's all project-oriented, and when I need to know something, I find it and read it then, whatever time it is." "I just wing it," says Pereira-Smith. "Every so often I get fed up with all these piles on my desk, so I break down and read them and then throw them away." Mackenzie says that for the disciplined person, picking up an hour a day for reading time is "a breeze" if he or she makes a serious effort. For starters, he suggests spending less time on administrative trivia, scheduling reading at the time of least interruptions--whether it's during lunch or late in the evening or during a set "quiet hour" during the day, when nothing but an emergency is allowed to get through. Easing the burden of other paperwork can also free up time for reading. "It's an exaggeration to say that I pick up each piece of paper only once and do something with it," says Wolff. "But, I try hard to follow that rule." That's a technique Mackenzie proposed in Time Trap, and while it may seem impossible, he says, "just try it. When you pick some piece of information up, decide immediately what to do with it. Get rid of it if you can--delegate it, relegate it, respond to it, file it, or throw it out." Seem impossible? According to studies conducted at his seminars during the last 20 years, Mackenzie says that 80 percent of what comes into the average "in" box can be disposed of in one handling. "In reality, only 20 percent is handled this way, which means that 60 percent is being handled again, and sometimes again and again," he says. In the end, managing information overload comes down to setting "strict priorities [regarding] what one has to learn," says Friedman. Siegel has solved the problem by "ignoring" it. "I could spend the whole day filing and reading and never getting anything done," he says. "So I trust my nervous system to filter out what I can't handle." For Pauling, information overload isn't so much a problem as information stimulation. "In almost every one of the journals I read regularly, I'll see something in the paper that isn't in the paper--suggesting to me some idea that I think is new that I ought to do some work on," he says. "I just get too many of these ideas to follow up on all of them." But that's another story. One thing is certain: Information overload is here to stay. "The winners--those who are and will be excellent--are those who will be focusing on access rather than memory," says Mackenzie.

Planning Helps Researchers Manage Information Overload

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