With new techniques rapidly increasing the storage of physics literature, we should limit information retrieval to critical review articles and data compilations despite the loss of author credit that might follow. A good review article makes obsolete much of the literature that it summarizes. But getting good reviews is a problem. To get more good ones, we should organize teams of writers encouraged by attractive honoraria.
AFEW YEARS AGO John Maddox, now editor of Nature, wrote an article seriously questioning whether the scientific literature was worth keeping. He complained that style and incorrect sentence construction often make scientific articles unintelligible, thus hastening their obsolescence.
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References
1. J. Maddox, Is the Literature Worth Keeping?, Rockefeller Institute Review, Feb. 1963; reprinted in The Graduate Journal of the University of Texas, Winter 1964.
Inside certain quantum systems, where randomness was thought to lurk, researchers—after a 40-year journey—have found order and unique wave patterns that stubbornly survive.
Since the discovery was first reported in 1999, researchers have uncovered many aspects of the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect, but its underlying mechanisms remain unclear.
