Recent developments in physics abstracting

Among the more venerable medical jokes is that one with the punch line, “The operation was a success but the patient died”. In the case of ills of organizations, an approximate analogue to this situation occurs when a survey made by a sub‐committee or study group with a view to remedying some society malady produces a list of praiseworthy recommendations none of which is ever put into effect. The patient may not die under these circumstances but neither does he get any better. It will be recalled that a year or two ago the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics jointly sponsored a study of physics abstracting which was supported under a contract with the Office of Naval Research. This study developed certain information as a result of which the Joint Committee on Science Abstracts of the Physical Society and the Institute made a series of recommendations. Both the results of the study and the recommendations have been reported previously in the American Journal of Physics (18, 417–424, October, 1950). The purpose of this article is to discuss the implementation of these recommendations that has been accomplished to date or is under way, with the hope of demonstrating that in this case the patient has shown at least some degree of improvement following, as it were, consultation and an exploratory operation.

This article is only available in PDF format