Scientific Communication and Information Flow

The field of professional communication is closely related to that of technical communication though professional communication encompasses a wider variety of skills. Professional communicators use strategies, theories, and technologies to more effectively communicate in the business world.

Professional communication encompasses written, oral, and visual communication within a workplace context. It blends together pedagogical principles of rhetoric, technology, and software to improve communication in a variety of settings ranging from technical writing to usability and digital media design. It focuses on the study of information and the ways it is created, managed, distributed, and consumed. Since communication in modern society is a rapidly changing area, the progress of technologies seems to often outpace the number of expert practitioners available to administer them. This creates a demand for skilled communicators which continues to exceed the supply of trained professionals.

Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) in his tract “De Alhemia” placed at the head of the list the following essential characteristics for an alchemist: “he must be taciturn and circumspect, and should communicate to no one the results of his operations”. The situation has radically changed since that time. Nowadays, when new chemical reactions or theories are developed, new compounds are synthesized or discovered in nature, the information is immediately made public in scientific journals and patents. A scientist works within the broad framework of information flow. He obtains much information during face-to-face conversations, by correspondence, at meetings, conferences, etc. Primary journals, patents, review journals, books, abstracting and indexing services are significant sources of information. The well-informed scientist is also aware of new computerized services.

Presenting results at professional societies and meetings, writing articles for possible publications, abstracting and indexing published papers, summarizing and evaluating review articles and monographs, he enters the domain of information exchange.

The amount of literature available in primary journals is really huge, that is why secondary sources of information are very important and helpful in conducting effective information search. Some meetings allow for some extended abstracts that can be several pages long and act as a miniature paper so if a scientist wants to write one he might have to ask the meeting organizer, and again these take much longer to write so sufficient time should be left.

Chemical abstracts is the most important key to finding original primary journal article. It gives a chemist sufficient information so that he could decide whether or not he wants to consult the original article. Chemical Abstracts gives a very brief description of the original article, name of the journal, its volume, number and pages, author's name and affiliation, the language of publication.

A scientist shouldn’t write about something he hasn’t done yet, but for a project he has largely completed (or at least knows what the results are and mean). If not, he has to guess what his results will show and he runs a real risk of having to present results the opposite of those announced in article, or has none at all. Chemical Abstracts publishes short articles from the primary literature and lists (by structural formula and name) all compounds whose chemistry is described in journals and patents. The chemist finds this sort of information in the article, as well as in General Subject Index, Author Index, Chemical Substance Index and Formula Index. For example, if he consults the General Subject Index for “prostaglandins”, he will receive information about the abstracts on the subject and various entries of interest (“total synthesis”, “preparation and activity”, etc.). A strict IUPAC naming system is not used by this journal, but the Index Guide contains cross-references to trivial or semi-systematic names.

Chemical Abstracts, Geological Abstracts, Environmental Abstracts and Biological Abstracts summarize articles from all fields of these sciences. These journals are secondary sources. Geological Abstracts is a key bibliographic reference source to the world's geological literature. It has 16 thousand entries from two thousand periodicals, books, conferences, proceedings published annually. The journal is available online as a part of GEO BASE, where you can always read an on­line sample copy. CDROM version of the journal is also available. Biological Abstracts monitors five thousand entries from the materials, which cover every life science topic including agriculture, biology, biotechnology, and ecology. You can find both print and online versions of the journal. There are also review journals where articles summarizing the results of numerous primary publications are found. As a matter of fact, much time and effort can be saved by the scientist who knows how to work with the secondary publications – indispensable tools in literature searching.