Too Many Journals? Nonsense!

Every few weeks I read another journalist’s jab at the value and qttarttity of scientific journals. When discussing the ever-expanding literature, reporters of the popular press frequently indulge in supertlcial analyses that distort reality, whether through misunderstanding or exaggeration. Nancy Jeffrey revealed profound misunderstanding in “Mollusks, Semiotics and Dermatology: Narrow Scholarly Journals Are Spreading” (Wall Street Journal, August 27, 1987, p. 25). She invites readers to check out college library shelves and tells them “some off-beat periodicals are bound to jump out at you.” A litany of journal titles-one carefully drawn up to invite ridicule-follows. This serves only to reinforce a contempt for specialized knowledge and reflects an increasing anti-intellectualism I see in the press and among the public. How does Jeffrey explain journal proliferation? She says nothing about twigging, the natural fractionation of knowledge and its embodiment in new journals. Nor does she note that more scientists are alive today than ever before, and that the journal is their primary medium of communication. Rather, Jeffrey attributes the appearance of new journals to institutions’ pursuit of “glory” and “prestige” or individual researchers’ attempts to beef up their vitae. A misunderstanding of the social process of science and knowledge accumulation has misled the editors of the Wall Street Journal into publishing a shallow and absurd commentary on the exponential growth of journals. To attribute the growth of the journal literature to the pursuit of personal or institutional gain ignores the substance of what is being published in those many new journals. It is instinctive for researchers exploring uncharted terrain to band together to form invisible colleges; it is also quite logical for them to create new journals in which to conduct their specialized discussions. Is Jeffrey suggesting that we abandon new areas like molecular biology for which no journals existed 30 years ago? Are we to expect that superconductivity will be discussed only in existing journals? Last month William J. Broad took up this same theme (New York Times, February 16, 1988, pp. C1,C1 1). Under the headline “Science Can’t Keep Up With Flood of New Journals,” Broad claims: “the number of scientific articles and journals being published around the world has grown so large that it is starting to confuse researchers, overwhelm the qualitycontrol systems of science, encourage fraud and distort the dissemination of important findings.”