Library and Information Science

To play an important role for research activities in the field of science and technology, where current information is always required, abstracting services must be as speedy as possible. In this article the writer tried to make a statistical examination of time lags in abstracting services. For this purpose, the following 4 chemical journals were selected: Journal of the American Chemical Society; Chemische Berichte; Zhurnal obshchei khimii; Bulletin de Societe Chimique de France. The numbers issued in January, 1964, of each journal was examined to see how many of its articles and when they were abstracted in the following 4 abstracting journals: Chemical Abstracts; Chemisches Zentralatt; Referativnyi zhurnal, khimiya; Bulletin signaletique.

The results are shown in Tables 1–4. Table 5 indicates the percentage of articles being abstracted by each abstracting journal. Chemische Berichte shows the highest percentage suggesting its importance. Table 6 shows, under each chemical journal, the average time lag in each abstracting journal. The average time lag in Chemical Abstracts is 4 months, much shorter than the others, suggesting its dominant services.