Paper details
Would It Be Possible to Manage Processing of Scientific Information Under Its Present Enormous Increase?
Author
Jaroslav Šilhánek, University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Czech Republic
Co-authors
Ludmila Zetková / University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Czech republic
Documents to download
Full text Foto přednášejícího / Picture Presentation
Abstract
Acknowledging the role of science in the progress and development of human society and its implementation into political programs naturally lead to an increase in production of scientific information and ever growing concern of sustainability of its processing into a usable form. Abstracting and referencing institution which play the key role in the process of distribution of scientific knowledge are facing growing cost of such activities with the result of increased price for end users, particularly for bibliographic databases.
Therefore it is not surprising that we have encountered a number of ideas how to regulate this process. But the authors of such ideas often omit the fact that publishing, distribution and depositing of scientific knowledge is a multi-level process with its self-reliant problems and that the production of results or primary information is only the beginning of the way back to their usage in continuing scientific activity.
Modern information technologies have made the above process much more efficient but many of its aspects prevail, regardless of the technology used. Some form of “quality” control at the beginning is naturally desirable but if a particular piece of scientific information is accepted as a permanent part of human knowledge, then it becomes vitally important to be able to find such piece of information not only nowadays, but e.g. in 100 years gains importance.
This presentation deals with the aspects of individual steps of the process of registration of scientific knowledge, mainly in connection with its enormous accumulation.
Author's professional CV
After graduation from the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology he obtained his PhD in organic technology from the same institution in 1968. Starting carrier as an organic chemist mostly in areas of pesticides and organic sulphur compounds chemistry he has been steadily engaged in the fields of chemical information and particularly in its electronic forms. He wrote a couple of teaching text on this subject and he is lecturing courses on Chemical Informatics on the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague.
He has about 70 papers, patents and review papers in local and international journals and gave a couple of plenary lectures on Online Meeting in London (1997, 1999) as well as at the largest chemical congress Achema in Frankfurt am Main on the subject of management of chemical information and searching problems. He is also author of a couple of projects on promotion of widespread access to the most important chemical databases for all chemical or natural science faculties in the Czech Republic.
