Interpreting Scientific Growth: A Comment on Derek Price's “Science since Babylon”

Pritchard A. , Statistical bibliography: An interim bibliography (Springfield, Va, 1969).

Narin F. , Evaluative bibliometrics: The use of publication and citation analysis in the evaluation of scientific activity (Cherry Hill, N.J., 1976).

de Solla Price D. , Science since Babylon (1st ed., New Haven, 1961; 2nd enlarged ed., 1975), 194.

Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, iv (1951), 85–93.

Op. cit. (ref. 3).

New York, 1963.

Op. cit. (ref. 3), 165ff.

ibid., 165–7.

ibid., 163.

Op. cit. (ref. 6), 9.

For a similar criticism of Price, see Gilbert G. N. and Woolgar S. , “The quantitative study of science: An examination of the literature”, Science studies, iv (1974), 279–94.

Op. cit. (ref. 3), 167; also see op. cit. (ref. 6), 15.

E.g., Collison R. L. , Abstracts and abstracting services (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1971), 9; idem, The annals of abstracting: 1665–1970 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1971), 1; Brodman E. , The development of medical bibliography (Washington, D.C., 1954), 49ff.; cf. Porter J. R. , “The scientific journal—300th anniversary”, Bacteriological reviews, xxviii (1964), 211–30, pp. 216f.

Collison defines an abstract for purposes of his research as “the terse presentation in (as far as possible) the author's own language, of all the points made, in the same order as in the original piece of primary documentary information—and that can be a book, a research report, a periodical article, a speech, the proceedings of a conference, an interview, etc. It is much more than this, too, for it is intended to stand as a readable and complete item in its own right, and is therefore a separate work of scholarship that can be fully indexed and exploited for the benefit of scholars and research workers” (Abstracts and abstracting services, 3).

Quoted in Porter , op. cit. (ref. 13), 219.

Kronick D. A. , “Studies of the early scientific journal”, Texas reports on biology and medicine, xxxii (1974), 63.

Collison , Abstracts and abstracting services, 60.

Hazard P. , The European mind (New York, 1963), 101.

See Collison , Abstracts and abstracting services, 61.

Collison , The annals of abstracting: 1665–1970.

Collison , Abstracts and abstracting services, 64.

See Tobey R. C. , The American ideology of national science 1919–1930 (Pittsburg, Pa, 1971), 6–7.

Shryock R. H. , “American indifference to basic science during the nineteenth century”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxviii (1948), 50–65; cf. Reingold N. , “American indifference to basic research: A reappraisal”, in Daniels G. H. (ed.), Nineteenth-century American science: A reappraisal (Evanston, Ill., 1972), 38–62.

Tobey , loc. cit. (ref. 22).

See especially, Senate U.S. , Technical information and services act, 80th Congress (Washington, D.C., 1947); Senate U.S. , Science and technology act, 85th Congress (Washington, D.C., 1958); Senate U.S. , Documentation, indexing, and retrieval of scientific information (Washington, D.C., 1960).

Price , op. cit. (ref. 3), 117ff.

For discussions of the definitional problem see Rose S. , “The S curve considered”, Technology and society, iv (1967), 33–39; Chubin D. E. , “On the conceptualization of scientific specialities”, unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting, American Sociological Association (San Francisco, 1975).

E.g., Williams L. P. , “The historiography of Victorian science”, Victorian studies, ix (1966), 197–204.

E.g., Gilbert G. N. and Woolgar S. , op. cit. (ref. 11).

Price , op. cit. (ref. 3), 162.