Literature of science and technology

Dr HH Mate
The accumulated body of scientific technical writings published to serve the informational needs of primarily, scientists, engineers, and research workers, and, to the extent that it can be understood, the general public. This vast literature is worldwide in origin, international in language diverse in subject content, varied in form, uneven in quality, and expensive. An ever-increasing portion of it is being produced, stored, and retrieved or published electronically, and is being made available on film, tape CD-ROM or magnetic disk, or through remote terminals as well as in print on- paper format.
The primary sources of scientific-technical information are the first published records of original research and development, accounts of new applications of science and engineering to technology and industry. These unorganized and usually not closely related contributions appear almost exclusively in periodicals, topical compilations such as Festschriften, and independently published proceedings of conferences, separate research reports or monographs, patents, standards, dissertations, or manufacturers’ literature.
Organized works and compilations that derive from or refer to the primary-sources literature make up the secondary sources of scientific-technical information: the handbooks, encyclopedias; treatises, bibliographies, reviews, abstracting and indexing serials, machine-readable bibliographic databases and databanks, other reference works, and, of course, all translations.
Guides to the literature, directories of persons, organizations or products, for example, and textbooks are often looked upon as tertiary sources. Popularizations, biographic, histories, and similar relatively non-technical publications are thought of as being about science rather than of science.
Primary Sources :  These are the records of original research, patents, standards, and manufacturer’s literature.
Periodicals :  These publications traditionally make up the bulk of the primary-source literature of science and technology. Periodicals include journals, bulletins, transactions, proceedings, or other serial publications that appear regularly and continuously in numbered sequence, but not newspapers or annuals. More than 20,000 scientific and technical periodicals are published worldwide.
Atleast 150 countries of the world regularly publish research journals in science & technology, and these may appear in many different languages. The growth of English as the major language of science has not displaced the considerable body of material in other languages, but the importance of language varies from subject to subject, and the importance of subject varies from country to country.
Current issues of some periodicals are available on black and white or coloured microfiche as well as in print-on-paper format, and complete volumes of many periodicals are available on microfilm for space-saving storage. Some periodicals are available online in electronic form, although most have printed counterparts. Many authors are still reluctant to publish in nonprint formats alone; but electronic peer-viewed journals with graphics and searchable text are an alternative.
The contents of periodicals vary considerably in the kind of material included as well as in the technical level. Professional, scientific, and technical societies, for example, tend to emphasize basic research and the more technical aspects to a subject, while industrial and trade associations lean toward the practical, personal, and popular side. Societies, too, almost uniformly make use of highly qualified subject experts, called referees, to evaluate critically all original contributions before they are published , thus imparting reliability, authoritativeness, and prestige to their publications. Other organizations, such as research institutes, university experiment stations, and government agencies, publish periodicals comparable with those published by the societies, but such organizations are more likely to emphasisze their own work. There are , of course, note worthy exceptions.
Conference Papers :  Papers presented at national and international scientific conferences, symposia, colloquia, seminars, and other technical meetings often are important contributions to the primary-source literature of science and technology but are also often uneven and elusive. At widely varying intervals as complete or partial collections by the convening bodies themselves, by the parent scientific societies, or by private publishers, they may appear as articles in , or supplements to , regular journals; or they may only be noted or at most abstracted. Audiotapes are sometimes available as supplement to, or substitute for, printed proceedings. Sometimes papers are preprinted and not later published at all, thus being made available only to those who attend the meetings or who write for them in time. Announcements of forthcoming scientific meetings as well as of resulting technical publications are now published regularly. World Meetings, for example, is a 2 year registry of such meetings, and index to scientific and technical proceedings is one of several indexes to the resulting publications.
Research monographs :  These are separately published reports on original research that are too long, too specialized, or otherwise unsuitable for publication in one of the standard journals. Each monograph is self-contained frequently summarizes existing theory or practice before presenting the author’s original and previously unpublished work, and is likely to be one of a series in the same field. Research monographs are also being published on microfiche with papers available on demand, a practice which may escalate as costs of print-on paper publishing continue to rise.
Research  Reports :  Reports from research and development projects make up another important part of the primary-source literature of science and technology. Reports are a more primitive form of literature because they are produced earlier in the research program, often as progress reports. While a progress report is only a temporary reference, it is important because it may include negative results and incidental data  which may be missing from a final report.
Research reports originate in all research organizations doing work under contract to the United States government and are in turn distributed to all installations, including designated depository libraries that have an interest in them. Classified reports, those containing data having some bearing on national security are distributed only to properly cleared individuals or organizations. Since distribution of even the unclassified reports is somewhat limited, few of them are indexed abstracted, or even listed by the standard services which cover other parts of the primary literature.
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the United States Department of Commerce, Springfield, Virginia is the agency responsible for the announcement, sales, and distribution of unclassified research, development, and engineering reports, translations, and other analysis prepared by United States and for foreign government agencies, by their contractors or grantees, or by special technology groups, including many information analysis centers. National Technical Information Service (NTIS) also is the source for federally generated machine processable data files and software. Since 1981, it has had the additional responsibility of operating an indexing service covering ongoing federally sponsored research projects, a service previously provided by the Smith-sonian Science Information Exchange (SSIE). Established in 1970, NTIS superseded the clearing house for Federal Scientific and Technical Information. (FSTI)
The writer of this paper/article is a researcher in the field of science & technology and in education besides in other fields. He is the scientist, educationist and author of many books. He can be reached at drhhmate@gmail.com.