The role of books in the transfer of scientific information
The worldwide increase in scientific and technical research - necessary for the economic development of society, and for the welfare of individuals - has resulted in the past decades in an almost exponential increase in the number of scientific and technical publications. Most of these publications find a place in journals, which - like Geologos - realize that results of scientific (or technical) research have no value if they are not made public, preferably for a worldwide readership.
One of the results of this awareness is that the number of scientific publications in the English language has grown much more rapidly than publications in other languages. Even though the diminishing possibilities to publish in their own language may seem unfortunate for those researchers who live and work in countries where English is not the mother tongue, this development is certainly beneficial for the scientific community as a whole.
Manuscripts in English have not only the advantage that they can, in contrast to manuscripts in any other language, be read by the majority of scientists worldwide, but also that the editors of peer-reviewed journals have many more qualified reviewers at their disposition. This is of utmost importance, since only critical peer review can help to reach and maintain a high scientific standard. And high-quality articles in journals with an international distribution form one of the fundaments on which the transfer of scientific information rests.
Another fundament is formed by scientific books. In our present-day world, the education of students, certainly of students in the natural sciences, rests for a large part on textbooks. In addition, more specialized books cannot be missed by any scholar who wants to get a good overview of a specific topic. This is because it is nowadays no longer possible to extract there ally relevant information that one requires from the countless number of digital sources. It is easy to find numerous articles on whatever scientific subject, but it is hardly possible to get in this way a good overview of a subject, showing what are the principles of a specific topic, how research results have been built up, what are the interrelationships with other topics, what are the economic value and prospects, etc.
One should realize, however, that books are not of good scientific quality by definition. Just like manuscripts for journals, high-quality contributions (commonly in the form of chapters) exist beside low-quality contributions. As a rule, it is clear whether a specific journal is peer-reviewed or not, but such information is commonly absent for books. This implies that scientists cannot rely on the validity and ac-curacy of the contents of a book by definition. That is precisely why many journals try to pro-vide well-based scientific judgments about the quality of books in the field(s) within their scope; they do so by publishing book reviews, authored by specialists in the pertinent topic. This should help the readers to distinguish between books that are of little value (or that may even give incorrect information) and books that, side by side with peer-reviewed articles, form a firm basis for future work, thus constituting also one of the fundaments for the transfer of scientific information. In fact, one might say that book reviews are some kind of peer review. Books without several reviews should be considered as having an equally restricted scientific value as articles in journals without peer review.
We are fully aware of the essential role that high-quality books play in science, and we are equally aware of the disappointment of scientists who have bought a book (for instance, because of an intriguing, appealing or promising title) only to find out during reading that the book is of insufficient quality. That is precisely the reason why Geologos publishes book reviews. Sometimes there appear so many books that deserve a review, that it would be hardly justified not to pay attention to them. This was recently the case, and for this reason we have decided to publish in the present issue many more book reviews than we tend to do. To say it in geological terms: low-quality books are like calcareous shales used for construction purposes: perhaps nice to see for a while, but a danger on the longer term. High-quality books, on the other hand, form one of the fundaments, built of solid rock, for scientific-information transfer. It is therefore of great scientific importance to distinguish between these two types of book. We hope to contribute in the form of critical reviews, and we thank our book reviewers, just like we are indebted to the reviewers of all submitted manuscripts, for their valuable help.
T. Zieliński
A.J. van Loon
J. Biernacka
|
