Inform. Stor. Retr. Vol. 4. pp. 87-90. Pergamon Press 1968. Printed in Great Britain

PRESENTATION SPEECH

by

ROBERT MAXWELL, M.C., M.P.

INFORMATION resulting from scientific, medical and technological research must now be treated as a valuable national resource such as coal, nuclear energy and our scarce scientific manpower.

Financing scientific research and development is proving exceedingly costly. I estimate that on a world-wide basis expenditure on basic research and development is now in excess of ten thousand million dollars a year. The country that organizes its scientists and industry to make use of this vast amount of valuable information which results f rom this gigantic world-wide research effort will gain enormous competitive advantage, which cannot but enhance its prestige and earning power abroad.

It is now accepted that information is not only a technique of exploiting the products of scientific research but that one can also develop information through the use of the computer as a valuable marketable commodity and a most crucial national resource. This is why the Government, through the Ministry of Technology and the Department of Education and Science, is already spending considerable sums of money to bring about a better diffusion and thus a more effective application of the results of science and technology in business, industry, medicine and agriculture as a way of helping the economy to grow to higher levels of .employment and to improve Britain's competitive position in world markets.

The transfer of technological knowledge and information from industry to industry, region to region, and discipline to discipline, as well as from country to country, has been a continuing process throughout the ages. Technology transfer must not be considered a new and untried concept. The current major effort in the advanced countries is to speed the transfer process by attempting to shorten the time gap between the discovery of new knowledge and techniques, and its application across a broad range of technical-economic needs.

In the past the time lag between the announcement of a research development and its utilization by technology was measured in tens of years, it is now measured in years and months. There is more time los t - -and therefore more time to be gained--between the laboratory and the drawing board than there is between the drawing board and the production line. Since ideas have no inertia, their occurrence can be accelerated subject only to the limits of our skill and facilities for information processing and transfer.

The communication of scientific and technical information to industry, and within industry, is the basic and central issue, compared with which the other factors influencing industrial progress, education alone excepted, are secondary. I t should be a mistake to fail to recognize the central significance of the subject.

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The principal challenge is to develop more effective techniques and systems for facili- tating the transfer of information between information systems and the scientists and engineers, the chief producers and users of scientific and technical information. There is also the need to give more attention to the value analysis of information, utilizing cost- benefit and other techniques such as decision theory and information theory to measure value. Lacking are objective and precise means for measuring effectiveness of an operat- ing system or service in order to relate the invested money to the information value received.

Britain's competitors, the Americans, the Japanese, the Germans and the Dutch, have organized themselves much more effectively than we have to use the published information resulting from scientific research. Often, and to our shame, these competitors make excellent use of British inventions. Recent tragic examples of this are computers, penicillin and the swing-wing aircraft; good British scientific ideas which were put to good use by our competitors.

There can be no doubt that books, journals and reprints will eventually give way to the machine storage of graphical and digital information and machine-generated copy. The technical publishing business will gradually be transformed into the information handling business, in which the printing press as a means of production of identical documents no longer plays a dominant role.

I have recommended the Government to take the initiative to set up a computerized pool of specialized scientific and medical information for Europe. There are, of course, many difficult problems to solve for such an European information centre, such as language, terminology and measurement, to name three obvious ones; perhaps priority should be given to European exchange of medical knowledge. Here is a clear-cut illustration of the value of systematic compilation and enquiry. Many hundreds of thousands of people suffer and die today because their local doctors and specialists have not heard of successful treatments in use only a few miles away.

The science of processing, storing and retrieving of information by computers provides this country with a not to be missed opportunity for enhancing the effectiveness of our national scientific, engineering and medical effort and improving the efficiency of Govern- ment management of research and development which lies in our ability to better com- municate information about the results of current research efforts as well as the result of past efforts. A strong science and technology is a national necessity and an adequate communications system is a pre-requisite for its good health.

Transfer of information is now recognized to be an inseparable part of research and development. All those concerned with R and D--individual scientists, doctors, engineers, academic and research establishments, learned societies, Government agencies--must accept responsibility for information transfer, giving to it the same degree of involvement and support that they now give to research and development itself. The information transfer process, in particular the opportunity for speedy and efficient retrieval, is strongly affected by the attitudes and practices of the originators of scientific information. The working scientist will in future have to share many of the burdens that have traditionally been carried by publishers, librarians and their professional assistants.

Government as the largest sponsor of research and development must ensure that in future the scientists, engineers and teachers devote a larger share of their time and resources to the improvement and better management of the ever-increasing volume of technical information. Unless this is done urgently and now, science, medical research and

Presentation Speech 89

engineering will become even more fragmented than they are today and certainly more costly and far less effective.

Since an adequate communications system is a pre-requisite for a healthy science and technology, the health of the technical communications system must be a major concern of the Government and industry. This is why I have recommended to the Government that they set up a consortium of interested Government departments, learned societies and private industry to ensure that there is no overlap and duplication in our information systems and that we make the best use of the considerable opportunities now available for the better use of scientific information by all concerned.

Doctors, engineers and scientists must recognize that the processing of technical information is a worthy and integral part of their job. Leading scientists and engineers must be prepared to commit themselves deeply to the job of sifting, reviewing and syn- thesizing information. The activities of reviewing and writing books, criticizing, are as much a part of science as is traditional research. The scientific community must give such individuals working in the information tr0,nsfer system the esteem and "the rewards that match the importance of their jobs. The individual author must accept more responsibility for subsequent retrieval of what is published. He must participate in the information transfer process rather than leaving the entire responsibility to the publisher, editor and librarian.

The Government, through the information services organized by the Ministry of Tech- nology and through the Department of Education and Science Office of Scientific and Technical Information, is beginning to make an effective contribution to let British engineers and scientists know what the Government is doing in the field of information and I strongly recommend Directors and managers in British industry to obtain a recently issued booklet by the Ministry of Technology called Technical Services for lndustry which lists the technical information and other services available from Government Departments and associated organizations which they will find helpful.

The Ministry of Technology's network of regional offices staffed by technologists supports a secondary network of industrial liaison officers based on university engineering departments and on technical colleges. This network is sponsoring or creating a wide range of services that are specially designed to meet the problem-solving information needs of industrial firms.

The Ministry of Technology also have in preparation a new and very valuable central service for the selective distribution of the technological information sheets to industrial firms containing recent technological advances hopefully in a form in which industry can use it to increase its productivity and exports.

Scientific and technological research now consume some 2.5 per cent of our gross national product and the public is .justified in demanding that the taxpayer receives value for money.

Our scientists and engineers must express themselves more clearly; our technical colleges and universities must do a great deal more to teach the techniques of handling information.

As is well known, we in the United Kingdom, a country without natural resources, supporting an ageing population, demanding a high standard of living, can only maintain this standard if we make use of opportunities such as are now given to us to exploit new educational technology coupled with the new science of information storage and retrieval to make better and faster use by British industry of the results of scientific research.

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By doing this we can help improve the quality of life in our own country, as for instance tackling more effectively the problems of air and water pollution, traffic congestion, and the many other myriad problems that are currently besetting our economy.

I hope that this conference, which is obviously being such a great success by attracting so many distinguished information scientists all over the wprld, will continue to meet also in future years at Cranfield which has provided such an excellent forum.