Industry's Future: Changing Patterns of Industrial Research.

ACS key tables and figures from the papers that will enhance understanding of the article's main conclusions. Individuals may subscribe to either the complete print version of ES&T or the moderately priced ES&T News and Research Notes; libraries and other institutional subscribers may subscribe only to the complete version. ES&T News and Research Notes will be in our repertoire for years to come because it meets an unsatisfied need. Surveys of our readers indicate that almost 20,000 people read ES&T each month. Place this number against the total number of people in chemistry, engineering, biology, geology, and other professions whose work is directly related to environmental research and technology, and it is clear that we are not reaching the entire audience who would benefit from ES&T. Some of you may feel that reaching such a large, diverse audience should not be part of the mission of a research journal, and I understand that view. But the new products we are introducing are intended not only to expand our readership but also to address a daunting challenge facing all research journals, the problem of "information overload," which I have written about in this column. Even the most ardent followers of the scientific literature have become overwhelmed by the huge volume of information being thrust upon them. Managing the "knowledge explosion." Scientific journals and related, unrenewed literature have grown over the past decade at a remarkable pace. Since I became the editor of ES&T in 1988, we have grown from 1452 published pages to a projected 3700 pages this year. This growth is not the result of any diminution in the quality of research. Indeed, my impression is that our average paper is better today than ever before. Unfortunately, no mortal can read all of these pages, much less all of the other journals in a particular sphere of interest. This situation presents a dilemma to scientific societies such as the American Chemical Society that have a mission to encourage scholarship and information dissemination. We must continue to publish the best research, and there is no indication that the volume of pages required to do this will decrease. Yet, we must concede that readers are overloaded, and we must do what we can to assist them in getting information from the literature. For most environmental professionals, the information they need comes in a compact, accessible form: news, critical reviews, feature articles, and opinion/analysis. There remains, of course, a core of dedicated readers who religiously read the research journal. ES&T will never adopt policies that will discourage these dedicated scientists, but even they are adopting new techniques to scan the literature more efficiently. In short, there is just too much for an individual to handle (or afford) within the traditional paper journal format. Advances in communication technology. The editors of ES&T, together with our Editorial Advisory Board, agree that this dilemma is real and must be addressed. The introduction of ES&T News and Research Notes and the World Wide Web service are only part of a larger strategy to make ES&T more useful to environmental professionals. For example, we will continue to exploit advances in communications technology to enhance the dissemination of information. We believe that computers with telecommunications interfaces eventually will allow us to provide • advanced search routines so readers can access more easily those parts of the research and magazine sections they desire to read, • archival capabilities (CD-ROM or the next generation thereof) that will allow rapid retrieval of information from back issues, • rapid processing and review of manuscripts, and • an advanced electronic version of ES&T with graphics and video illustrations that enhance the quality of information in our articles.