Research studies in patterns of scientific communication: II. The role of the national meeting in scientific and technical communication

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Abstract

We describe the results of a comprehensive study of scientific/technical communication associated with eleven national meetings which were sponsored by nine physical-, social- and engineering-science disciplines. Three groups of meeting participants were studied: authors (persons who presented papers) attendants (sample of persons who were present at these paper-presentations), and requestors (sample of persons who requested copies of these papers). The results showed that the national meeting is the first public announcement of a large portion of current research findings in any discipline and much of the information-exchange behavior encountered at the meeting is intrinsically exploratory. The meeting presentation itself usually constitutes an interim report since most material presented there ultimately finds its way into the journal literature. Some discussion is presented of the relationship of the information-exchange activities to characteristics of meeting participants.

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    The research reported here was supported by a grant (NSF GN-514) from the National Science Foundation.

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