The Abstracting Services in Korea: The Present State, Problems and Some Suggestions for Action in the Future

우리나라의 초록시스템 - 현황, 문제 및 개선방안

The main purpose of the present study is to survey the major abstracting bulletins of national nature in Korea, to define such problem areas as lacunae, duplicates and limitation in coverage in the abstracting services currently available in Korea, and to make some suggestions for action for improving the abstracting services in the light of general principles and the tradition and situations unique to Korea. The major conclusions reached at this study are summarised as follows: (A) A new abstracting bulletin of general nature covering the whole field needs to be created in each of the following fields where no established abstracting service is available for the outcome of research and development activities in Korea. (1) Language (2) Religion (3) Art (4) Language (5) Literature (6) History (B) A new specialised abstracting bulletin needs to be created in each of the following fields of science where abstracting services limited in coverage are partially available. (a) Statistics (b) Sociology (c) political science (d) Public administration (e) Law (f) Folk lore (g) Military science (2) Pure sciences (a) Mathematics (b) Chemistry (c) Astronomy (d) Geology (e) Mineralogy (f) Life sciences (g) Botany (h) Zoology (3) Applied sciences (a) Agriculture (b) Architectural engineering (c) Mechanical engineering (d) Electrical engineering (e) Chemical engineering (f) Manufacturing industry (g) Domestic science (C) Publication of the abstracting bulletins suggested in (A) and (B) above may be ideally carried on by a qualified learned society established in the respective field. and should be financially supported by the public fund under the provisions of Art. 27 of the Research Promotion Act of 1979. (D) The current practice of adding the author's abstract and keywords to each of the records of the "Doctoral Theses in Humanities and Social Sciences" part of the" Catalogue of Doctoral and Master's Theses Submitted to the Universities in Korea" published by the National Assembly Library should be applied to all the other parts, i. e. to the parts of the "Master's Theses in Humanities and Social Sciences" and of the "Doctoral and Master's Theses in Natural Sciences': which will not only increase the Catalogue's use value but also discourage appearance of various theses abstracts of individual academic institutions such as the" Abstracts of the Doctoral and Master's Theses Submitted to Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology" which will in turn reduce inefficiency involved in the abstracting services at national level. (E) A general abstracting bulletin covering most part of the outcome of research and development activities in Korea other than that covered by the existing abstracts needs to be created to be temporarily. used till the abstracting journals suggested in this study will be fully available. A realistic way of having such a bulletin may be to expand the present coverage of "The Abstracts of the Reports of the Government-sponsored Projects" currently published by Korean Research Foundation.