Abstracting Services in Korea

한국의 초록서비스에 대하여

The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate into general characteristics of the abstracting services in Korea and to discuss general directions of development of the abstracting services in the country. This study is designed to achieve the purpose by gathering and analysing data related to the abstracting journals published in the past ten years and by comparing the results with similar data gathered by the investigator in 1984. The major conclusions made in this study is summarised as follows. (1) Researchers and professionals working in limited numbers of subject fields are benefited by abstracting services of recent achievements in research and development in Korea. Those in most of the fields have essentially no abstracting services of such achievements. Even many researchers and professionals in the limited numbers of the fields that have some elementary abstracting services are not informed of research results in their fields because the abstracting journals are scattered in many narrow subjects and in many cases, the abstracting journals only cover publications in some specific forms and kinds. (2) Abstracting journals of general subjects, which are supposed to be of more or less help to the researchers in the subject fields that have no abstracting journals of their own, have rapidly increased in number in the past ten years. Most of such abstracting journals carry thesis and dissertation abstracts, and the rest those of research papers published in specific places, in specific forms, by specific institutes, and of reports of research projects sponsored by specific foundations. These abstracting journals are not of the kind that comprehensively provide general readers with current awareness of publications of research results in Korea. (3) Most of the abstracting journals existing in Korea are published by institutions of higher education and research institutes, and the rest by commercial publishers, industrial firms, libraries, information centers, government agencies, research foundations, learned societies, etc. Those which publish many titles are small in number and those publish one or two titles are large in number. The former is largely made up of institutions of higher education and research institutes. (4) Ten years ago, there was not a single publishing house that produced abstracting journals. Three commercial publishing houses now produce abstracting journals. As this change occurs, centers of excellence are founded and competitive elements are introduced in abstracting services. This change, in turn, is expected to improve quality of the other abstracting journals in Korea. (5) The abstracting journals published in Korea are classified by type into those of dissertations, research papers, journal articles, patent specifications in that descending order. The fact that Master's and doctoral dissertation abstracts are dominating in Korea is due to the irrational practice of publishing those abstracts at many institutions. (6) Most of the abstracting journals existing in Korea are published by national or government-supported research institutes in order to publicise their own research outputs. Their coverage of literature is normally narrow, and naturally their value to users is limited. (7) The abstracting journals published in Korea increased in number at the rate of $77.8-100\%$ every five years in the past twenty-five years. Most of the abstracting journals that ceased to be published during the period survived for two years. (8) Korean is the desirable language for the abstracting journals designed to be distributed within Korea. About half of the abstracting journals published in Korea is printed in Korean and the other half in foreign languages, and in Korean with foreign languages. All the abstracting journals in foreign languages are printed in English xcept one, which is printed in Japanese. (9) Some twenty percent of the abstracting journals in Korea is published monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly. Others are published annually, biannually, and irregularly. The latter may not function properly as a current-awareness tool due to long intervals between their issues. It is particularly undesirable that about half of the abstracting journals in Korea is published irregularly. Most of the abstracting journals published in Korea are distributed freely to individuals and institutions selected by the publishers. (10) The abstracting journals published by the use of computers increased drastically in the past ten years. The abstracting journals produced by the conventional type-setting method will probably disappear In Korea in another ten years to come. Automation of the production of abstracting journals does not simply mean technical, economic improvement of publishing processes but availability of machine-readable databases that can be used for other purposes, including the generation of other publications and the provision of machine literature searching capabilities. Necessary steps should be taken for this important development that is occurring in the abstracting services in Korea.