The Society of Chemical Industry and Abstracts

Abstract

AT the recent annual meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry, the retiring President and the new President each made some remarks concerning the cost of the journal of the Society and the necessity of curtailing expenses by dealing more strictly with the abstracts. I suppose hardly any two of us would quite agree as to what is the rubbish, Teutonic or otherwise, which ought to be left out, and what is good matter, which ought to be abstracted at greater or less length. No matter who is editor, all of us would abide as firmly as ever in the belief that we could have made a better selection of articles for abstraction. Before, however, we set about any further movement in the direction of cutting down abstracts to a mere useless list of titles, I would like to point out one direction in which expense might safely be curtailed without fear of objection from any quarter. All will agree, I am sure, that it is a waste of money to abstract the same article twice. I am sure other members besides myself must have noticed that this blemish is not entirely absent from the Society's journal. It should be known to every chemical babe and suckling, that even very unimportant papers are sometimes published more than once. Yet this seems to have escaped the notice of whoever is responsible for the editing of the abstracts. Witness the following from this year's journal:—P. 389, “Sulphides of Cobalt and Nickel, A. Villiers (Bull. Soc. Chim., 1895, 13 [4]),” and “Qualitative Separation of Nickel from Cobalt, A. Villiers, Bull. Soc. Chim., 1895, 13 [4].” Now let us turn to p. 524, where we find, “Sulphides of Nickel and Cobalt, A. Villiers, Comptes rend., 1894, 119,” and on p. 509, “Qualitative Separation of Nickel and Cobalt, A. Villiers, Comptes rend., 1895, 120.” We have cobalt and nickel in one case, and nickel and cobalt in the other; but the articles from the Bull. Soc. Chim. are the same as those from the Comptes rend., and by the same author. A still more incomprehensible example will be found on comparing pp. 191 and 313. On p. 191 we have a short abstract of an article on petroleum, by A. Riche and G. Halphen. On p. 313 we have a long abstract of the same article. In one case it is given under qualitative organic chemistry, in the other under quantitative organic chemistry. Yet the reference in each case is the same—“J. Pharm. Chim., 1894, 30, 289.” In this case, therefore, the abstracts are not even prepared from different journals.