Jul 17th 2008
Is the web narrowing scientistsâ expertise?
One explanation could be that indexing works by titles and authors alone, as happened with printed journals, forced readers to cast at least a cursory glance at work not immediately related to their ownâÂÂor even that the mere act of flicking through a paper volume may have thrown up unexpected gems. This may have led people to make broader comparisons and to integrate more past results into their research.
It is not yet clear whether this change is for good or ill. Electronic searching means that no relevant paper is likely to go unread, but narrowing the definition of âÂÂrelevanceâ risks reducing the cross-fertilisation of ideas that sometimes leads to big, unexpected advances.