Reflexiones finales

Perhaps the most obvious com m ent to make is that more toxicology resources exist now than 20 years ago. This increase in the volume of the literature would be expe cted , simply os a result of the passage of time. Using Toxline as a measure, Kissman e t al. (1982) estimated the growth rote of toxicology journal articles at 107,000 per year. Nevertheless, it may be that an additional increase has occurred, consequent to the increasing prevalence of electronic com m unication in our lives, a nd particularly, the em ergence of the world wide w eb. It is difficult to derive a m ethod by which to measure this exactly.

Certainly the tendency to store information in electronic format, and the ready availability of a world wide publishing mechanism, have led to the perception of global rather than local information retrieval. This in itself increases the am ount of information to be dea lt within any one discipline. For the exam ple of toxicology, resources may be identified from places such as Russia and China. 20 years ago, such information would be virtually impossible to retrieve, and quite hard to even know about. This chan ge is, of course, not solely due to new ICTs; clearly political, social a nd econom ic issues hove played a part. A significant facto r is the use of English langua ge in network based communications. It con, however, be stated that the am ount of information available to those interested in toxicology has increased because international resources can be more readily located, and that this is because of new ICTs.

The some argum ent may also apply for local resources. It m ay now be possible to find more hom e produced information, because it is easier for the authors to publish it. The exam ple of 'grey' literature, described by Kissman and Wexler (1983) as including technical reports, governm ent documents and dissertations, m ay be relevant here. M uch US governm ent and international regulatory bodies information is now available in tull text from w e b pages, Everitt (2000).

There is still then the question of whether new ICTs hove resulted in the generation of novel information, which would not exist without them, or whether the increase is only due to enhanced publishing and access mechanisms, and to copies of information being produced in additional, electronic formats.

New, raw toxicology data, referred to earlier in this ch ap ter as a zeroth ca tegory of information, have undoubtedly been generated over the past 20 years. Kissman and Wexler (1983) refer to the following areas of toxicology testing and research:

carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, reproductive toxicology and teratogenesis, target organ toxicology, structure activity relationships and risk assessment. Today there are additional areas such as genomics, proteomics and genetically m odified animals (Fry and George 2001 ). Whether any of the new d a ta are due solely to new ICTs is

beyond the limits of the current study, which focuses on information com m unication, rather than d a ta generation. It is, however, possible to suggest here th a t new

ideas/work/techniques may have been facilitated by new ICTs, in th a t information com m unication between toxicologists is now easier, and this m ay generate increased research and consequently increased raw data.

The extent to which raw da ta is collected in electronic form allows d a ta to be

archived alongside any electronic publication which refers to it; this makes it possible for a reader to check, or re-analyse the d a ta to their own satisfaction (Meadows

1998), in a w ay which is rarely possible in print.

Torasson et al. (2002), discuss how d a ta from genomics and proteomics can be linked to analyses for risk assessment.

For information in the main four resource categories, it is likely that new ICTs have played an 'encouraging' role, rather than having been directly responsible for the existence of novel information. This role envisages information a t any of the four levels, which enters the com m unication process only in a form which is derived from new ICTs. Examples of types of encouraged information include:

postings to mailing lists and discussion groups

w e b pages containing unpublished personal or organisational information w e b diaries

lists of resources or webliographies portals

multimedia course sites webrings

lists of lists

From the above examples, it can be seen that an am ount of primary, tertiary and even quaternary information, which may previously have remained 'inform al', (ie.

difficult/impossible to retrieve) now has on opportunity to b e co m e part of the 'formal' information com m unication process. The lack of e ffe ct on secondary resources reflects that fa c t that secondary com m unication is by nature part of the formal com m unication process. Bibliographic services have been accessible via networks for longer than 20 years, and therefore the im p a ct of new ICTs is rather less than for other types of information. With regard to printed works, these d o not readily transfer to an electronic environment, although examples can be found, and so here again the im p a c t of new ICTs is minimal.

The c o n c e p t of encouraged information thus reveals a second im p a ct of new ICTs; an increase in the number of forms which information resources can take. Specific ICT based information forms can be seen on the resource categorisation listing, shown earlier in this chapter.

The current range of forms of toxicology information con be com pared with those described around 20 years a go in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Information Transfer in Toxicology, held at the US National Library of M edicine in September 1981 (Kissman et al. 1982). This report refers to primary, secondary and tertiary literature, but within the confines of traditional forms including preprints, journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, abstracting and indexing systems (and their

com puterised counterparts), databanks, books and monographs. The resource categorisation listing proposed in this study re-defines the sort of information assigned to e a ch category, adds a quaternary level of resource, and extends the number of forms available to encompass new ICTs.

Whilst the w e b m ay have boosted the availability of formal primary material such as journal articles, conference proceedings and report literature, it is in the area of informal 'pre-primary' information that the new forms have had their greatest im pact.

Kissman et al. (1982) detailed the com m unication of toxicology information from generation to primary publication, referring to a pre-publication phase involving the invisible college, the semi-formal mechanism of ongoing research information collation, and the distribution of preprints. They point out that these forms are by no means reliable, and that m uch information is 'lost' betw een the stages of d a ta generation and the primary publication of results and conclusions. Conversations betw een members of an invisible college are untraceable, as are preprints, and ongoing research listings do not include everything and may not be kept up-to-date.

C om m unication still takes place between workers before, during and after ttie acquisition of raw d ata, or zerotti level information, but before ttie work is ready for publication. The difference now is that it is possible to 'ca p tu re ' and subsequently ‘retrieve’ this informal information to some extent, as some of it may enter the formal com m unication arena via forms resulting from new ICTs. Examples would be the archives of discussion or mailing list postings, and these could be regarded as an extension of the invisible college idea. Personal w eb pages and w e b diaries can be used to publish preprint text, initial thoughts and summaries of ongoing research information. Again though, some informal information will still remain unrecorded, or m ay be kept solely on private systems. There is also the issue of durability, in that archives of mailing lists may not be kept forever, and personal w e b pages are m aintained a t the discretion of the author.

The hyperlinked nature of the w e b clearly lends itself to the publication of w e b based lists of resources, services, and even other lists. Many toxicological examples of these forms ca n be found, and although printed variants still exist, these newer forms are clearly of increasing im portance.

The listing of toxicology resources given in the appendix, section 3.5.a can be used to construct a model of information com m unication for toxicology a t the time of writing. This is shown in figure 3.1.

This m odel con be com pared with earlier ones, such as that derived by Garvey and Griffith (1972) and the Royal Society (1981). Information chain models are also discussed by Duff (1997). Several differences can be noted. Firstly, a pre-primary phase can be discerned, in which information can now enter the formal

com m unication process before the primary publication of an idea or c o n ce p t. The core com m unication, between primary and secondary services, remains largely unchanged, although the allocation of printed works such as books and monographs to this section is different from other com m unication models (Kissman 1982) which regard these as tertiary entities.

The pre-primary, primary and secondary resources all feed into the tertiary resources. In reality, tertiary listings sometimes point also to quaternaries, so it m ay be considered that these too, contribute to resources at this level.

Finally, the tertiary entities feed into the quaternaries, although again here it is possible to find pointers to other levels of information.

Nevertheless, this m odel provides on app ro ach to information com m unication which is Z-shaped, in comparison to the linear models previously described.

Whilst com pilation of the list of resources has given an insight into the qualitative im p a ct of new ICTs on toxicology com m unication, it is not possible to draw any quantitative conclusions as to the actual am ount of im p a ct in any one area. Chapter four, considers how this may be achieved.