György Rózsa: Information: from claims to needs (Joint edition published by the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Kultura Hungarian Foreign Trading Company. Budapest, 1988)

I. The socio-professional aspects of the development of the scientific information with special regard to social sciences

27 The question is, which one of the two institutions expresses better the meaning of efficiency? The social efficiency of information activities has no definite parameters. As Marx said in his Theories of surplus value "The number of workers necessary to make a table, the amount of work of a definite kind necessary to manufacture a given product under certain production conditions are exactly known. This, however, is not the case with many 'non-material' products. The amount of work required to achieve a certain result is just as approximate as is the result itself". And if this is in general a true approach to intellectual work, to the 'non-material' production like research and especially social science research, it is also true for information activities, whose results are even more approximate than those of research. A large amount of divergent publications could be quoted concerning the measurement of rentability and efficiency of research and development. The investigations are on an initial stage, especially those concerning efficiency. On the other hand, the justification of any scientific information activity is to provide information for research work. However, scientific information has its own features scope and methods, but it would be a kind of over-estimation of information work to study its efficiency disregarding its close connection with research. It seems to me that studies concerning efficiency of scientific information are in a stage of defining the problems. However, in this scientific approach, to formulate the points of discussions, the points of divergence could be considered as fundamental. 2. Development trend of scientific information activities: a brief statement The development of scientific information following on the scientific-technological revolution imposes a new definition of certain activities that have evolved during the social division of labour comparable to the qualitatively new social function of science. Tentatively, the following can be said; in the process of science becoming a direct productive force, the communication of scientific knowledge, itself a product of this process, reacts upon it and becomes an integral part of it; one of its most essential and active elements. Like science, scientific information becomes organized, acquires mass proportions and tends to develop according to the organization of the productive forces. This development, following a tendency, has several components, its analysis has economic, science-organizational, gnoseological and sociological aspects which require complex research. In the same way and by its very nature the process of transformation of science into a direct productive force shows itself most markedly in the natural sciences and engineering, so scientific information also acts as an initiator of the productive forces mainly in these fields. At the same time, however, the social sciences also undergo a significant development, especially in the field of management of society and economy, and in such branches as economics, sociology and management science. The results of basic research in natural sciences, promoting both science and production, become applicable in their general and abstract character (e.g. mathematics,