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

40 methods for assessing economic efficiency, etc.), and their international collation. By fulfilling these tasks the documentation of science organization (to which we shall revert later) also performs tasks of a limited research character.

3 Therefore, this form of information may also be termed as tertiary information supply. On the other hand, information analysis centers are standing near to research institutes. Which are the criteria for these information centers? The consideration of these criteria will cast more light on the characteristics of information syntheses. The information working group of OECD thus outlines the operational principle of information analysis centers: — it works in a well-defined subject field to serve an adequate number of users; — works under scientific leadership; — is closely connected with the leading researchers; — 75 per cent of the received inquiries will be replied by an expert of the given subject field; — at least 50 per cent of the information supplied goes beyond bibliographical information; — it issues data collections and analytic-synthetic reviews. By and large, the same operational principles are deemed as characteristic by the authors of the basic work on informatics.

4 However, the information analysis center is nor the only workshop of publishing information syntheses. Information syntheses may be just as well issued whether by a research institute or by a library or documentation center. The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is a case in point. This library has been publishing information syntheses in a regular way ever since 1961 in the field of science of science, in the form of a documentary periodical titled Bulletin of Science Organization (Tudományszervezési Tájékoztató)

5. This periodical was called forth by the actual needs of Hungarian science policy, at a time when the problems of the top management, financing and planning of the country's research effort had come to the fore. Its backbone, its most important part is the column of information syntheses. One issue of the periodical contains 8 to 10 such syntheses (originally termed as "review articles") mostly by external specialists. The editorial staff is not engaged in library work in the proper sense. Their task is regularly to keep track of several hundreds of periodicals which contain — with more or less regularity — articles, studies on science of science, and also to examine the new book acquisitions of the library from the aspect of science of science. Their task is also to be in touch with the users (research managers, research institutions) and to recognize the subject fields where the need for information syntheses arises, comparing the potential needs with the literature available. Not infrequently do users give ideas and proposals to the editors. In parallel with the formulation of the plan of the individual issues, the designation of the most suitable authors is also carried out. Let us take the number 6. of the Bulletin's 17th volume (1977) to exemplify the thematic fields covered: "Possibilities of assessing the development of industrial research units and certain problems of measurement" (by a senior scientific researcher