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
ON THE EVALUATION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND THE USE OF SCIENTOMETRICS Formulation of the problem The evaluation of the utility and the quality of information systems and processes is a widely debated problem. The concepts of efficiency, rentability, cost-effectiveness are very closely linked with the problem of evaluation. The literature of the economics of information and its bibliographies show a growing interest in the evaluation of information systems and services. We are dealing here with the evaluation of automated information systems, as these are more numerous and more widely used both in R and D and in problem solving. The impressive number of computerized data bases is significant in itself. As Tomberg's Data Base Guide indicates the number of such data bases was 533 in 1978, that of data banks 568, and of referral services 577, amounting to a total of 1678 1 . How to choose among the large number of data bases, how to evaluate them, what kinds of criteria to use? These are difficult questions, as evaluation has to serve something, it is not a question "en soi". But the evaluation of information systems is nothing but an integrated part of the evaluation of R and D. The investigations of the utility of information systems is in fact a very important aspect of R and D evaluation. Saying this, it is to be recognized that the evaluation of information systems has its own specific questions. First of all it is the stage of the evaluation of R and D which is to be examined because of the very close links between the evaluation of R and D that of information systems. Generally the following types of research activities are recognized in R and D 2. Basic research: it is aimed at producing new scientific results, knowledge, new theories and scientific laws. Within basic research difference should be made between the so called pure research motivated only by the curiosity of researchers and the oriented basic research directed by the scientific or economic interests of a management body or of a research unit. Basic research in general is not aimed at attaining practical results. The aim of applied research is also to produce new scientific results but with a view to a practical achievement, with a view to applicability. Development utilizes the existing scientific results to produce new materials, tools, processes and systems. Development research is in general of experimental character. In development research activities the direct economic-technical results are of major importance. Some activities are linked with R and D such as postgraduate and higher education, information processing and dissemination, collection of general data (meteorology,
