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
50 astronomy, public health, etc.), standardization, investigations of the finalization of the results of R and D, patents and innovations. It seems reasonable to follow the evaluation criteria for the above-mentioned types of research activities. It would be irrealistic to evaluate the direct contribution of information systems to basic research. It is the effectiveness of such systems that can be evaluated. We can observe also a contradictory process. The more theoretical and intellectual the input the less obsolescent it is in terms of research; the more its information needs are the less its measurability (efficiency, etc.). The information system as a whole can be evaluated only a posteriori in an indirect way. This applies to basic research. On the other hand: the less the relative importance of the information system in applied and development research is and the more the obsolescence of their information is, the more the measurability of the used information is as a part of the new products of services. This contradictory process can be formulated as follows: more information value — less measurability. It means that an important part of information systems cannot be evaluated directly. Does it mean that the evaluation and the quality of a great part of information systems and services should be neglected? Certainly not. There are some elements which must be taken into consideration and thus the problem can be approached. For the evaluation of information systems and services an approximation of their utility may be sufficient and Mendeleev's statement, that science begins where and when something can be measured is valid only to a certain extent for information. At present we think that the formulation of the questions of measurability and of the evaluation of information systems can be considered as a result of or an approach to the problem. And in many cases the formulation of questions can be a step forward in the process of research. Evaluation of information systems and scientometrics The term "scientometrics" was coined by V. V. Nalimov and T. M. Mulchenko in their monograph published in 1969 3. Scientometrics which has got established widely since then and already has its own international journal 4 deals with the study of science by mathematical-statistical methods. The authors of scientometric papers analyse the respective interrelations of the volume of scientific periodicals, of the number of research workers, of the expenditure on researches, of the citations, and so forth. They try to study the effectiveness of groups and individuals. We shall now specify some selected questions some authors deal with in their work 5. We selected these questions according to the extent to which they can be related to our topic, i.e. the evaluation of information systems. The study of the topic mentioned does not take us immediately to evaluation but we think it does help us to approach it and to elaborate adequate methods. Consequently the questions to study are as follows:
