About this issue

Regular readers may have noticed the increase in frequency of special issues of this Transactions. There are a number of reasons for this and for our planned continuation of the practice of grouping articles into special issues or Sections and soliciting special issues or sections. One reason, of course, is that we believe the topics covered in such issues or sections are important in the management of Research, Development, and Engineering (R, D, & E). Another, however, relates to the role of scientific and technical information (STI) and how it is used. Although the pattern of using management-related STI is somewhat different from that of straight scientific or engineering STI, the behavior of users in the two fields has much in common. Both groups engage in “browsing” and “current awareness” reading, to keep up with what is happening. However, this activity is often at a fairly quick pace and does not generally penetrate deeply into the subject matter of an article, unless the reader has a continuing special interest in that subject. This contrasts with the deliberate “search” for information or literature on a particular subject related to a special need or task. In the latter case, more attention is paid to p particular article and it may be subject to careful scrutiny and follow up through its references.