Scientific Information Exchange Surrounding the 1968 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

This article cites a study, which deals with the scientific communication associated with the 1968 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The study reported here is the first in this series for educational research. Presentations at the 1968 annual meeting of AERA constituted a set of core events in relation to which communication was assessed. Three groups of persons having contact with these presentations were included in the study: authors, those who made presentations at the meeting; attendants, those who heard these presentations; and requesters, those who requested copies of the presentations from the authors. All 349 authors who presented papers were sent questionnaires. The questionnaire concerned the inception, nature, and previous as well as planned dissemination of the work they reported; the authors' current activities in those subject areas discussed in their presentations; and the effect upon these activities of scientific information exchanged at the meeting. The study assessed: how much of the program material had been submitted for journal publication during the ensuing year; which journals had been selected; and how many authors had neither submitted nor planned to submit manuscripts to journals based on their meeting presentations.