Pour Serge Hurtig, que signifie un anniversaire? Carl Friedrich avait bien tort lorsqu’au congrès de Paris de 1961, ayant présenté le nouveau secrétaire général de l’à l’ensemble des congressistes réunis en assemblée plénière, ayant dit combien il se réjouissait que Serge Hurtig ait accepté le poste, il ajoutait, en aparté, que le seul défaut apparent du nouveau Secrétaire Général était sa jeunesse; mais qu’il n’y avait pas à s’inquiéter car cela était temporaire. Or, Serge Hurtig n’a pas changé. Il a toujours la même jeunesse d’allure et d’esprit et toujours ce talent d’organisateur que Friedrich avait distingué. Mais les Abstracts, eux, ont bien à peu près 60 ans (je dis Abstracts plus reconnaissable que Documentation). Je célèbre ses 60 ans à distance d’ordinateur en raison d’un accident qui m’interdit les longs voyages, du moins jusqu’à l’automne.
Ma contribution au panel de Madrid consacré aux Abstracts en l’honneur de Serge Hurtig sera un amalgame de souvenirs personnels et de réflexions sur Documentations politiques.
Nous étions, Serge et moi, étudiants aux Sciences-Po de Paris à la même époque (son diplôme date de 1950, le mien de 1947) et mes recherches des années 1950 me faisaient retrouver fréquemment les halls, couloirs et salles de bibliothèque de la rue Saint-Guillaume où régnait une atmosphère à la fois studieuse et surréaliste qui vaudrait qu’on y situe un film en costume et en comportement d’époque. Le surréalisme tenait au rôle des huissiers, habillés de façon bien distincte, huissiers qui avaient deux fonctions principales: celle de précéder vers une salle de cours, ou du moins vers le grand amphithéâtre, des professeurs qui auraient fort bien pu s’y rendre eux-mêmes (du moins Siegfried, Renouvin, Morazé et autres qui étaient de la maison) ; mais il fallait aussi que ces huissiers, lorsqu’ils n’étaient pas en déplacement au service de vieilles traditions de décorum et de politesse; il leur fallait, dis-je, assis sur leur chaise, passer leur temps non pas à lire des journaux mais, ciseaux en main, à en découper des articles dont les contours étaient marqués à l’encre noire, articles qui étaient identifiés par des numéros de code. Ces derniers permettaient à d’invisibles autorités supérieures (Jean Meynaud, Serge Hurtig et leurs assistants je présume) de mettre ou faire mettre dans une chemise-classeur appropriée, en tas mais dans un ordre strictement chronologique, le butin journalier récolté par les huissiers. Ces chemises-classeur avaient chacune un intitulé tel que ”élection présidentielle de 19xx” “poujadisme”, “Andorre” etc… Je n’ai jamais consulté de coupures de presse aussi utiles, aussi fraiches, aussi bien indexées. Tel est l’environnement dans lequel travaillait Serge Hurtig lorsqu’il participa avec Jean Meynaud au lancement des Abstracts en 1951.
Je passe donc aux Abstracts et à l’anglais qui est maintenant la langue de cette publication à hauteur d’environ 80%.
I shall start with the wish that Serge would write a piece tracing the origins of the collection of newspaper clippings made available in the Sciences-Po library and more generally that he would describe the initiatives taken by the pioneering team with which he was associated. Did the collection of press clippings lead to the Abstracts? What were the problems to be overcome and how were they solved. What was the impact of the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences of Jean Meyriat (also at Sciences-Po). I have more questions concerning the present and the future of the Abstracts. I include them in the following notes.
1. The Abstracts and its users
Launched in 1951, in the year following the first congress of 1950 in Zurich, the Abstracts have to this day continued to be available in print and offer now electronic access as well. The cost to libraries is relatively low even after the change of publisher from the to Sage. This must be judged satisfactory by the Harvard librarians who invited authors of scholarly papers to a publishing boycott of the journals and abstracting services charging exorbitant prices. The Abstracts say they keep publishing a print copy mostly for users in Eastern Europe and developing countries . That too is commendable but may soon be unnecessary if nearly all libraries experience what has happened in so called western societies: the shortage of storing space, the cuts in staff, and the absence of students who prefer to access electronic publications from their homes or from university cafeterias. What are the projections made by Sage and by the editors of the Abstracts concerning the speed of disappearance of print copies? Regrettable as it may be, would such disappearance reduce costs and help lowering the subscription prices?
2. The language of the articles abstracted by the Abstracts
To measure the relative importance of the languages of political science as seen through the Abstracts, consider its April 2012 issue. A systematic sample of 280 from the 1498 articles abstracted in that issue show the text of the articles to be in English in 77% of the cases while French or German score 7% each and the other languages - Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian , and Spanish - only 1% each. On that measure Political Science is as English as Chemistry. True, the few hooks to the non-English articles provide access to a larger literature through the footnotes of these articles. But I would think it advisable to expand the non-English coverage. Are there plans to that effect?
Countries of the publishers
Judged by the location of the publishers of the journals in our sample, the expected dominance of English is verified: 36% in the United Kingdom, 36% in the USA, 2% in English Canada. These publishers can easily afford to offer free subscriptions to an abstracting service. Do the Political Science Abstracts rely exclusively on free subscriptions? If so, does that constrain the coverage?
Full or partial coverage?
The 950 journals abstracted in recent years by the Abstracts are of two types: those that are covered in full and those that are covered only partially. Those covered in full account for only 7%. The advantage of having this very restricted category is to lead the user, especially the undergraduate student, to the core of the discipline and thus avoid overload; but the user wanting to browse a collection of abstracts, as if it were a set of library shelves, would likely find the 7% much too low for a discipline that is increasing its intellectual links to other social sciences (notably sociology, economics, anthropology, geography, and sociolinguistics) as indicated by the very names of the research committees of IPSA. The electronic format more than the print format should facilitate an increase in full coverage at little cost.
The IPSab vs the WWPSab
Until 2000, when the World Wide Political Science Abstracts (WWPSab) were created from the amalgamation of two small abstracting services, the International Political Science Abstracts (IPSab) did not have a serious competitor. It now has one and that cannot but affect the evolution of the IPSab. The choice will likely be between competition on all fronts or having a distinctive niche. My guess is that Serge Hurtig, if only because of his multilingual background (from Rumania to France to Argentina to the USA and back to France) will prefer a multi-lingual and multinational distinctiveness.
Conclusion: Thanks and cheers to Serge Hurtig
Jean Laponce
University of British Columbia
President 1973-1976
International Political Science Review Editor 1986-2002
