universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

250Time is another important factor in chemistry, and reviewers usually emphasize therecency of the publication as a necessary condition for being considered worth reading.Surveys of the time lag between the date chemistry books were published and the datethey were reviewed reveal that reference to recency in BRs respond to the needs of thedisciplinary context: usually more than 60% of the books are reviewed within one yearafter being published, and 90% are reviewed within two years (Motta-Roth, 1995; Chen,1976). Economics has an intermediary pattern between chemistry and linguistics, withmore than half of the books (52.3%) being reviewed in the second year of being on themarket. Linguistics has an opposite pattern from chemistry, with most books (78.7%)being reviewed between two to three years after appearing in the market, and only 20% ofthe books being reviewed within a year after publication showing that promptness inevaluating new publications in linguistics does not seem to be a primary concern as it is inchemistry.In two year’s time, an advanced chemistry book becomes outdated; in three years, itis already considered obsolete. Timeliness as a characteristic aspect of the field has adirect correspondence to the texts themselves. Knowledge structure in chemistry (as inphysics) is conceived of as atomistic, fractionated into small sub-topics in such a way thateach researcher is able to identify an independent set of theoretical questions to be studied(Becher, 1987). As a result, accretion of knowledge in the discipline occurs fast andefficiently and chemistry BRs respond to this contextual feature referring to theimportance of an up-to-date bibliography. In the 20 chemistry texts, 70% refer at leastonce to timeliness as closely associated to the nature of knowledge as shown by examples