Scientific communication and its relevance to research policy

This paper addresses the relation between developments in scientific commun ication and research. The developments in scientific communication are rela ted to developments brought about by opportunities provided by the developm ent and wide-scale introduction of modern information and communication tec hnology. However, this paper does not focus on technological developments, but rather discusses how these new developments in scientific communication enable developments in research and research policy, and vice versa. The r ole of scientometrics and bibliometrics in this context is briefly discusse d.