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	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor.—It is disappointing that the intervention by Dr Pitkin and Ms Branagan¹ did not reduce the number of defective abstracts in articles for publication. As a medical librarian who spends much time advising on and conducting literature searches, I am well aware of the problems of retrieving appropriate information from electronic databases. The more help authors give in providing good abstracts, the more accurately the article will be indexed, and the greater the chances a search will retrieve that article from a database.

Indexers are highly experienced and qualified information professionals, but they are rarely clinical specialists. Indexers are instructed to assign terms as specifically as possible to match the authors' words, but they never "diagnose" or "interpret." MEDLINE's indexers add more than 7000 references to the database every week. Although indexers skim articles in their entirety, the chances are that indexing terms will be assigned solely . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Can the Accuracy of Abstracts Be Improved by Providing Specific Instructions?: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Roy M. Pitkin and Mary Ann Branagan
JAMA. 1998;280(3):267-269.
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