This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (30)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Journalology/ Peer Review/ Authorship  • Quality of Care  • Quality of Care, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Margaret A. Winker, MD

JAMA. 1999;281:1129-1130.

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

The abstract is, aside from the title, the most frequently read and most easily accessed portion of an article reporting original biomedical research. The abstract provides an irreplaceable resource for busy clinicians, researchers, and authors searching for pertinent material in the source journal or in computerized databases. JAMA began publishing abstracts with articles on January 7, 1956, predating MEDLINE by a decade; other journals followed suit.¹ Structure was not added to JAMA abstracts until 1991² when the structured format developed by Haynes et al³ and tested⁴ and evolved⁵ in Annals of Internal Medicine with the help of Edward J. Huth, MD, then Annals' editor, was adopted. Reading the abstract has never been a substitute for reading the article: crucial details of the study, such as patient selection and follow-up, definition of outcome measures, and study limitations, receive short shrift in the terse style of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Dr Winker is Deputy Editor of JAMA.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Accuracy of Data in Abstracts of Published Research Articles
, , and
JAMA. ;281():1110-1111.
FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Enhancing Practitioner Knowledge Through a Unique Abstracting Format Used With Research on Social Work Practice Journal Articles
Holosko
Research on Social Work Practice 2009;19:234-238.
ABSTRACT  

Better reporting of randomized trials in biomedical journal and conference abstracts
Hopewell et al.
Journal of Information Science 2008;34:162-173.
ABSTRACT  

Quality of Abstracts of Papers Reporting Original Cost-Effectiveness Analyses
Rosen et al.
Med Decis Making 2005;25:424-428.
ABSTRACT  

Screening research papers by reading abstracts
Groves and Abbasi
BMJ 2004;329:470-471.
FULL TEXT  

Accuracy of Abstracts for Original Research Articles in Pharmacy Journals
Ward et al.
The Annals of Pharmacotherapy 2004;38:1173-1177.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Quality of Abstracts Describing Randomized Trials in the Proceedings of American Society of Clinical Oncology Meetings: Guidelines for Improved Reporting
Krzyzanowska et al.
JCO 2004;22:1993-1999.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Quality of Abstracts in 3 Clinical Dermatology Journals
Dupuy et al.
Arch Dermatol 2003;139:589-593.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Effects of Technical Editing in Biomedical Journals: A Systematic Review
Wager and Middleton
JAMA 2002;287:2821-2824.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Effectiveness of a Journal Intervention to Improve Abstract Quality
Pitkin et al.
JAMA 2000;283:481-481.
FULL TEXT