WRITING ABSTRACTS FOR FREE‐TEXT SEARCHING

A survey of abstracting policies used by producers of bibliographic databases examined abstracting guidelines which aim to enhance free‐text retrieval. Of the 123 database policies examined, fifty‐seven (46 per cent) included such instructions. Editors consider content of abstracts and their language as a primary factor in retrieval enhancement. Most recommend that once abstractors decide which concepts to include in abstracts and in which form to represent them, these terms should be co‐ordinated with index terms assigned from a controlled vocabulary. Guidelines about the type of abstracts, i.e., informative or indicative, and about their length are not affected by the capability of free‐text retrieval.