As a guest user you are not logged in or recognized by your IP address. You have
access to the Front Matter, Abstracts, Author Index, Subject Index and the full
text of Open Access publications.
Background: Retrieval tests have assumed that the abstract is a true surrogate of the entire text. However, the frequency of terms in abstracts has never been compared to that of the articles they represent. Even though many sources are now available in full-text, many still rely on the abstract for retrieval.
Methods: 1,138 articles with their abstracts were downloaded from Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and the British Medical Journal. Words were extracted from the articles and their abstracts and the frequency of each word was counted in both sources. Each article and its abstract were tested using a chi-squared test to determine if the words in the abstract occurred as frequently as would be expected.
Results: 96% of the abstracts tested as samples of the article they represented.
Conclusion: In these four journals, the abstracts are lexical, as well as intellectual, surrogates for the documents they represent.
This website uses cookies
We use cookies to provide you with the best possible experience. They also allow us to analyze user behavior in order to constantly improve the website for you. Info about the privacy policy of IOS Press.
This website uses cookies
We use cookies to provide you with the best possible experience. They also allow us to analyze user behavior in order to constantly improve the website for you. Info about the privacy policy of IOS Press.