[Reprinted from SCIENCE, N. S., Vol. LIV., No. 

 1396, Pages 291-295, Sept. 30, 19S1] 



SCIENTIFIC ABSTRACTING^ 



7s it worth while for scientific journals to 

 provide abstracts at the beginning of their 

 articles? 



The answer to this question depends, of 

 course, on the nature of the abstracts. If they 

 are sketchy, incomplete and unreliable, as 

 many abstracts published at present are, they 

 may be worse than useless. But suppose each 

 abstract describes the contents of the article 

 so completely and precisely that any reader can 

 tell with assurance whether the article contains 

 any results of interest to him, and suppose it 

 summarizes the methods, conclusions and 

 theories so as to give all the information any 

 reader not a specialist in the narrow field in- 

 volved needs; that is, suppose each is the 

 result of a careful analysis of the article by a 

 competent abstractor, would not such abstracts 

 enable the reader to grasp the significant re- 

 sults in the articles not only more quickly but 

 more completely and clearly than by skim- 

 ming through the articles? 



Such abstracts would save much time for 

 the scientist not only as a reader of current 

 literature but also as an investigator. For 

 when he desires information on a certain nar- 

 row subject, such abstracts would help him to 

 determine more quickly than otherwise which 

 of the articles referred to in a bibliography or 

 other list contain what he needs; and fre- 

 quently the abstracts would give him the in- 

 formation directly and make a search through 

 the articles unnecessary. Finally, such ab- 



1 The method of analytic abstracting described 

 in this paper was developed by the writer during 

 1919-20 while on the staff of the Eesearch In- 

 formation Service of the National Eesearch 

 Council. 



