Clear guidelines have been provided for
structuring the abstracts of original
clinical research and review articles and,
in the last 10 years, several major medical
journals have adopted the policy of
publishing all such articles with
structured abstracts. Proponents claim
that structured abstracts enhance peer
review, improve information retrieval,
and ease critical appraisal. However,
some journals have not adopted them
and their opponents claim they make
articles longer and harder to read and
restrict author originality. Previous
research on structured abstracts has
focused on how closely they follow
prescribed structure and include the
salient points of the full text, rather than
their role in increasing the usefulness of
the article.
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