BACKGROUND Many physicians rely on the abstracts of research articles to guide their
clinical decision making. This need for expediency is one basis for many journals to reformat …

Background: The use of a structured abstract has been recommended in reporting medical
literature to quickly convey necessary information to editors and readers. The use of …

This study was carried out to determine if the content of structured abstracts conforms with
recommendations of the Ad Hoc Working Group for the critical appraisal of the medical …

Medical journals are a principal source of new knowledge for clinicians. Unfortunately,
articles containing valid and valuable information are often buried among others of less …

Following proposals in 1987 and 1988, several medical journals have provided more
informative abstracts (" structured abstracts") for articles of clinical interest. Structured …

Background Structured abstracts have been widely adopted in medical journals, with little
demonstration of their superiority over unstructured abstracts. Objectives To compare …

Background: We compared the quality of structured abstracts of original research articles
from the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), and …

Annals of Internal Medicine introduced more informative abstracts (MIAs) in 1987 [l] to
provide readers-particularly clinicians-with more accurate summaries of articles of potential …

PURPOSE: To evaluate the quality of abstracts of original research articles. DESIGN: Blind,
criterion-based survey. SAMPLE: Systematic sample of 33 abstracts of original research …

Background Checklists for peer review aim to guide referees when assessing the quality of
papers, but little evidence exists on the extent to which referees agree when evaluating the …