The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Structured abstracts: Do they improve the quality of information in abstracts?
Abstract
Introduction This retrospective observational study was designed to assess the impact on quality of changing from unstructured to structured abstract format. Six dental journals, 3 that adopted structured abstracts and 3 with unstructured abstracts, were used. Methods One hundred abstracts from original articles, published between January 1995 and December 1998, were selected from each journal. A 29-question checklist was developed and used to assess the quality of the information in the abstracts. Results The mean score for abstracts published in all journal was 53.9% (SD 11.5; 95% CI 52.8%, 54.8%). There was no statistically significant difference between the scores of the first 50 abstracts and the second 50 abstracts from any journals with unstructured abstracts (P = .19-.80). The mean score of the second 50 abstracts from journals that adopted the structured abstract format was significantly higher than scores from journals with unchanged formats (P < or =.001). Conclusions Structured abstracts provide higher-quality information. Journal editors should be encouraged to use a structured abstract format.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Structured abstracts provide higher quality and more information, could be easier to read, search, and facilitate peer review, and are welcomed by readers/authors [41–43].”
From Reporting quality of abstracts of systematic reviews/meta-analyses: An appraisal of Arab Journal of Urology across 12 years: the PRISMA-Abstracts checklist (2023) · cites this paper as [41]
In the citing paper
“Structured abstracts had significantly higher quality compared to unstructured ones; and change in abstract format from unstructured to structured affected quality positively [41,44].”
From Reporting quality of abstracts of systematic reviews/meta-analyses: An appraisal of Arab Journal of Urology across 12 years: the PRISMA-Abstracts checklist (2023) · cites this paper as [41]
Citations
Cites
Improving the Quality of Reporting of Randomized Controlled Trials: The CONSORT Statement
Begg, C. (1996) · JAMA · doi:10.1001/jama.1996.03540080059030 · Cited by 3,127
More informative abstracts revisited.
Haynes, R. B., Mulrow, C. D., Huth, E. J., Altman, D. G., & Gardner, M. J. (1990) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/0003-4819-113-1-69 · Cited by 526
Research works printed but not linked: 13
- Pitkin, 1998, Can the accuracy of abstracts be improved by providing specific instructions?, JAMA, 280, 267, 10.1001/jama.280.3.267 · DOI · Paper page
- Dickersin, 1994, Identifying relevant studies for systematic reviews, BMJ, 309, 1286, 10.1136/bmj.309.6964.1286 · DOI
- 1987, A proposal for more informative abstracts, Ann Intern Med, 106, 289
- Mulrow, 1988, A proposal for more informative abstracts in review articles, Ann Intern Med, 108, 613, 10.7326/0003-4819-108-4-613 · DOI · Paper page
- Taddio, 1994, Quality of nonstructured and structured abstracts of original research articles in the British Medical Journal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association, CMAJ, 150, 1611
- Turpin, 2004, Consensus builds for evidence-based methods, Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop, 125, 1, 10.1016/j.ajodo.2003.11.014 · DOI
- Bickley, 2003, How to… find the evidence, J Orthod, 30, 72, 10.1093/ortho/30.1.72 · DOI
- Wilczynski, 1995, Preliminary assessment of the effect of more informative (structured) abstracts on citation retrieval from MEDLINE, Medinfo, 8, 1457
- Fricker, 1998, A new self-curing resin-modified glass-ionomer cement for the direct bonding of orthodontic brackets in vivo, Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop, 113, 384
- Altman, 1980, Statistics and ethics in medical research: III. How large a sample?, BMJ, 281, 1336, 10.1136/bmj.281.6251.1336 · DOI
- Khosrotehrani, 2002, Abstract quality assessment of articles from the Annales de Dermatologie, Ann Dermatol Venereol, 129, 1271
- Dupuy, 2003, Quality of abstracts in 3 clinical dermatology journals, Arch Dermatol, 139, 589, 10.1001/archderm.139.5.589 · DOI · Paper page
- Trakas, 1997, Quality assessment of pharmacoeconomic abstracts of original research articles in selected journals, Ann Pharmacother, 31, 423, 10.1177/106002809703100406 · DOI
Cited by
Managing polysemy and synonymy in science mapping using the mixtures of factor analyzers model
Wei, F., Li, W.-J., Lu, Q., & He, Y.-X. (2009) · doi:10.1002/asi.v60:10 · Cited by 270
Preferred Reporting Of Case Series in Surgery (PROCESS) 2023 guidelines
Mathew, G., Sohrabi, C., Franchi, T., Nicola, M., Kerwan, A., & Agha, R. (2023) · International Journal of Surgery · doi:10.1097/js9.0000000000000940 · Cited by 255
“Structured abstracts have been noted to convey information with a higher quality in comparison to unstructured abstracts [12] .”
BackgroundThe Essential Guide to N-of-1 Trials in Health
Nikles, J., & Mitchell, G. (2015) · Springer Netherlands · doi:10.1007/978-94-017-7200-6 · Cited by 75
Presenting software engineering results using structured abstracts: a randomised experiment
Budgen, D., Kitchenham, B. A., Charters, S., Turner, M., Pearl Brereton, A., & Linkman, S. (2008) · Empirical Software Engineering · doi:10.1007/s10664-008-9075-7 · Cited by 69
“…1980s, also provides convincing empirical evidence in favour of improved relevant information content provided through the use of structured abstracts (Sharma and Harrison 2006) (a broader discussion of previous research related to structured abstracts can be found in Kitchenham et al. (2008)).”
BackgroundResultA scoping review of comparisons between abstracts and full reports in primary biomedical research
Li, G., Abbade, L. P. F., Nwosu, I., Jin, Y., Leenus, A., Maaz, M., Wang, M., Bhatt, M., Zielinski, L., Sanger, N., et al. (2017) · BMC Medical Research Methodology · doi:10.1186/s12874-017-0459-5 · Cited by 80
Metadata
- Authors
- Sharma, S., & Harrison, J. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Liverpool (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Harrison, Jayne E.
- Venue
- American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2006-10
- Volume
- 130
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 523-530
- ISSN
- 0889-5406 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2041358537
- Cited by
- 86
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 11.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- structured abstracts, abstract quality, dental journals, scientific reporting, journal editorial policy, information quality
- MeSH terms
- Abstracting and Indexing, Journalism, Dental, Periodicals as Topic, Bibliometrics, Databases, Bibliographic, Information Dissemination
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
