Abstract renders the summary superfluous.

By definition, an abstract and summary must contain much the same content, as it is the purpose of each to provide a synopsis of the study or review. The journal Surgery Gynecology and Obstetrics requires both an abstract and a summary for its articles. We studied 83 reports from Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, reviewing the similarities and differences in the abstracts and summaries based on six objective criteria: the number of words, the number of sentences, the number of repetitious sentences, the clarity of the abstract or summary without having to refer to the body of the article, the expression of conclusions and the introduction of new material that is not mentioned within the body of the article. Our results showed that, although abstracts were nearly one-third longer than the summaries, almost one-third of the sentences were repetitious. On the other hand, in one-fifth of the instances, the important conclusions of the article were included in either the abstract or summary but not both. We conclude that the quantitative and structural attributes of the summary and abstract are sufficiently similar to warrant that the abstract mandated by many publications has rendered the summary superfluous. Furthermore, when both the abstract and summary are included within an article, the omission of important conclusions can occur in one or the other. We recommend to retain the abstract or the summary in the conventional format in the articles rather than to have both in entirety or an altered format.

Evaluating the medical literature. Part I: Abstract, introduction, methods.

In this installment on critical evaluation of medical literature, we have discussed the Abstract, Introduction, and Methods sections. A great deal of information is placed in the methodology section of any paper. To critically evaluate a research publication, one must evaluate the methodology, for evaluation of the results of an investigation is meaningless if the methodology is unsound.