Didolkar M S, Flemming M V, Venanzi W E
Department of Surgery, University of Maryland, Baltimore 21201.
Surg Gynecol Obstet. 1989 Mar;168(3):259-62.
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.
根据定义，摘要和概要必须包含大致相同的内容，因为它们的目的都是提供研究或综述的概要。《外科、妇科与产科》杂志要求其文章同时提供摘要和概要。我们研究了《外科、妇科与产科》的83篇报告，基于六个客观标准审查了摘要和概要中的异同：字数、句子数量、重复句子的数量、无需参考文章正文即可理解的摘要或概要的清晰度、结论的表述以及文章正文中未提及的新材料的引入。我们的结果表明，尽管摘要比概要长近三分之一，但几乎三分之一的句子是重复的。另一方面，在五分之一的情况下，文章的重要结论只包含在摘要或概要中的一个，而非两者都有。我们得出结论，概要和摘要的定量和结构属性足够相似，以至于许多出版物要求的摘要使得概要变得多余。此外，当一篇文章同时包含摘要和概要时，重要结论可能会在其中一个中被遗漏。我们建议在文章中保留传统格式的摘要或概要，而不是同时完整呈现两者或采用改变后的格式。
