Department of Surgery, Maine Medical Center, Portland, ME, USA.
Langenbecks Arch Surg. 2022 Sep;407(6):2569-2577. doi: 10.1007/s00423-022-02538-0. Epub 2022 May 18.
The International Abstract(s) of Surgery (IAS) was a monthly supplement to Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics (SG&O, later Journal of the American College of Surgeons) from 1913-1994, approximately equal in size to the journal itself. It followed the example of the Zentralblatt für Chirurgie (ZblCh), which had been compiling abstracts of the current world surgical literature since 1874 (but in the German language). This article seeks to review the relationships of these surgical abstract journals in historical context.
Citations in the IAS were systematically sampled for 1913-1990, and in the ZblCh and other American and German surgical publications for 1905-1940. Changes in the proportions of citations by language category were tabulated over time and related to concurrent international events and the publication histories of the sampled journals.
German-language citations were most frequent until the First World War, even in America. They subsequently became less frequent in America, but remained dominant in Germany. Articles in French or other languages were occasionally cited by Americans, but in German publications, they were cited as frequently as those in English. Contemporary observations from this time confirm that the American literature was being disregarded by most German surgeons. Since the Second World War, surgical publications have become predominantly English-language, even in Germany, and printed abstract compilations have become irrelevant.
The history of the IAS and ZblCh reflects world events of the early twentieth century, the isolation and decline of German scientific leadership, the rise of American surgery, and the transition from a multilingual print-based era to one where scientific communication is primarily electronic and in English.
国际外科文摘（IAS）是 1913 年至 1994 年期间《外科学、妇科学与产科学杂志》（SG&O，后更名为美国外科医师学会杂志）的每月增刊，其篇幅与杂志本身大致相当。它效仿了《外科学文摘》（ZblCh），后者自 1874 年以来一直编译世界外科文献的文摘（但使用德语）。本文旨在历史背景下回顾这些外科文摘期刊的关系。
对 IAS 中 1913 年至 1990 年的参考文献进行系统抽样，并对 ZblCh 以及其他美国和德国外科出版物中 1905 年至 1940 年的参考文献进行抽样。按语言类别分类的参考文献比例随时间的变化情况被制表，并与同期的国际事件和抽样期刊的出版历史相关联。
第一次世界大战前，德语文献的引用最为频繁，即使在美国也是如此。此后，在美国的引用频率降低，但在德国仍占主导地位。美国人偶尔会引用法语或其他语言的文章，但在德语出版物中，这些文章的引用频率与英语文章一样高。当时的观察结果证实，大多数德国外科医生忽视了美国文献。自第二次世界大战以来，外科出版物已成为英语为主导语言，即使在德国也是如此，印刷文摘汇编已变得无关紧要。
IAS 和 ZblCh 的历史反映了 20 世纪初的世界事件、德国科学领导地位的孤立和衰落、美国外科手术的崛起以及从多语言印刷时代向以英语为主导的电子科学交流时代的转变。
