CMAJ • January 18, 2005; 172 (2). doi:10.1503/cmaj.1040559.
© 2005 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association.
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Research letter

How should abridged scientific articles be presented in journals? A survey of readers and authors

Marcus Müllner, Fabian Waechter, Sara Schroter and Barbara Squire

From the Medizinische Universität Wien, Austria (Müllner), and BMJ, British Medical Association, London, UK (Müllner, Waechter, Schroter, Squire)

SEVERAL SCIENTIFIC AND GENERAL MEDICAL JOURNALS publish full-length articles on their Web sites and abridged versions in their print journals. We surveyed a stratified random sample of BMJ readers and authors to elicit their preferred format for the abridged print version. Each participant received a research paper abridged in 3 different formats: conventional abridged version, journalistic version and enhanced-abstract version. Overall, 45% (95% confidence interval [CI] 42%–48%) of the respondents said they liked the conventional version most, 31% (95% CI 28%–34%) preferred the journalistic version and 25% (95% CI 22%–27%) preferred the enhanced-abstract version. Twenty-eight percent (95% CI 25%–32%) indicated that use of the journalistic format for abridged articles would very likely stop them from submitting papers to BMJ, and 13% (95% CI 11%–16%) said the use of the enhanced-abstract version would stop them from submitting to BMJ. Publishers of general medical journals who publish shortened articles should consider that authors and readers prefer a more conventional style of abridged papers.




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