The abstract is, aside from the title, the most frequently read and most easily accessed portion of an article reporting original biomedical research. The abstract provides an irreplaceable resource for busy clinicians, researchers, and authors searching for pertinent material in the source journal or in computerized databases. JAMA began publishing abstracts with articles on January 7, 1956, predating MEDLINE by a decade; other journals followed suit.1 Structure was not added to JAMA abstracts until 19912 when the structured format developed by Haynes et al3 and tested4 and evolved5 in Annals of Internal Medicine with the help of Edward J. Huth, MD, then Annals' editor, was adopted. Reading the abstract has never been a substitute for reading the article: crucial details of the study, such as patient selection and follow-up, definition of outcome measures, and study limitations, receive short shrift in the terse style of the abstract.6- 7 A simple and straightforward abstract may obscure a more complex (and realistic) story within the text. These limitations aside, however, the abstract provides the reader with an efficient summary of the study that facilitates scanning many articles to find those that are the most pertinent to the reader's interests and needs.
Register and get free email Table of Contents alerts, saved searches, PowerPoint downloads, CME quizzes, and more
Subscribe for full-text access to content from 1998 forward and a host of useful features
Activate your current subscription (AMA members and current subscribers)
Purchase Online Access to this article for 24 hours
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
Instructions
Thank you for submitting a comment on this article. It will be reviewed by JAMA editors. You will be notified when your comment has been published. Comments should not exceed 500 words of text and 10 references.
Do not submit personal medical questions or information that could identify a specific patient, questions about a particular case, or general inquiries to an author. Only content that has not been published, posted, or submitted elsewhere should be submitted. By submitting this Comment, you and any coauthors transfer copyright to the journal if your Comment is posted.
* = Required Field
Disclosure of Any Conflicts of Interest* Indicate all relevant conflicts of interest of each author below, including all relevant financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including, but not limited to, employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speakers’ bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. If all authors have none, check "No potential conflicts or relevant financial interests" in the box below. Please also indicate any funding received in support of this work. The information will be posted with your response.
Some tools below are only available to our subscribers or users with an online account.
Download citation file:
Web of Science® Times Cited: 41
Customize your page view by dragging & repositioning the boxes below.
More Listings atJAMACareerCenter.com >
and access these and other features:
Register Now
Enter your username and email address. We'll send you a link to reset your password.
Enter your username and email address. We'll send instructions on how to reset your password to the email address we have on record.
Need assistance?
Athens and Shibboleth are access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. They replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Athens or Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.