ABSTRACTING SERVICES IN MEDICAL SCIENCES

Analyses the list of medical journals given in the Worldmedical periodicals. The journals a.re examined on thebasis of subject, country of publication, scrutiny by ab-stracting services, periodicity, etc. Percentages of un-abstracted journals are worked out. Indicates how the in-dexing and abstracting services have not been able to achievecomplete bibliographical control in the field of Medicine.

o INTRODUCTION

The tremendous advances in the field ofmedical sciences which we are witnessing inthe present century has, at least partly, beenmade possible by the great improvements inthe methods of assembly, organization and dis-semination of the accumulating medical litera-ture. However, with all the indexing and ab-stracting services we have not as yet achievedcomplete bibliographical control of the field.An endless tide of information in the shape ofbooks, theses, journal articles, trade litera-ture, etc., is battering in with almost uncon-trollable rapidity. The number of services forthe bibliographic control of scientific literatureis increasing year after year. One sometimesfeels that there are too many such services inthe field without any great advantage, The in-adequacies of existing services may be summa-rized as:

Sep 1955 V 2 N 3

A. NEELAMEGHANMadras Medical College, Madras

1. Incomplete cove r ag'e of literature due toa) critical selection of periodicals to be

covered,b) critical selection of articles to be in-

dexed,c) certain unrepresented segment of lit-

erature such as unpublished theses,reports, trade literature, medicalschool bulletins, et c. , and

d) multiplicity of languages in which theoriginal articles are published.

2. Duplication due to lac k of cooperationamong the services.

3, Time lag of anything from 4 months totwo or three years from the first appear-ance of an article to the publication of itsabstract.

4. Need for an efficient system of subjectclassification, standardized indexing andcitation procedure s.

5, Difficulties in getting the original arti-cles quoted in the abstracts.

Some of the above points are discussed andillustrated in a comparison of two abstractingservices for surgical literature in the Journalof documentation, December 1954, pp, 193-200,

89

NEELAMEGHAN

1 WORLD MEDICAL PERIODICALS

The study of abstracting services presentedin this paper is based on the information givenin World Medical Periodicals, compiled byL. T. Morton, and published by WHO/UNESCO,1953. It is quite certain that the four thousandand odd journals listed do not exhaust all thetiles in the field. For instance, for India thelist gives 47 currently published titles whilethere are over a hundred titles current in Indianow; the German publication Periodica Medi<;:J!:,1952, lists some 12,000 titles including reportsand other types of serials in the medical field.However, the world list may be taken to in-clude all the important medical journals upto1950, and the figure is quite impressive whenwe consider the fact that the ten abstracting ser-vices discussed put together do not cover overa thousand of the titles. "The list includes ti-tles of all current medical periodicals whichhave been traced, all medico-biological period-icals regularly surveyed by certain abstractingagencies, as well as well known medical jour-nals which ceased publication during the period1900-1950" - Preface.

2 ABSTRACTING SERVICES

The abstracting services considered are:1. American Medical Association (AMA); 2.Abstracts of World Medicine; Abstracts ofWorld Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology(AWM); 3. Biological Abstracts (BI); 4. Bul-letin de l'Institut Pasteur (BIP); 5. British Ab-stracts AlII (BR); 6. Bureau of Hygiene (Bul-letin of Hygiene, and Tropical Diseases Bulletin(BU); 7. Chemical Abstracts (CA); 8. ExcerptaMedica (EM); 9. Nutrition Abstracts (N); 10.Semaine des Hopitaux (SH).

It may be noted that the once separate pub-lications Abstracts of World Medicine and Ab-strac.!..s._()LWo:r!~$_u..!gery, Obstetrics and Gyn-aecology have since 1952 merged under onetitle Abstracts of World Medicin~. Also, Brit-ish Abstracts AliI, published by the Bureau ofAbstracts has now the new title Brjtish Ab-ill.a.cts of Medical Sciences (1954-).

The geographical distribution of the locationof the abstracting services noted above is:Great Britain 4, U.S.A. 3, France 2, Nether-lands 1.

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Certain of the services under consideration,e. g. Tropical Diseases Bulletin, Nutrition Ab-stracts, Chemical Abstracts, etc., are limitedto certain subjects and this, to some extent,would also limit the number of journals scrutin-ized and als 0 the type of journals and articlesabstracted by them.

3 ANALYSIS

31 By Agency

Table I gives the number of journals scrutin-ized by each of the agencies all by themselves,in other w or ds the area in which there is no du-plication. This gives a total of 650 journals.From Tables I and III it could be inferred thatof the 3,516 currently published journals about30 per cent is not covered by the ten services,while over 50 per cent is scrutinized by morethan one of the services.

TABLE I

Abstracting Service Number ofjournalsscrutinizedby the ser-vice only

American Medical Association (AMA) 144Abstracts of World Medicine; Ab-

stracts of World Surgery, obstet-rics & Gynaecology (AWM) 152

Biological Abstracts (BI) 22Bulletin de L'lnstitut Pasteur (BIP) 9British Abstracts AlII (BR) 5Bureau of Hygiene. Bulletin of Hy-

giene; Tropical Diseases Bulletin(BU) 6

Chemical Abstracts (CA) 133Excerpta Medica (EM) 146Nutrition P. bstracts (N) 5Semaine des Hopitaux (SH) 28

650

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ABSTRAC TING SERVICES IN MEDICAL SCIENCES

32 By Place of Publication

Analysis by place of publication of the jour-nals is presented in Table II. It gives in alpha-betic order names of 89 countries from whichthe journals emanate. number of journals cur-rently published in each of those countries. andthe number not scrutinized by any of the aboveabstracting services as indicated in World Med-ical Periodicals. A grouping of the journals bylarger geographical areas as presented in TableIII is perhaps more informative. The geograph-ical regions are Europe. Africa. Asia. LatinAmerica. U. S. A. and Canada. Australia andNew Zealand. Of the 1.630 journals currentlypublished in Europe about 19 per cent are notscrutinized; in Asia 54.6 per cent of her 272journals are unabstracted; in Latin Arnericathe percentage of unabstracted journals is 54.8out of the 912 published journals; of the NorthAmerican journals 13.6 per cent is not covered;for United States alone about one-eight the to-tal number of periodicals published are not scru-tinized. and many of these are local society ormedical department publications. Of the 38journals of Africa 5 are not covered while 18.2per cent of the 22 journals from Australia/NewZealand are not scrutinized. For the wholeworld the figures are 1062 or 30.2 per cent ofthe 3.516 journals currently published are notcovered by the agencies under discussion.

TABLE II

Country ofPublication

Number cur-rently pub-lished

Number notabstracted

AlbaniaAlgeriaArgentinaAustraliaAustriaAzerbaijanBelgian CongoBelgiumBoliviaBrazilBritish GuinaBulgariaCanadaCeylonChile

17

207193111

6417

2121

1448

368

11

94371

1516

105

811

40

Sep 1955 V 2 N 3

ChinaColombiaCosta RicaCubaCyprusCzechoslovakiaDenmarkDominican

RepublicEquadorEgyptEritreaEsthoniaFinlandFranceFrench Equator-

ial AfricaFrench West

AfricaGermanyGreeceGuatemalaHaitiHondurasHongkongHungaryIcelandIndiaIndonesiaIraqIrelandIsraelItalyJamaicaJapanKenyaKoreaLebanonLybiaLithuaniaLuxembourgMalaya. F. M. S.MexicoMoroccoNetherlandsNew ZealandNicaraguaNorwayPakistanPanamaParaguayPersiaPeru

5437

5761

3625

4624

340

122

818811

12231

615

3

224

1 1

1187

245432

291

474158

2672

1241141114

912

603592383

37

39164331'7

91

325

189

11

53

9152

162

13

91

Philippine sPolandPortugalRumaniaSalvador (El)South Africa,

Union ofSpainSwedenSwitzerlandThainlandTriesteTrinidad &

TobagoTunisiaTurkeyU.S.S.R.UkraineUnited KingdomU.S.A.HawaiiUruguayUzbekistanVenezuelaViet NamYugoslavia

NEELAMEGHAN

104644179

21810

67

12994287

51

199

14

4

13

284710

189591

350

2391

16

19

103

2976

31

24

6

TABLE III

Region Number of Number of Percent-journals journals un- age of (3)current abstracted to (2)

(1 ) (2) (3) (4)

Europe 1,630 309 18.9Africa 38 5 12.9Asia 272 157 54.6LatinAmerica 912 500 54.8

U.S.A &Canada 642 87 13.6

Austral'ia/New Zea-land 22 4 18.2

3.516 1,062 30.2

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Journals from Asia and Latin America seemto fare worst. In Asia, however, the high per-centage of unabstracted journals is mainly dueto the high percentage of unabstracted journalsof China and Japan (85/'0 and 66. 4% r e epect ive'ly ),Many of these journals from these countriescontain articles in the national languages andthis may be one of the reasons for the highper-centage of unscrutinized journals coming fromthere. That language may be one of the rea-sons for non sc.rutiny of journals by abstractingservices is also borne out by the Greek j our ,nals. Many of the journals from Greece containarticles in Greek and the percentage of unab-stracted journals for the country is as high as66.7. On the other hand, from India almost allscientific writing is in English and the pe:r:cent-age of unabstracted journals is only 19. 2 percent (Of course, as already noted, the list doesnot contain all the Indian medical journals). Theneglect of Latin American journals may be ra-ther puzzling. The large number (912) of jour-nals and the fewer (21) mergers or cessationsmight be an indication of great continued scien-tific activity of the area. However, there arenot many worthwhile periodicals in the big list,many of them are published by individual doc-tors or clinics.

33 By Subject

Table IV analyses the position according totopics in the biomedical field. Under 83 alpha-betically arranged subjects as per World Med-ical Periodicals, are given the number of jour-nals currently published in each of the subjectsand the number of unabstracted journals. Alarge number of titles because of their compre-hensive coverage of the field cannot be assignedto any particular heading and so are groupedunder the heading Medicine (General). A fewjournals find a place under Medicine as well asSurgery. This alphabetic arrangement of sub-jects may not be revealing much except for in-formation on the abstracting of journals in in-dividual subjects.

TABLE IV

Subject Number ofjournalscurrent

Number ofjournalsunabstracted

AlcoholismAllergy

58 2

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ABSTRACTING SERVICES IN MEDICAL SCIENCES

Anaesthesia 9 1 Microbiology 52 6Anatomy 22 4 Microscopy 7Anthropology 10 Military & NavalAviation med- Medicine 52 21

icine 8 Mycology 3 1Biochemistry 30 1 Neurology &Biology, General 78 6 Psych. 141 36Cancer 42 14 Neurosurgery 9 2Cardiovascular Nutrition 44 9

system 39 5 OccupationalChemistry 18 1 Ther. & Re-Dermatology 43 8 habil. 5 3Diabetes 3 Odontology 155 94Embryology 8 Ophthalmology 97 30Endoc rinology 32 7 Orthopaedic s 29 2Entomology 5 Otolaryngology 71 13Epidemiology & Paediatric s 129 36

Vital Statistics 5 10 Parasitology 27 3Gastroenterology 26 4 Pathology 60 13Genitourinary Pharmacology 26 7

system 30 8 Pharmacy 94 15Geriatrics 2 Photography 3 1Gynaec. & Obst. 86 7 Physical Educ. 7 4Haematology 10 2 Physiology 42 5Heredity 20 1 Physiotherapy 15 4Histology 14 2 Plastic Surgery 5 2Hist. of Med. 20 7 Proctology 3Hospitals 16 3 Psychology 33 3Hydrology & Radiology 46 12

Climatology 8 4 Respiratory sys. 18Hygiene & Pub. Rheumatism 11

Health 206 106 Science, General 43 1Immunology 20 2 Serology 5 1Indus. Hygiene 47 10 Sexology 5 3Infectious Dis. 12 3 Social Medicine 27 8Insurance Med. 4 1 Speech Disorders 5Jurisprudence, Stomatology 23 7

Medical 21 8 Surgery 191 48Leprosy 17 10 Technical Meth. 5Malaria 9 2 Therapeutics 43 6Maternity & Child Toxicology 2

Welfare 9 5 Tropical Med. 41 6Medicine, Gen- Tuberculosis 84 18

eral 1020 420 Venereology 42 10Medicine, Veterinary Med. 60 18

Bibliog. 7 1 Zoology 15 1Medicine,

Ethics 3 1Medicine,

Experim. 55 5 34 By Preliminary Disciplines

Medicine, Or-ganization & In Table V the grouping is according toPolicy 16 1 br oader headings:

Sep 1955 V 2 N 3 93

NEELAMEGHAN

1. Disciplines preliminary to the study ofmedicine: the percentage of unabstracted jour-nals varies from l. 4 (Science) to 16.7 (Anat-omy).

2. General medical journals, Pathology,Hygiene and Preventive medicine: Here the per-centage of unabstracted journals is about 40.

3. Regional diseases: The percentage ofunabstracted journals varies from 5 (Locomo-tor system) to 30.2 (Reproductive system) withan average of 20 per cent.

4. The specialities (excluding Dentistry).:The percentage of unabstracted journals variesfrom 12.5 (Obstetrics and Gynaecology) to 33(Ophthalmology) .

Dentistry needs to be considered as a sep-arate speciality not within the purview of theabove abstracting services.

It would appear that disciplines preliminaryto the study of medicine particularly the gener-al sciences, viz. Science, Chemistry, Biology,Zoology, are the most well covered by the ab-stracting services. However, it is to be r ern ern .bered that the list contains only the "medico-biological periodicals regularly surveyed by cer-tain abstracting services." Secondly, amongthe services under consideration are ChemicalAbstracts and Biological Abstracts which ar~fairly comprehensive in their respective fields(scrutinizes over 5230 journals and BI about4,500).

Group 2, General medical journals, etc.,which contains the largest percentage of unab-stracted journals has a large number of the un-abstracted journals from Latin America, Chinaand Japan.

Articles pertaining to the history of medic-ine appear also in periodicals other than thosedevoted purely to medical history. For themedical historian a separate indexing or ab-stracting service collecting all these papersmay be most helpful. We do have now one suchservice in Current Work in the History of Med-~ (1954-) published by the Wellcome Histor-ical Medical Library.

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TABLE V

Subject Number Number Percent-of jour- of jour- age ofnals nals (2) tocurrent current (3)

(1) (2 ) (3) (4)

Group 1

Science 43 1 2.4Chemistry 18 1 5.6Biology 113 7 6.3Bioc hemistry 30 1 3.3Zoology 15 1 6.7Microbiology 242 39 16.1Medical Tech-

nology 8 1 12.5Anthropology 10Anatomy 36 6 16.7Physiology 50 5 10.0

Group 2

Pathology &General Med. 1,221 461 37.8

Hygiene andPublic Health 350 14~ 42.2

Group 3

Respiratorysystern 76 13 17.1

Cardiovascularsystem 39 5 12.4

Haernatopoeticsystern 10 2 20.0

Gastrointestinalsystern 52 11 21. 1

Endocrinesystern 32 7 21. 9

Locornotorsystern 40 2 5.0

Urogenitalsystern 30 8 26.7

Reproductives y st e m 47 13 30.2

Neurology &Psychology 188 41 21. 8

Group 4

Surgery 257 72 28.0Obst. Gynaec. 95 12 12.5Paediatrics 129 36 28.0

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ABSTRACTING SERVICES IN MEDICAL SCIENCES

Dermatology 43 8 18.6Ophthalmology 97 30 33.0Forensic Med.

&: Toxicol. 23 8 35.0T'r opi cal Med. 41 6 14.6

35 By Periodicity

The journals, excluding indexing and abstrac-ting journals, indicated as currently publishedate grouped into Weeklies, Bimonthlies,Monthlies, etc. In the group of Weeklies areincluded those journals issued 40-85 times ayear; Monthlies include those issued 8-14times a year; those issued 3 -4 times a yearare included in the Quarterlies, while those is-sued 5- 7 times a year are in the Bimonthlies.In the category of 'Unknowns' are those journalsfor which no information as to frequency is givenin the list.

From the appended table it may be seen thatMonthlies form the most numerous, 29.4 per

cent of all types; then come the Quarterlies(19.9 per cent) and then the 'Unknowns' (14.5per cent). If the 'Irregulars' and 'Unknowns'are considered together, the combined groupwould be the second most numerous type (26.6per cent).

The number of journals not scrutinized bythe three abstracting services Abstracts ofWorld Medicine (AWM), American MedicalAssociation (AMA), and Excerpta Medica (EM)were counted in each of the groups. Coverageby the three services collectively is highest inthe case of Quarterlies, over 90 per cent of thejournals being scrutinized; the next be s.t cover-age is for Weeklies and Bimonthlies (81 per centin each category). For the 508 journals of the'Unknown' group no indication of abstracting bythe services is given. Nearly half the numberof the Irregulars are not covered by the threeservices. In the combined group of Irregularsand 'Unknowns' the percentage of unscrutinized.journals is over 75 per cent.

Incidentally the Table indicates that the threeservices AWM, AMA, EM scrutinize collectivelyonly 60 per cent of the journals listed.

TABLE VI

Type No. currently Percentage to Number of Percentage ofpublished total number journals not 4 to 2

of journals scrutinizedby AWM,AMA, EM

1 2 3 4 5

Weeklies 85 2.4 16 19.0Semi-monthlies 85 2.4 35 41.1Monthlies 1,016 29.4 293 28.8Bimonthlies 464 13.3 88 19.0Quarterlies 687 19.9 61 8.9Half-yearlies 58 1.6 17 30.0Yearlies 165 4.6 59 35.8Irregulars 420 12.0 199 47.4Unknowns 508 14.5 508 100.0

3, 487 1,376 39.4

Sep 7955 V 2 N 3 95

4 COVERAGE

NEELAMEGHAN

COITlplete and absolute coverage of rn edi ca Iliterature is neither possible nor is it absolutelyessential. There will always be a few paperswhich will have to go unindexed at least f r ornthe point of view of keeping the cost of the ser-vices at a reasonable level. That there is needfor better coverage of journals as well as artic-les is quite evident. That there is need for co-operation arn ong the services has long beenstressed. In Table VII the extent of duplication ofjournal titles between AMA, AWM, and EM areindicated; if we are to consider the journalsscrutinized by these three services alone thenthe percentage of duplication will be higher.

TABLE VII

Abstracting Servicesin c orribi nat ion

Nurnb e r ofjournalsscrutin-ized bythe ser-vices inc OITlbi-nation

AMA, AWM, EMAMA, AWMAMA, EMAWM, EM

7791,044

900953

Percentageof the nUITl-ber of jour-nals scru-tinized bythe com-bination tototal num-ber of jour-nals scru-tinized bythe 10 ser-vices

31. 842.036. 738.7

We have noted that for various reasons thereis a t irrie lag of 4 months to year s from thet irn e of publication of a paper to the publication

of its abstract that certain of the services scru-tinize over a hundred journals all by t.hern s elv e s ,Hence for comprehensive bibliographical searchwe have to look into all the services with thehope of getting a few more references f r orn thenon-duplicated journals and also that in one ser-vice certain articles would be indexed earlierthan in another.

Publication of articles in languages not'popular' in the scientific world has, as alreadynoted, been one of the reasons for non-scrutiny'of some journals by the abstracting agencies.On the other hand one can make out a case forthe agencies publishing English abstracts devot-ing special attention to these articles giving asfull abstracts as possible.

BIP, BR, BU, N, SH add only 53 fresh ti-tles to the list covered by AMA, AWM, BI andCA. The last rrrent iorred covers mostly chem-ical and pharmaceutical journals and the fieldmay be left to it; although on its list of journalsfor scrutiny are many medical journals it is ex-pected that it would abstract only those articleswhich fall within its subject purview avoidingduplication with the general rne di cal abstractingservices. The extent of duplication between BR,certain section of BI and EM Sec. 2 must bequite appreciable.

For clinical medicine and surgery we haveAMA, AWM and EM. AWM although scrutin-izes quite a large nurnb er of journals, is veryselective of the papers. The 144 journals scru-tinized by AMA alone are mainly those of U. S. A.and South America. Since its inception in 1947EM has expanded into several sections andgreatly improved in the matter of coverage ofjournals as well as articles. There is rnu chscope for its improvement, it is true, but it isbecoming more and more accepted as a com-prehensive medical abstracting service in theEnglish speaking world (See also, Journal ofDocuITlentation, De cerribe r 1954, pp.193-200).

96 .. An lib sc