The functions of abstracts in the initial screening of technical documents by the user

Charles W. N. Thompson

Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1973, vol. 24, issue 4, 270-276

Abstract: Abstracts (and other short surrogates for the complete text) of a document have been generally considered a valuable aid to the reader in quickly determining the relevance of a document (as well as, in some cases, serving as a substitute for reading the text, and as a separate surrogate in secondary services). A test of this hypothesis was conducted in the form of a field experiment in three military laboratories. Based on what a sample of 85 scientists and engineers reported on the time they took and the relevance judgments they made with respect to the documents which came across their desks over a four week period, there does not appear to be any evidence to support the assumption that abstracts, accompanying a document, have any significant effect.

Date: 1973
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