A Comparative Study Of Abstract Writing Between Chinese Journals Of Basic Medicine And American Ones

The English abstract in medical papers plays a unique role in international transmission of the medical information. It has been the shortcut for the medical researchers in finding the information they need in various databases, as well as the main media for fast international transmission of medical techniques and achievements.The four-heading structured abstract is commonly used in Chinese journals of basic medicine and clinical medicine. Some serious problems in abstract writing, such as the fixed abstract format (four-heading), the abstract context lack of coherence and logic as well as repetition of abstract content, exist in those journals of basic medicine, yet there are no effective solutions so far.Taking the abstracts from Chinese journals of basic medicine and American ones, by literature investigation and comparative study, we investigated and analyzed①the information required in Instructions to Authors about format and context structure of the abstracts in Chinese journals of basic medicine and American ones,②the status of adopted format of the abstracts used in the two countries, and③the context structure and writing styles of the abstracts in Chinese journals of basic medicine and American ones, so as to understand the characteristics of context structure and abstract writing in Chinese journals of basic medicine and American ones, find more reasonable abstract format and context structure and solve the problems existing in Chinese journals of basic medicine.Our investigation showed①the requirements in Instructions to Authors of American journals of basic medicine are more wide and detailed than Chinese ones, but none of them concerns the context structure of the abstract.②In American medical journals, the structured abstract is mainly applied to report clinical trials on the causes, courses, diagnosis and treatment of the diseases, while the non-structured abstract is mostly used to report the researches in basic medicine. However, the four-heading structured abstract is widely adopted in Chinese medical journals of both clinical medicine and basic medicine.③In the abstract writing of Chinese journals of basic medicine, there exist some typical problems, such as repetition of the paper title and the objective, redundant methods description, lack of background information, and less readability.④The non-structured abstract used in American medical journals does not use headings, but has its own specific context structure. The context of the non-structured abstract is more logic, coherent and readable because of no limitation to its format.⑤The non-structured abstract also includes the information related to background, objective, methods, results and conclusion, but not in separated format. Instead, the information of two adjacent headings mentioned above or three weaves together for the coherence and logic of the abstract context. Emphatically, the information about objective and methods, besides its basic role, should function as a clue in elucidating the research idea.The abstract format is subjected to the abstract content. The most important role of the abstract of high quality is to clearly and logically elucidate the research idea, then is the suitable and concise abstract format. No matter the structured abstract or the non-structured abstract, their task is to transmit the abstract content. So the key in abstract writing is how to arrange the abstract content coherently and logically in either abstract format. Therefore, in order to solve the problems existing in abstract writing of Chinese journals of basic medicine, we proposed two context structures as reference after studying the abstract writing of American journals of basic medicine.①Background-(phasic aims+specific methods)-results-conclusion;②Background-objective-(results+specific methods)-conclusion.The quality of abstract writing concerns the international communication and impact of our achievements of medical researches. The harmony of abstract context and abstract format will be conducive to the internationalization of Chinese journals of basic medicine.