1. Introduction
In the modern information environment, an enormous amount of knowledge is produced daily in books, journals, reports, theses, conference papers, and digital documents. It is not always possible for students, researchers, and professionals to read every document in full. They need a quick way to judge whether a document is relevant to their study or work. This need has given rise to abstracting services.An abstract is a brief and accurate summary of the essential contents of a document. It condenses the original work by concisely highlighting the purpose, scope, methodology, results, and conclusions. Abstracts serve as surrogates of documents, allowing users to understand the core ideas without consulting the entire text.
An abstracting service is an organised activity carried out by libraries, information centres, or specialised agencies that systematically collect, prepare, and publish abstracts of current literature in a specific field or across multiple subjects. These services act as gateways, enabling users to stay updated with developments in their area of interest while saving time and effort.
The role of abstracting services has expanded with the rise of electronic publishing. Today, most academic databases and digital libraries provide searchable abstracts that allow researchers to quickly scan extensive literature collections and select only the most relevant complete texts. In this way, abstracting services have become critical to information retrieval and knowledge dissemination.
2. Meaning and Definitions of Abstracting Services
Abstracting services are organised systems that provide summaries of documents to help users identify, evaluate, and access relevant information quickly. Instead of reading entire books or articles, researchers can rely on abstracts to decide whether the document is valid. These services thus act as time-saving tools in the age of information overload.In library and information science, abstracting services are considered an essential part of secondary sources of information because they do not provide the original documents but supply condensed versions (abstracts) that point towards them.
Standard Definitions
Lancaster (1991): “An abstracting service is a publication or database which lists documents and provides abstracts that describe their content so that the user can decide whether or not to consult the full text.”
Chowdhury & Chowdhury (2010): “Abstracting is the process of representing the essential content of a document in a concise and accurate form. Abstracting services are tools that systematically produce and disseminate such summaries for user access.”
International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO 214, 1976): “An abstract is a brief and accurate representation of the contents of a document, without added interpretation or criticism, and without distinction as to who wrote the abstract.” Key Elements in Definitions
- Concise: The Abstract is shorter than the original work.
- Representation: Abstract represents the essential content of the document.
- Purpose: To guide users in deciding the relevance of the full document.
- Systematic service: Abstracts are not random but prepared and published in an organised, often regularly updated form.
3. Characteristics / Features of Abstracting Services
Abstracting services possess distinctive characteristics that make them valuable information retrieval and research tools. These features differentiate them from other reference tools and ensure their effective use in libraries and information centres.Key Characteristics
- Condensed Representation: Abstracts provide only the core ideas of a document in brief form. They highlight objectives, scope, methods, results, and conclusions, omitting unnecessary details.
- Surrogate Nature: Abstracts act as substitutes for the original documents. They give enough information to help users decide whether to consult the full text.
- Accuracy and Objectivity: Abstracts must faithfully represent the document without distortion, personal opinion, or interpretation. Neutral and unbiased language is essential.
- Clarity and Concise: Abstracts are written in clear, simple, and direct language. Redundancy, jargon, or unnecessary words are avoided.
- Indicative or Informative: Abstracts may be indicative, describing only the scope and purpose, or informative, including results and conclusions. The type depends on the subject and purpose of the service.
- Structured or Unstructured Format: Some abstracts are presented in a structured format with sections such as Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusion, while others are in a continuous paragraph style.
- Coverage and Regularity: Abstracting services are published regularly, weekly, monthly, or quarterly to keep users up to date. They may cover one discipline or multiple subjects.
- Medium of Availability: Abstracting services may be available in print or electronic form, though most are now offered online with search and retrieval functions.
- Authorship of Abstracts: Abstracts may be written by the author of the original work, a subject specialist, or a professional abstractor working for an agency.
- Language Utility: Abstracts may appear in the original or widely understood languages, such as English. Some services provide translations or multilingual abstracts.
- Timeliness / Currency: Abstracts should be produced soon after the original publication to ensure relevance and usefulness. Delays reduce their value.
- Integration with Indexing: Many abstracting services combine indexing features, enabling users to search by author, title, subject, or keywords and read the abstracts.
4. Objectives of Abstracting Services
- Quick Access to Information: To provide users with a concise summary of documents so they can quickly judge the relevance of the material without reading the full text.
- Time Saving: To save the time of researchers, students, and professionals by allowing them to scan summaries instead of going through lengthy documents.
- Bibliographic Control: To organise and control the ever-growing body of literature by systematically representing documents in abstract form.
- Current Awareness: To update users about the latest developments in their subject areas through regularly published abstracts.
- Facilitate Retrieval: To enhance information retrieval systems' effectiveness using abstracts containing key concepts and terms.
- Overcome Language Barriers: To make the essence of foreign-language documents available in widely understood languages such as English.
- Support Research and Study: To help scholars, scientists, and librarians select the most relevant works for detailed study.
- Aid in Decision-Making: To provide the essential facts and findings of documents that help policymakers, managers, and researchers make informed decisions.
- Complement Indexing: To add value to indexing services by pointing to where information is located and explaining what it contains.
- Promote Literature Visibility: To increase the reach and impact of scholarly and technical documents by presenting their contents in accessible summaries.
5. Importance / Role of Abstracting Services in Libraries
- Efficient Information Retrieval: Abstracts enable librarians and users to identify relevant documents quickly without scanning entire collections.
- Support for Research: Abstracting services provide researchers with summaries of the latest studies, helping them select the most valuable materials.
- Time Management: By offering concise summaries, libraries help users save time in literature review and knowledge discovery.
- Enhancement of Reference Services: Abstracts assist reference librarians in answering user queries accurately by pointing to relevant sources with summarised content.
- Current Awareness Services: Abstracting services form the basis of Current Awareness Service (CAS) and Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI), keeping users updated with recent developments.
- Bridging Language Gaps: Abstracts in widely used languages like English allow access to global literature, even when the original document is in a foreign language.
- Collection Development: Librarians use abstracting services to evaluate and decide which new resources should be acquired for the library.
- Improvement of Catalogues and Databases: Abstracts enhance bibliographic records in Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) and databases, making search results more informative.
- Support for Interdisciplinary Studies: Abstracting services combine literature from different disciplines, helping libraries serve multidisciplinary research needs.
- Educational Utility: Abstracts are used in teaching and learning, allowing students to grasp essential ideas of texts quickly and focus on deeper reading of relevant works.
- Preservation of Knowledge: Abstracts act as permanent surrogates of documents, ensuring that even if the original material becomes rare or inaccessible, its essential content remains available.
- Facilitation of Systematic Reviews: In research libraries, abstracts support the preparation of systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and bibliometric studies by offering concise summaries of large volumes of literature.
- Reduction of Information Overload: Abstracting services help libraries filter vast amounts of published information, providing users only the most relevant and high-quality content.
- Support for Digital Libraries and Repositories: Abstracts improve the usability of institutional repositories and digital libraries by making deposited works more discoverable.
- Promotion of Scholarly Communication: By highlighting the core findings of research, abstracting services increase the visibility of authors’ work and enhance scholarly communication across disciplines.
- Decision Support in Policy and Industry: Libraries serving government and industrial organisations rely on abstracts to supply decision-makers with precise and up-to-date research evidence.
- Enhancement of Search Engines: Abstracts improve the performance of library discovery tools and search engines by supplying keywords and summaries that raise precision in retrieval.
- Standardisation of Information: Abstracting services follow international standards (such as ISO 214) for preparing abstracts, which ensures consistency and reliability across resources.
- Training and Skill Development: Abstracts help LIS students and researchers learn how to identify, evaluate, and summarise information, improving their information literacy skills.
- Economic Value: Abstracting reduces costs for libraries and users by minimising unnecessary acquisition or photocopying of irrelevant full-text documents.
- International Collaboration: Abstracting services such as Chemical Abstracts, PubMed, and LISA promote global knowledge exchange and cooperation among scholars.
- Benchmarking and Research Trends: Abstracts allow librarians and researchers to analyse publication trends, subject growth, and citation patterns across time.