Emerald Structured Abstracts have arrived!

Citation

(2005), "Emerald Structured Abstracts have arrived!", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2005.05918aaa.004

Emerald Structured Abstracts have arrived!

Emerald Structured Abstracts have arrived!

Well it has finally happened and all the first issues of the 2005 volume of Emerald journals will contain structured abstracts. Have a look at an article title page in this issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. That is how they will look from now on. The look will be slightly different in the electronic version on the web site, but this is only a cosmetic variation and takes account of the different media and the way people use the information.

The idea took hold at the beginning of 2004 and a small team worked on the design and introduction of structured abstracts throughout the year. Thanks to all the hard work of authors, editors, editorial and production staff at Emerald and we can now showcase them for the first time. We believe they provide real benefits to our readers and researchers and that they answer some of the key questions people have about a paper without having to scan or read the entire paper:

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  What research has been conducted on this topic?

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  How was the research approached – what methods were used?

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  What were the main findings?

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  Are there any literature reviews on this topic and are they selective or inclusive?

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  So what? The authors have shown this, but what does this mean for my work/organization?

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  I want to conduct research in this area, but what questions still need to be answered?

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  Has this work got any relevance and value for me?

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  What did the writer set out to show?

Structured abstracts provide the answers to these kinds of questions without the researcher having to go any further into the article itself. Authors can be more confident that their paper will be noticed and read by others with a real interest in the topic or research.

As far as possible we have alerted our authors and editorial team members to this change via Literati Club Newslines and communications with journal editors. Authors who have been asked to rewrite their abstracts in the new format have readily obliged. The response from all parties has been very encouraging:

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  Structured abstracts are increasing in popularity among the social and behavioural sciences

  There's overwhelming evidence that readers (and indexers) glean more from structured abstracts. (Jonathan Eldredge, MLS, PhD, AHIP, Associate Professor, School of Medicine Academic & Clinical Services Coordinator and Author Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center Health Sciences Center, The University of New Mexico, USA)

(For more on structured abstracts and their value for researchers and writers, read the short paper by Liz Bayley and Jonathan Eldredge at http://research.mlanet.org/structured_abstract.html).

Everyone has difficulties in the digital environment in weighing up the value of any piece of information and structured abstracts go some way towards a remedy to the problem of information overload. Emerald is the very first publisher in the management field to introduce structured abstracts and whilst we are mindful that this means change for authors and researchers, we feel our pioneering work in this area gives our journals a strong competitive advantage. We are pleased and proud to be the first in the field to implement this extremely good idea.

Unfortunately, we are unable to go back through more than 40,000 papers already in Emerald's database to change already-published abstracts into structured ones. On a more positive note, however, nearly 5,000 new papers will be deposited into the database this coming year and all will be accompanied by a structured abstract.

Emerald would be pleased to hear what you think about this initiative. E-mail Sue de Verteuil, Head, Editorial Developments at sdeverteuil@emeraldinsight.com with your views.