Scientific meeting abstracts: significance, access, and trends.
Abstracts of scientific papers and posters that are presented at annual scientific meetings of professional societies are part of the broader category of conference literature. They are an important avenue for the dissemination of current data. While timely and succinct, these abstracts present problems such as an abbreviated peer review and incomplete bibliographic access.


METHODS
Seventy societies of health sciences professionals were surveyed about the publication of abstracts from their annual meetings. Nineteen frequently cited journals also were contacted about their policies on the citation of meeting abstracts. Ten databases were searched for the presence of meetings abstracts.


RESULTS
Ninety percent of the seventy societies publish their abstracts, with nearly half appearing in the society's journal. Seventy-seven percent of the societies supply meeting attendees with a copy of each abstract, and 43% make their abstracts available in an electronic format. Most of the journals surveyed allow meeting abstracts to be cited. Bibliographic access to these abstracts does not appear to be widespread.


CONCLUSIONS
Meeting abstracts play an important role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Bibliographic access to meeting abstracts is very limited. The trend toward making meeting abstracts available via the Internet has the potential to give a broader audience access to the information they contain.
Kelly
J A
JA
Bio-Medical Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA.
D001634:Bibliographies as Topic; D003226:Congresses as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003625:Data Collection; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007255:Information Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016243:Library Collection Development; D016239:MEDLINE / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010380:Peer Review; D011640:Public Policy; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012955:Societies, Medical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States