Title, abstract, key words and references in biomedical articles

Abstract

Scientists frequently communicate the results of their work in research reports. When writing scientific articles, authors must follow instructions and requirements of standard article format. A scientific paper should have in proper order, a Title, Abstract, Introduction, Material and Methods Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Literature. A title should be the fewest possible words that accurately describe the content of the paper. It should attract researchers' attention in order to be included in their investigation. An abstract is a short summary of the article. It concisely summarizes results and conclusion so that essential details of the paper can be understood in 100 - 250 words. The most commonly used are structured abstracts. Key words are provided below the abstract and describe the medical concepts characteristic for the whole article. Assign at least one and an average of 5 to 10 key words. Indexing in biomedicine means using the Thesaurus of the American National Library of Medicine: Medical Subject Headings. It provides easy and fast access to precise information using key words assigned to each document. Reference citation is obligatory and integral part of scientific articles. It provides communication among the authors and binds scientific papers as well as whole scientific knowledge in certain fields.

Keywords

• medicine
• research
• writing
• publishing
• abstracting and indexing
• subject headings