Abstracting and indexing in the medical sciences

Abstracts and indexes constitute the most popular means of assuring adequate retrieval of the many thousands of papers published every year in the ever expanding field of medicine. Different types of abstracts and indexes are available for different purposes and to meet varying user requirements. The problem of "keeping up" with developments in one's own field of endeavour can usually be solved by qualified abstractors. Most indexes serve the purpose of assuring the retrieval of pertinent documents. However, in order to retrieve specific pieces of information which are absolutely indispensible to the medical practitioner or scientist, a new approach is needed. This technique, which is termed the "combined index-abstract" method, has been employed successfully for the handling of a large body of specific items of information in a restricted area of experimental and clinical pharmacology.