The abstract as a 200-word summary that readers click through to access a full article is a staple of scientific publishing. But as Aileen Fyfe explains, this is only one of the roles that abstracts have performed in the history of scientific communication.
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Acknowledgements
The research underpinning this essay was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, AH/K001841. An earlier version of these thoughts appeared as A. Fyfe, ‘Where did the practice of ‘abstracts’ come from?’ A History of Scientific Journals website (8 July 2021); https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/philosophicaltransactions/where-did-the-practice-of-abstracts-come-from/#more-1444
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Fyfe, A. The surprising history of abstracts. Nat Rev Phys 6, 464–465 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00741-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00741-0
