EBM NOTEBOOK

Less is more: where do the abstracts in the EBM journal come from?

Angela Eady¹, Paul Glasziou², Brian Haynes¹

¹ McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
² University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Every 2 months, a brand new issue of Evidence-Based Medicine containing 20 abstracts is published. The compact appearance belies the mounds of sifting required to arrive at the finished journal. Readers should know, though, that the process for winnowing these select articles from the published literature is systematic and thorough. This article describes the 2-stage process of validity checks followed by a rating by clinicians for relevance that is used to selected articles.

Journal staff hand search 140 journals and examine each original study or review. This hand searching amounts to 60 000 articles that are annually assessed. The 140 journals include the highly rated general medical journals (Lancet, N Eng J Med, JAMA, BMJ, CMAJ, Ann Int Med, and Cochrane reviews), plus various speciality journals that are selected on the basis of article yield—we regularly replace the low-yield journals with better candidates. . . . [Full text of this article]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Glasziou, P., Marks, S., for the Evidence-Based Journals team, (2009). Selecting "Aetiology" articles for the Evidence-Based Medicine journal.. Evid. Based Med. 14: 103-103 [Full Text]  
• Glasziou, P., Burls, A., Gilbert, R. (2008). Evidence based medicine and the medical curriculum. BMJ 337: a1253-a1253 [Full Text]  
• Phillips, R, Glasziou, P (2008). Evidence based practice: the practicalities of keeping abreast of clinical evidence while in training. Postgrad. Med. J. 84: 450-453 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Glasziou, P., Haynes, R B. (2008). Reply from the editors. Evid. Based Med. 13: 69-69 [Full Text]