Purpose: This study aimed to compare the length limits specified in the author guidelines with the actual length of abstracts in 90 journals in the fields of pharmacology, oncology, and neurology. Specifically, the following parameters were examined: abstract formats among the three subject areas; the relationship between the length limit and the actual length of abstracts; and actual abstract length according to the number of subheadings, the length of structured abstract subheadings, the length of frequently used subheading sets, and clinical trial registration information.Methods: Thirty journals from each of three medical fields (pharmacology, oncology, and neurology) were selected from Elsevier’s Scimago Journal Rank. This included the journals indexed in PubMed from 2018 to 2019 that published the most articles. Article abstracts from these journals were used to create a dataset for this study. Descriptive, comparative, and correlational analyses of data for the three fields were conducted.Results: The number of subheadings and abstract length increased in parallel. The Results component was the longest, suggesting that authors tended to use longer text to report results than for other structural abstract components. Authors generally utilized the length limit to a full extent without exceeding it.Conclusion: The traditionally used 250-word length limit should be reconsidered for pharmacology, oncology, and neurology journals because it disregards the distinctive characteristics of abstracts and length differences between structured and unstructured abstracts. Various characteristics of abstract lengths presented in this study should be considered to establish more justifiable policies.

中文翻译：

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PubMed 中列出的药理学、肿瘤学和神经病学期刊中摘要的长度限制与实际长度的比较

目的：本研究旨在将作者指南中规定的长度限制与药理学、肿瘤学和神经学领域的 90 种期刊中摘要的实际长度进行比较。具体来说，检查了以下参数：三个主题领域中的抽象格式；摘要长度限制与实际长度的关系；和实际摘要长度根据子标题的数量、结构化摘要子标题的长度、常用子标题集的长度和临床试验注册信息。方法：来自三个医学领域（药理学、肿瘤学和神经病学）各 30 种期刊选自 Elsevier 的 Scimago 期刊排名。这包括 2018 年至 2019 年被 PubMed 索引的发表文章最多的期刊。这些期刊的文章摘要用于为本研究创建数据集。对三个领域的数据进行了描述性、比较性和相关性分析。结果：副标题数量和摘要长度同时增加。结果部分最长，这表明作者倾向于使用更长的文本来报告结果，而不是其他结构摘要部分。作者通常充分利用了长度限制而不超过它。结论：传统上使用的 250 字长度限制应重新考虑用于药理学、肿瘤学和神经病学期刊，因为它忽略了摘要的显着特征以及结构化和非结构化之间的长度差异摘要。