THE QUALITY OF ANALYTICAL INFORMATION CONTAINED WITHIN ABSTRACTS AND PAPERS ON NEW ANALYTICAL METHODS

The quality of analytical method information represented in full research papers, short communications and their abstracts published in Analytical Abstracts was investigate. The 40 selected papers described new quantitative analytical methods and appeared in six of the major journals of analytical chemistry. A set of criteria was developed which evaluated the existence of information describing the application area, the analytical method itself and the performance characteristics. The papers and abstracts could be improved with respect to all criteria. If all criteria were taken into account there was no paper or abstract that was described well. There was no difference between full research papers and short communication-like papers at the 5 % level of significance. The abstracts were significantly worse. Various sources of incompleteness of the papers and abstracts are presented and recommendations are given. In addition, the spread of analytical method information in papers was investigated. The results showed no specific location for the different types of information. All these results make the possibility of automatic extraction of analytical method information from papers and abstracts very problematic.