Structured vs. Unstructured Abstract: A Different Look at Iranian Journals of Library Science

The present study aims to investigate the quality of the structured versus unstructured abstracts in terms of content comprehensiveness and observing the items in APA manual.This survey uses a content analysis method. Data were collected through study of abstracts. Journals included in this study are as follows: Faslname-ye Ketab, Journal of Academic Librarianship and Information Science, Iranian Journal of Information Processing & Management, Library and Information Science Quarterly, Ganjine-ye Asnad, and Research on Information Sciences & Public Libraries. Of each publication, abstracts of 4 recent issues have been studied.Of 245 abstracts, 49.4 percent were structured and 50.6 percent were unstructured. The score mean for structured abstracts was higher than unstructured ones. The most frequent omission from abstracts was information about ''conclusions" and the least omission belonged to "purpose". It was revealed that most of Persian journals of LIS use structured abstracts, although the structures used were not the same. Based on findings of the current study, it seems that a structured format increases the quality of abstracts. Keyword: abstracting, library and information science journals, structured abstract, unstructured abstract.