Examining the Value of Full Text Journal Articles for Researchers as edu.Global Adds Over 7 Million to Website

An incredible 7 million plus free full-text journal articles are now available at edu.Global, on subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology.

But why are full text articles so important compared to abstracts when it comes to researching?

Abstracts do provide some valuable pieces of information and are widely available on certain websites but let’s take a brief look at why there are major advantages to taking steps to obtain and use full-text articles instead, particularly in the field of scientific discovery.

1. Full text articles have more information.  That includes detailed descriptions of methods and the complete study results.  In fact, in a study published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics  it showed that only 8% of the scientific claims made in the full-text articles were found in their abstracts.
2. While authors usually include their most important findings in the abstract, secondary study findings, discoveries, and observations are frequently only found in the full-text article.
3. Full-text articles are more likely to contain information on adverse events, which is often missing from abstracts. According to a study published in BMC Medical Research Methodology, “abstracts published in high impact factor medical journals underreport harm even when the articles provide information in the main body of the article.”

BOTTOM LINE: While using article abstracts provides some value, there are limits and researchers need access to the full text of the articles to ensure they don’t miss important data.

June 13th, 2017