Quality Evaluation of Academic Thesis Abstracts Based on ANSI / NISO Z39.14 (R2015) Standard: A Case Study

Karimi, Maryam; Kazerani, Maryam; Shekofteh, Maryam; Jahanihashemi, Hassan

Quality Evaluation of Academic Thesis Abstracts Based on ANSI / NISO Z39.14 (R2015) Standard: A Case Study

Document Type : Articles

Authors

Maryam Karimi ¹

Maryam Kazerani ²

Maryam Shekofteh ²

Hassan Jahanihashemi ³

¹ M.A. Department of Medical Library and Information Sciences, Faculty of Paramedical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

² Assistant Prof. Department of Medical Library and Information Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

³ Associate Prof. Department of Children Growth Center, Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin, Iran

Abstract

Abstracts are regarded as valuable tools in assessing the relevance of documents during information retrieval. The determination of abstract compliance based on international standards is one of the methods which can be used for generating qualified information, reducing costs and establishing aligned coordination with international standards. Further, ANSI/NISO Z39.14 standard is one of the international standards presented by NISO committee which its final amendment was published in March 2015 and proposed some principles in terms of content and structural elements of different sources like theses. For this purpose, the present study aimed to evaluate the abstracts of Persian theses in different educational levels with ANSI/NISO Z39.14 standard at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU) during 2010-2014. 386 Persian abstracts were selected from among the abstracts in master’s theses, PhD dissertations, Medical Doctorate(MD) and specialized medicine theses at different schools. The standard texts of ANSI/NISO Z39.14 (R2015) were used as the instrument including 15 structural and 5 content elements. Results indicated that there was a significant difference between the consistency of structural and content elements of the standards among the abstracts of the selected theses at different educational levels in different schools. The results suggest that an instructional and a coherent model should be developed, based on international and latest edition standards such as ANSI/NISOZ39.14 guideline for abstracts which are necessary to be followed by all centers in order to improve the style of writing abstracts.

Keywords

Theses Abstracts

ANSI/NISO Z39.14 (R2015) Standards

information retrieval

Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

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