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Erroneous instructions routinely issued by medical journals—Part 1: ‘Do not use abbreviations in the abstract’

In the ‘olden days’ many medical journals did not include abbreviations in the abstracts of the reports they published. That ceased to be the case decades ago, but inexplicably a huge number of journals’ ‘Instructions for Authors’ still include an erroneous directive instructing authors that abbreviations are not permitted in abstracts. All of these journals do now include abbreviations in the abstracts they publish—and have done for years—in blatant contradiction of their own directive in this regard. The people most adversely affected by this blatantly contradictory yet easily rectifiable situation are confused prospective non-native English speaking authors, and the ‘pre-submission’ manuscript editors they are now actively advised to engage the services of by these very same journals prior to submission. In my capacity as one such freelance medical manuscript editor I recently contacted many of these journals via the relevant email addresses indicated on their websites urging them to address this situation. With the exception of the staff of one single journal who to their great credit corrected the problem almost immediately, the silence was deafening.