The importance of the use of descriptors in medical publications
(Portuguese
PDF version)
Jorge R. Ribas Timi *
*
Adjunct professor, Vascular Surgery, Universidade Federal do Paraná
(UFPR), Curitiba, PR, Brazil.
J
Vasc Br 2005;4(2):114-5
A medical
specialty is characterized by, among other things, gathering specific
knowledge on an issue that does not belong to the general knowledge
of Medicine.
All human
knowledge is written, since it was the form found by humanity to share
its knowledge in an ascending chain. Therefore, cultures which did not
develop an alphabet were lost in time, once oral transmission cannot
perpetuate itself and it does not serve as evolutionary scientific basis
either.
When choosing
a specialty, one must know it deeply and search for this knowledge through
several forms. However, it is mainly through published articles that
specialists keep up-to-date.
As time
goes by and experience is gathered, the specialist physician starts
to publish articles, writing for several scientific journals within
and outside his professional area. Articles can be presented in several
ways, from a case report, which arouses interest for being unusual,
to a research outcome that will change all the conduct for that specific
issue. Nevertheless, every article is valid, since they are focused
on different realities and compared with similar articles in the literature.
Practitioners involved with the academic life have a larger literary
production than others, since they are involved with academic research.
Every time
an author publishes an article, he is feeding the knowledge machine,
since he is contributing with his results and, at the same time, reviewing
what has already been published on the topic. One who does not read
is often reinventing the wheel.
Any type
of scientific paper is born from an idea, develops from a research on
the topic and study protocol, progressing to a presentation, frequently
in congresses or other events of the specialty. However, a paper only
becomes known when it is transformed into a scientific article and is
published.
The publication
is the real certificate of the existence of a scientific paper, since
it is through it that the article has a known name and address, as well
as its authorship and the service from where it was originated.
Choosing
the appropriate means for publishing an article is of major importance.
If the topic only interests one's specialty, then it should be published
within one's community. Nevertheless, if the article is of general interest
or is a warning on problems concerning our specialty to other physician
practitioners, then it must be submitted to the most appropriate means
in order to reach the target audience.
We must
also search for the journal which has the most considerable impact among
the chosen means to submit our articles for publication. One of the
criteria used for measuring the impact factor of a journal is the number
of citations by other published articles. Thus, whenever we can cite
our journals in our articles, we will be contributing to an increase
in the impact factor of our means of communication.
The title
and the abstract deserve special care, once it is through them that
the reader will decide if it is worth reading the article. It is not
easy to be a physician and keep constantly up-to-date, as the Code of
Medical Ethics preaches, since Medicine is the second science that most
produces scientific literature, computer science being the first one.
In practice,
every month thousands of new articles are added to the files of medical
knowledge. All the articles need to be catalogued. Cataloguing is made
through the descriptors, which may vary from three to 10 per article
and cannot be neglected by the author of the scientific article.
Descriptors,
which are also known as key words or descriptors, are the easiest way
to find a scientific article in the large file of medical knowledge.
In order
to do so, it is due to the author to find the best descriptors to characterize
his paper. This search can be made in the Index Medicus. Back
in 1994 we tried to call the attention to this important procedure,
through a review article1 published in the
journal of Vascular Surgery & Angiology, an official entity of the Brazilian
Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery, which had a list of descriptors
that could be used by vascular surgeons and angiologists for cataloguing
their articles. Only 9 years afterwards, Oliveira et el. once again
highlighted this issue within our specialty in an article published
in Acta Cirúrgica Brasileira.2
By correctly
indicating the descriptors of an article, authors are inserting their
papers in the right place of research files from medical indexes. They
will be contributing to the spread of knowledge of their specialty and
specifically their papers, as well as the journal responsible for the
publication. More than that, they will be making things easier for those
interested in deepening their knowledge on a topic, whether for their
continuous learning or for referencing a new research that generated
a new article on the topic.
Finally,
each published article is the result of a research performed by the
author and included in the scientific universe. However, an article
published with descriptors that are incorrectly selected or do not characterize
the topic is like an anonymous star lost in the sky, which will never
be referenced neither by scientists nor by poets.
