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This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of a keyword or descriptor in the title, from the viewpoint of document selection and information retrieval for scientists engaged in contraception research. A total of 2152 document titles recorded in the Index Medicus during 1973-75 was examined. Another set of 567 contraception titles published in the Index Medicus during 1963-65 was also studied to determine if there were any changes in the information content of the titles over a 10-year period. Employing the Montgomery-Swanson method, it was found that 92.2% of the documents from the later period and 88.0% of those from the earlier period had at least one "contraception term" in their titles. The data obtained in this study exceed those of published reports. A brief review of some of the previous studies dealing with the retrieval capabilities of titles in various branches of medical and life sciences is presented. It is concluded that the title search method is a very effective means of retrieving pertinent documents in the field of contraceptive technology. A trend of improvement in the information content of the scientific titles is also noted.
No quantitative data on the use of eponyms in medicine are available. This paper attempts to quantify the frequency of occurrence of 91 personalized disease and syndrome eponyms (DSE) in the titles of medical documents. By employing the subject heading-title word correlation technique of Montgomeryand Swansonit was found that 72.2 percent of the 2,435 papers listed in the 1973 Index Medicushad at least one of these 91 candidate DSEs in their titles; another 195 (8.0 percent) titles had the corresponding descriptive or non-eponymic synonyms, and the remaining 480 (19.8 percent) titles did not have either of these two matching elements. Thus, the ratio of occurrence of the personalized DSEs to their descriptive names in the titles of the medical literature examined appeared to be 9:1. It was further noted that, while about 80 percent of the pertinent literature could be retrieved on the basis of a title search with DSEs and their descriptive synonyms, about 20 percent of the relevant documents will be missed.
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