“No Abstract Available.” Maybe It’s a Time to Integrate Abstracts into Editorials?

Abstract

Abstract of the peer-reviewed article is a short description of its main sections and simultaneously with the title is the most visible part of the paper. Articles of such types as case reports, case series, original research, review, essays, and many other types have their own abstract. Many, except of editorials. Considering the fact that as of 2023, the science unfortunately has been replaced by the pursuit of citations, the insufficient number of citations of editorial articles may be caused by the lack of an open abstract in them. We oppose discrimination of editorials. Editorial articles are permanently evolving and the number of editorials in which the number of pages reaches 9 is increasing. And an article with so many pages should have its own abstract. We demand that editorials be given the right to have their abstracts. The problem of the absence of an abstract in editorials is like a coin—it has two sides. On the one side, scientist, or editor of other journal, especially in the case of closed (i.e., paid) editorial, may not understand from the editorial title alone the details of what the article is about and whether this article can be useful in their research, practice, or editorial office work. On the other side, the article lacks visitors and, as a result, its authors do not receive dividends in the form of citations. Let’s not forget about the publishers, who in turn receive less revenue in the case of closed editorials, which in turn does not allow reinvesting in technological innovations of journals. In this editorial, we analyze and present the advantages of integrating abstracts into such an important type of article as editorial.