Childhood Dermatomyositis Associated with Hepatocarcinoma

The editorial "The Internet and the Journal " ( June 22 issue) 1 addresses the pros and cons of electronic "publishing" of articles on the Internet.You mentioned abstracts in passing, but the specter of electronic publishing of abstracts raises even more serious questions.Any flaws in the proposal for electronic publication of articles would be magnified enormously for electronic abstract publication.The selection process for abstracts already has demonstrable shortcomings.One study found that abstracts frequently were never published, and if they were it was only after a long interval.The number of citations of abstracts (a measure of interest in their content) was not a predictor of subsequent successful publication. 2Subsequent analyses have expanded these observations. 3Negative abstract results were published less often as papers, 4 and even when publication did result, long delays were common. 5 The electronic publication of data in an abstract, even when they are published later as an article, can lead to the acceptance of flawed or preliminary information by the medical community long before the data have been subjected to critical peer review.The risk of disseminating this unvalidated information is obvious.