In a follow‐up of earlier studies, Biological Abstracts (BA), Chemical Abstracts (CA), Excerpta Medica (EM), Psychological Abstracts (PA) and Current List of Medical Literature (CL) were searched for 240 published articles that resulted from oral research reports given at bio‐medical meetings in 1957 and 1958. Seventy per cent of the 240 papers appeared in at least one of the four abstracting services, and almost 90% were indexed in CL; however, no single abstracting service covered more than about one‐half of all the papers in any of the three research fields. The average time‐lag between primary and secondary publication for cardiovascular and endocrine papers was about four months in CL, four in CA, six in BA, and eight to ten months in EM. For psychopharmacologic papers, all of the services were slower. This “tracer” technique makes possible and practical a continuous assessment of how a given research field is being served by abstracting and indexing services.

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