Comparative indexing: Terms supplied by biomedical authors and by document titles

The original aim of this study was to obtain objective data bearing on the much argued question of whether author indexing is “good.” Author indexing of 285 documents reporting biomedical research was scored by comparing the author‐supplied terms (author set) for each paper with a criterion set of terms that was established by asking a group of 12 potential users to describe the same document. Terms in the document title (title set) were scored similarly. The average author set contained almost half of all the terms employed by more than one member of the user group and scored 73% of the maximal possible score, as compared with 44% for the average title set. When judged by the method and criterion employed here, author indexing is substantially better than indexing derived from document titles. The findings suggest that indicia supplied by an author should serve scientists in biomedical disciplines other than his own about as well as they serve his disciplinary colleagues. The general method developed for measuring indexing quality may represent a practical yardstick of wide applicability.