PURPOSE: To evaluate the quality of abstracts of original non-experimental research articles in Brazilian Journals in Surgery. METHODS: Convenience sample of 471 abstracts of original research articles from six Brazilian surgical journals indexed in Thomson Reuters (ISI) Web of Knowledge. The quality of abstracts was measured against a checklist of eight evaluation criteria, which were divided into 32 categories. The total score for each abstract was obtained by summing the score of all criteria present. The overall mean score was also determined. RESULTS: The overall mean score of abstract quality was that of a good abstract. Most of the abstracts contained some information from each of the eight basic categories of an abstract. All abstracts were structured ones. CONCLUSION: The overall quality, for abstracts of original articles of six Brazilian non-experimental journals in surgery, was classified as good.