This focus of this article is to highlight what is commonly wrong with abstracts. Please note: The relevancy of some issues raised here might depend upon your discipline or document type.
For example, some academic journals do not require abstracts at all or only require a very brief project overview. Any suggestions or comments please email info writingclearscience. Se lf-Study and Premium enrolments available Learn more These common mistakes are not listed in any particular order and some overlap:.
The abstract should be a complete, succinct summary of your entire project. Summarising is being able to identify and highlight key points using as few words as possible. Paraphrasing is when you use your own words to convey meaning from another source, with the aim of improving clarity. Paraphrasing often includes summarising. One common mistake is to copy entire sentences from different parts of the paper into the abstract.
Annesley1 has rightly compared abstract to an 'elevator talk', wherein an author summarizes the important information the paper conveys with an aim of getting the reader interested in the idea, enticing him to read the whole manuscript. It is, therefore imperative that authors give great attention to writing a good abstract for their paper. The importance of an abstract cannot be over-emphasized.
After the title, it is the most commonly read part of a manuscript. On the basis of the first impressions made by the title and the abstract, they try to determine if the article would be of interest and relevance to the journal's readership.
If they decide to send it for peer review, the prospective reviewers are generally provided access only to the abstract before they agree to review the whole paper. Abstract is the only part of the article that readers get to see when they search through electronic databases2 and several journal websites allow the non-subscribers access to the abstract alone. Here, an abstract acts as a trailer. Abstracts can be descriptive or informational.
The reader is required to read the entire article to know what the article really contains. Such abstracts are usually ultra-short words and are rarely used for original research articles. They are more commonly seen with Case Reports, reviews and opinion articles; articles that do not contain original research data.
They include details of the research study and have enough material information to act as a proxy for the entire paper. Unstructured also called as non-structured abstracts are free-flowing and as the name suggests, have no pre-defined arrangement or organization in the form of sub-headings.
By comparison, structured abstracts have a planned and ordered assembly with sub-headings such as background, objectives, methods, results and conclusions. These sub-headings could differ from journal to journal.
Structured abstracts contain more information, are easier to read, recall and search for, and are generally preferred by readers and authors. He is obliged to provide an abstract in the format prescribed by the Journal.
A good abstract is a complete and honest summary of the whole manuscript with a coherent stream of thoughts. It should stand on its own. The reader should not be required to refer to the whole paper for understanding what is said in the abstract. The abstract should state research question or the hypothesis , objectives, key points in methodology that would convince the readers about the soundness of the methods employed, important and key observations and the "take-home" message, so as to tell a complete story.
Since most biomedical journals prefer to have informational abstracts, this section will provide tips for writing such an abstract. Whether a journal prefers a structured abstract or a simple unstructured one, it is always a good idea to write an abstract with a structure based on the IMRAD format and then strike out the sub-headings if the journal demands an unstructured abstract.
Ground work: Before one starts writing an abstract, an author must perform a proper ground work and the most important task in this is to carefully read and understand the instructions provided by the Journal regarding writing an abstract.
These directives apply to the format structured or unstructured , word limit, sub-headings and other details such as font type and size and spacing, etc.
It is advisable to read abstracts of papers published in the recent issues of the journal to get an idea about what is generally preferred by the journal editors. When to start writing an Abstract: Some experts advise authors to begin writing a manuscript by drafting the abstract first. This strategy renders writing the abstract quite difficult and is fraught with the danger of abstract depicting information that has not been included in the final draft of the manuscript.
Now that the use of on-line publication databases is prevalent, writing a really good abstract has become even more important than it was a decade ago. Abstracts have always served the function of "selling" your work. But now, instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must convince the reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down a copy of the article from a library or worse, obtain one after a long wait through inter-library loan.
In a business context, an "executive summary" is often the only piece of a report read by the people who matter; and it should be similar in content if not tone to a journal paper abstract. Despite the fact that an abstract is quite brief, it must do almost as much work as the multi-page paper that follows it. This can help you to determine which areas of the abstract will require revisions, either to clarify your meaning or to better highlight your major findings.
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News, tips, and resources from the academic publishing experts at AJE. Follow these 6 tips to make the most of a small amount of space. Provide clear conclusions but avoid overselling your work.
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