Abstract section of a research paper
Pmc3136027how to write a good abstract for a scientific paper or conference presentationchittaranjan andradedepartment of psychopharmacology, national institute of mental health and neurosciences, bangalore, karnataka, indiaaddress for correspondence: dr. Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly article has been cited by other articles in ctabstracts of scientific papers are sometimes poorly written, often lack important information, and occasionally convey a biased picture. This paper provides detailed suggestions, with examples, for writing the background, methods, results, and conclusions sections of a good abstract. The primary target of this paper is the young researcher; however, authors with all levels of experience may find useful ideas in the ds: abstract, preparing a manuscript, writing skillsintroductionthis paper is the third in a series on manuscript writing skills, published in the indian journal of psychiatry. Earlier articles offered suggestions on how to write a good case report,[1] and how to read, write, or review a paper on randomized controlled trials. 2,3] the present paper examines how authors may write a good abstract when preparing their manuscript for a scientific journal or conference presentation. Although the primary target of this paper is the young researcher, it is likely that authors with all levels of experience will find at least a few ideas that may be useful in their future abstract of a paper is the only part of the paper that is published in conference proceedings. The abstract is the only part of the paper that a potential referee sees when he is invited by an editor to review a manuscript. The abstract is the only part of the paper that readers see when they search through electronic databases such as pubmed. Finally, most readers will acknowledge, with a chuckle, that when they leaf through the hard copy of a journal, they look at only the titles of the contained papers. Only a dedicated reader will peruse the contents of the paper, and then, most often only the introduction and discussion sections. Only a reader with a very specific interest in the subject of the paper, and a need to understand it thoroughly, will read the entire , for the vast majority of readers, the paper does not exist beyond its abstract. For the referees, and the few readers who wish to read beyond the abstract, the abstract sets the tone for the rest of the paper. It is therefore the duty of the author to ensure that the abstract is properly representative of the entire paper. These are listed in table 1general qualities of a good abstractsections of an abstractalthough some journals still publish abstracts that are written as free-flowing paragraphs, most journals require abstracts to conform to a formal structure within a word count of, usually, 200–250 words. The usual sections defined in a structured abstract are the background, methods, results, and conclusions; other headings with similar meanings may be used (eg, introduction in place of background or findings in place of results). Some journals include additional sections, such as objectives (between background and methods) and limitations (at the end of the abstract). In the rest of this paper, issues related to the contents of each section will be examined in oundthis section should be the shortest part of the abstract and should very briefly outline the following information:What is already known about the subject, related to the paper in questionwhat is not known about the subject and hence what the study intended to examine (or what the paper seeks to present). The purpose of the background, as the word itself indicates, is to provide the reader with a background to the study, and hence to smoothly lead into a description of the methods employed in the authors publish papers the abstracts of which contain a lengthy background section. In most cases, however, a longer background section means that less space remains for the presentation of the results. This is unfortunate because the reader is interested in the paper because of its findings, and not because of its background. Wide variety of acceptably composed backgrounds is provided in table 2; most of these have been adapted from actual papers. 4–9] readers may wish to compare the content in table 2 with the original abstracts to see how the adaptations possibly improve on the originals. 2examples of the background section of an abstractmethodsthe methods section is usually the second-longest section in the abstract. Table 3 lists important questions to which the methods section should provide brief 3questions regarding which information should ideally be available in the methods section of an abstractcarelessly written methods sections lack information about important issues such as sample size, numbers of patients in different groups, doses of medications, and duration of the study. Readers have only to flip through the pages of a randomly selected journal to realize how common such carelessness 4 presents examples of the contents of accept-ably written methods sections, modified from actual publications. 10,11] readers are invited to take special note of the first sentence of each example in table 4; each is packed with detail, illustrating how to convey the maximum quantity of information with maximum economy of word 4examples of the methods section of an abstractresultsthe results section is the most important part of the abstract and nothing should compromise its range and quality. This is because readers who peruse an abstract do so to learn about the findings of the study. The results section should therefore be the longest part of the abstract and should contain as much detail about the findings as the journal word count permits. Examples of acceptably written abstracts are presented in table 6; one of these has been modified from an actual publication. 11] note that the first example is rather narrative in style, whereas the second example is packed with 5information that the results section of the abstract should ideally presenttable 6examples of the results section of an abstractconclusionsthis section should contain the most important take-home message of the study, expressed in a few precisely worded sentences. Thus, the conclusions may contain three elements:The primary take-home messagethe additional findings of importancethe e its necessary brevity, this section has the most impact on the average reader because readers generally trust authors and take their assertions at face value. Hypothetical examples of the conclusions section of an abstract are presented in table 7examples of the conclusions section of an abstractmiscellaneous observationscitation of references anywhere within an abstract is almost invariably inappropriate.
Results section of a research paper apa
Other examples of unnecessary content in an abstract are listed in table 8examples of unnecessary content in a abstractit goes without saying that whatever is present in the abstract must also be present in the text. Likewise, whatever errors should not be made in the text should not appear in the abstract (eg, mistaking association for causality). Already mentioned, the abstract is the only part of the paper that the vast majority of readers see. However, nowhere in the abstract did the authors mention that these conclusions were based on just 5 cases and 12 controls out of the total sample of 126 cases and 806 controls. There were several other serious limitations that rendered the authors’ conclusions tentative, at best; yet, nowhere in the abstract were these other limitations a parting note: most journals provide clear instructions to authors on the formatting and contents of different parts of the manuscript. Authors should tailor their abstracts to the specific requirements of the journal to which they plan to submit their manuscript. It could also be an excellent idea to model the abstract of the paper, sentence for sentence, on the abstract of an important paper on a similar subject and with similar methodology, published in the same journal for which the manuscript is tessource of support: nil conflict of interest: none nces1. Placeboxetine for major depressive disorder: researcher, author, reader, and reviewer perspectives on randomized controlled trials. Perhaps more important than the first, is that this the paper to be read at several different levels. The take home is that the scientific format helps to insure that at a person reads your paper (beyond title skimming), likely get the key results and journal-style scientific papers ided into the following sections: title,Authors and affiliation, abstract,Introduction, methods,Acknowledgments, and , which parallel the experimental process. This website describes the style, content,And format associated with each sections appear in a journal in the following prescribed order:What did i do in a nutshell? Section headings: each main section of the paper begins with g which should be capitalized, the beginning of the section, and double the lines above and below. Do not underline the g or put a colon at the e of a main section heading:When your paper reports on one experiment, use subheadings to help organize the dings should be capitalized (first each word), left justified, and either s or e of a subheading:Intensity on the rate of electron , authors' names,And institutional affiliations. Use descriptive words that you would ly with the content of your paper: the molecule studied,The organism used or studied, the treatment, the location of. A majority of find your paper via electronic database searches and engines key on words found in the title should be centered top of page 1 (do not use a title page - it is a waste for our purposes); is not underlined or authors' names (pi or first) and institutional affiliation are and centered below the title. Over-winter in fields in response sed daily mean mallard, ura drake, and ment of wildlife biology, university of colorado - title is not a section, but it ary and important. Remember that the title becomes the most on-line computer searches - if your title is insufficient,Few people will find or read your paper. Similarly, the above title could en stimulates nose-twitch courtship behavior in abstract summarizes, in one paragraph (usually), the s of the entire paper in the following prescribed sequence:The question(s) you investigated. State the implications of s your results gave can only make the simplest the content of your article, the abstract allows you ate more on each major aspect of the paper. The readers decide whether they want to read the rest of , or it may be the only part they can obtain via ture searches or in published abstracts. Must be included to make the abstract useful to may to reference your you know when you have enough information in your abstract? A simple rule-of-thumb is to imagine that another researcher doing an study similar to the one reporting. If your abstract was the only part of the could access, would you be happy with the information presented. Use the active possible, but much of it may require passive your abstract using concise, but complete, sentences, to the point quickly. Maximum be 200-300 words, usually in a single abstract should not contain:Lengthy background information,References to other literature,Elliptical (i. Strategy: although the first section of your paper, the abstract, by definition,Must be written last since it will summarize the paper. To ing your abstract, take whole sentences or key each section and put them in a sequence which paper. Check your work: once the completed abstract, check to make sure that the the abstract completely agrees with what is written in . Confirm that all the information appearing ct actually appears in the body of the paper. This is accomplished by discussing the y research literature ( summarizing our current understanding of the problem the purpose of the work in the form of the hypothesis, question,Or problem you investigated; and,Briefly explain your approach and, whenever possible, the possible outcomes literally, the introduction the questions, "what was i studying? For example,In the mouse behavior paper, the words hormones and likely appear within the first one or two sentences ish the context by providing. In the mouse behavior paper, for example, begin the introduction at the level of mating general, then quickly focus to mouse mating behaviors hormonal regulation of behavior. The articles listed in the literature relevant papers you find are a good starting point to rds in a line of inquiry.
Es are particularly useful because they summarize research done on a narrow subject area over a brief time (a year to a few years in most cases). Or methodology, the merits of the new technique/ the previously used methods should be als and section is variously called methods and this section you explain clearly how you carried study in the following general structure zation (details follow below):Studied (plant, animal, human, etc. Style in this section should read as if you were bing the conduct of the experiment. You may use the to a certain extent, although this section requires of third person, passive constructions than others. Reported as the greek symbol : you do not need to say made graphs and is some additional advice on ms common to new scientific m: the methods section to being wordy or overly repeatedly using a single relate a single action; s in very lengthy, wordy passages. Example: notice how tution (in red) of treatment and control identifiers passage both in the context of the paper, and if taken to measure a600 of the reaction mixtures exposed to light 1500, 750, and 350 ue/m2/sec immediately after chloroplasts were added (time. Function: the function of s section is to objectively present your key results,Without interpretation, in an orderly and ce using both text and als (tables and figures). The results section with text, reporting the key results and referring figures and tables as you proceed. The n should be organized and/or figures that sequenced to present your key findings in a logical text of the results section should be crafted to follow ce and highlight the evidence needed to answer the questions/ investigated. Table s section is a text-based presentation of the key includes references to each of the tables and text should guide the h your results stressing the key results which answers to the question(s) investigated. The section shown in red would simply not appear except ces to report a statistical outcome and over-use of the word "significant": your results will read much more cleanly avoid overuse of the word siginifcant in any of its scientific studies, the use of implies that a statistical test was employed to make a the data; in this case the test indicated a larger mean heights than you would expect to get by chance the use of the word "significant" to this your parenthetical statistical es a p-value that indicates significance (usually when. Might occasionally include in this section tables and help explain something you are discussing, they must n new data (from your study) that should have been r. Authors always e reviewers of their drafts (in pi courses, be done only if an instructor or other ued the draft prior to evaluation) and any sources g that supported the research. 1st person, objectivity) are relaxed , acknowledgments are always brief and never the n the discussion and the literature literature cited section gives an alphabetical listing ( author's last name) of the references that you in the body of your paper. A complete format list for virtually of publication may be found in not label this section "bibliography". Types of content | on: an appendix contains information that is understanding of the paper, but may present information r clarifies a point without burdening the body of the appendix is an optional part of the paper, and is found in published gs: each appendix should be identified by a l in sequence, e. See tables and figures), numbered in a separate sequence from those found in the the paper. In multiple appendices are used, the table and figure indicate the appendix number as well (see ment of biology, e, lewiston, me sity of southern zing your social sciences research zing your social sciences research paper: 3. The purpose of this guide is to provide advice on how to develop and organize a research paper in the social of research flaws to ndent and dependent ry of research terms. Choosing a research ing a topic ning a topic ing the timeliness of a topic idea. An oral g with g someone else's to manage group of structured group project survival g a book le book review ing collected g a field informed g a policy g a research abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of 300 words or less, the major aspects of the entire paper in a prescribed sequence that includes: 1) the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated; 2) the basic design of the study; 3) major findings or trends found as a result of your analysis; and, 4) a brief summary of your interpretations and ance of a good mes your professor will ask you to include an abstract, or general summary of your work, with your research paper. The abstract allows you to elaborate upon each major aspect of the paper and helps readers decide whether they want to read the rest of the paper. Must be included to make the abstract useful to someone who may want to examine your do you know when you have enough information in your abstract? A simple rule-of-thumb is to imagine that you are another researcher doing a similar study. Then ask yourself: if your abstract was the only part of the paper you could access, would you be happy with the amount of information presented there? If the answer is "no" then the abstract likely needs to be to write a research abstract. Types of begin, you need to determine which type of abstract you should include with your paper. Critical abstract provides, in addition to describing main findings and information, a judgement or comment about the study’s validity, reliability, or completeness. The researcher evaluates the paper and often compares it with other works on the same subject. It makes no judgments about the work, nor does it provide results or conclusions of the research. It does incorporate key words found in the text and may include the purpose, methods, and scope of the research. That is, the researcher presents and explains all the main arguments and the important results and evidence in the paper. An informative abstract includes the information that can be found in a descriptive abstract [purpose, methods, scope] but it also includes the results and conclusions of the research and the recommendations of the author.
The length varies according to discipline, but an informative abstract is usually no more than 300 words in length. No pretence is made of there being either a balanced or complete picture of the paper and, in fact, incomplete and leading remarks may be used to spark the reader’s interest. In that a highlight abstract cannot stand independent of its associated article, it is not a true abstract and, therefore, rarely used in academic the active voice when possible, but note that much of your abstract may require passive sentence constructions. Get to the point quickly and always use the past tense because you are reporting on research that has been gh it is the first section of your paper, the abstract, by definition, should be written last since it will summarize the contents of your entire paper. To begin composing your abstract, take whole sentences or key phrases from each section and put them in a sequence that summarizes the paper. Before handing in your final paper, check to make sure that the information in the abstract completely agrees with what your have written in the abstract should not contain:Lengthy background information,References to other literature [say something like, "current research shows that... To just an article's abstract does not confirm for the reader that you have conducted a thorough or reliable review of the literature. Knapp bequest this page, the uw-madison writing center writer's handbook offers advice on writing abstracts and answers questions such as: including:Do abstracts vary by discipline? The "abstracts: examples" page, you will also find sample undergraduate symposium abstracts from a variety of is an abstract? Abstract is a concise summary of a larger project (a thesis, research report, performance, service project, etc. That concisely describes the content and scope of the project and identifies the project’s objective, its methodology and its findings, conclusions, or intended er that your abstract is a description of your project (what you specifically are doing) and not a description of your topic (whatever you’re doing the project on). Since abstracts are generally very short, it’s important that you don’t get bogged down in a summary of the entire background of your you are writing your abstract, stop at the end of every sentence and make sure you are summarizing the project you have undertaken rather than the more general abstracts vary by discipline (science, humanities, service, art, or performance)? Do vary from discipline to discipline, and sometimes within cts in the hard sciences and social sciences often put more emphasis on methods than do abstracts in the humanities; humanities abstracts often spend much more time explaining their objective than science abstracts r, even within single disciplines, abstracts often differ. Check with a professor to find out about the expectations for an abstract in your discipline, and make sure to ask for examples of abstracts from your should an abstract include? The fact that abstracts vary somewhat from discipline to discipline, every abstract should include four main types of should state the main objective and rationale of your project,It should outline the methods you used to accomplish your objectives,It should list your project’s results or product (or projected or intended results or product, if your project is not yet complete),And it should draw conclusions about the implications of your should my objective/rationale section look like? First few sentences of your abstract should state the problem you set out to solve or the issue you set out to explore and explain your rationale or motivation for pursuing the project. The problem or issue might be a research question, a gap in critical attention to a text, a societal concern, etc. The purpose of your study is to solve this problem and/or add to your discipline’s understanding of the authors state their thesis or hypothesis in this section of the abstract; others choose to leave it for the “conclusions” should my methods section look like? Section of the abstract should explain how you went about solving the problem or exploring the issue you identified as your main a hard science or social science research project, this section should include a concise description of the process by which you conducted your research. For a visual or performing arts project, it should outline the media you employed and the process you used to develop your should my results/intended results section look like? Section of the abstract should list the results or outcomes of the work you have done so far. If your project is not yet complete, you may still want to include preliminary results or your hypotheses about what those results will should my conclusion section look like? Abstract should close with a statement of the project’s implications and contributions to its field. Often than not, projects are not completely finished by the time presenters need to submit their abstracts. Your abstract doesn’t need to include final results (though if you have them, by all means include them! They can still be useful and informative, and you should include them in your abstract. Instead, focus on what you have done and will do as you finish your project by providing the information we have suggested your abstract is still too long, look for unnecessary adjectives or other modifiers that do not directly contribute to a reader’s understanding of your project. Look for places where you repeat yourself, and cut out all unnecessary should i start writing my abstract? Look specifically for your objectives, methods, results, and re-examining your work, write a rough draft without looking back at the materials you’re abstracting. This will help you make sure you are condensing the ideas into abstract form rather than simply cutting and pasting sentences that contain too much or too little your draft to the writing center to get feedback from a writing instructor. Don’t just cut and paste sentences from your research paper into your abstract; writing that is appropriate for long papers is often too complicated for abstracts. Read your abstract aloud, or ask someone else to read it aloud to you, to see if the abstract is appropriately fluid or too past tense when describing what you have already with a professor in your field to determine whether active or passive voice is more appropriate for your discipline. This type of material takes up too much space and distracts from the overall scope of your kind of feedback should i seek to make sure my abstract is effective?
With a professor or another student in your field throughout the entire process of writing your abstract. Call 263-1992 to set up an y, ask someone you know (a roommate, friend, or family member) who specializes in a different field to read your abstract and point out any confusing points. If you can make your abstract understandable to an intelligent non-specialist, you’ve probably made it effective for the audience of a standard conference or ue reading for examples of abstracts from many disciplines. Works consulted: leo writing abstracts, ©1995, ‘96, ‘97, ’98 the write place; writer’s workshop, university of illinois, urbana, adapted by kitty o. 2007 board of regents of the university of wisconsin wikipedia, the free to: navigation, abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. 1] when used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a manuscript or typescript, acting as the point-of-entry for any given academic paper or patent application. Abstracting and indexing services for various academic disciplines are aimed at compiling a body of literature for that particular terms précis or synopsis are used in some publications to refer to the same thing that other publications might call an "abstract". In management reports, an executive summary usually contains more information (and often more sensitive information) than the abstract does. As such, an abstract is used by many organizations as the basis for selecting research that is proposed for presentation in the form of a poster, platform/oral presentation or workshop presentation at an academic conference. Most literature database search engines index only abstracts rather than providing the entire text of the paper. Full texts of scientific papers must often be purchased because of copyright and/or publisher fees and therefore the abstract is a significant selling point for the reprint or electronic form of the full text. Abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions. Consulting the abstract alone is inadequate for scholarship and may lead to inappropriate medical decisions. Abstract allows one to sift through copious numbers of papers for ones in which the researcher can have more confidence that they will be relevant to his or her research. Once papers are chosen based on the abstract, they must be read carefully to be evaluated for relevance. It is generally agreed that one must not base reference citations on the abstract alone, but the content of an entire ing to the results of a study published in plos medicine, the "exaggerated and inappropriate coverage of research findings in the news media" is ultimately related to inaccurately reporting or over-interpreting research results in many abstract conclusions. 4] a study published in jama concluded that "inconsistencies in data between abstract and body and reporting of data and other information solely in the abstract are relatively common and that a simple educational intervention directed to the author is ineffective in reducing that frequency. 5] other "studies comparing the accuracy of information reported in a journal abstract with that reported in the text of the full publication have found claims that are inconsistent with, or missing from, the body of the full article. Citation needed] however, publishers of scientific articles invariably make abstracts freely available, even when the article itself is not. For example, articles in the biomedical literature are available publicly from medline which is accessible through academic abstract typically outlines four elements relevant to the completed work:The research focus (i. Results/findings of the research; main conclusions and may also contain brief references,[8] although some publications' standard style omits references from the abstract, reserving them for the article body (which, by definition, treats the same topics but in more depth). 9] an abstract may or may not have the section title of "abstract" explicitly listed as an antecedent to content. Abstracts are typically sectioned logically as an overview of what appears in the paper, with any of the following subheadings: background, introduction, objectives, methods, results, conclusions. Citation needed] abstracts in which these subheadings are explicitly given are often called structured abstracts by publishers. In articles that follow the imrad pattern (especially original research, but sometimes other article types), structured abstract style is the norm. Abstracts that comprise one paragraph (no explicit subheadings) are often called unstructured abstracts by publishers. This is an open access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original informative abstract, also known as the complete abstract, is a compendious summary of a paper's substance including its background, purpose, methodology, results, and conclusion. 11][12] usually between 100 and 200 words, the informative abstract summarizes the paper's structure, its major topics and key points. 11] a format for scientific short reports that is similar to an informative abstract has been proposed in recent years. Descriptive abstract, also known as the limited abstract or the indicative abstract, provides a description of what the paper covers without delving into its substance. The late 2000s, due to the influence of computer storage and retrieval systems such as the internet, some scientific publications, primarily those published by elsevier, started including graphical abstracts alongside the text abstracts. It is not intended to be as exhaustive a summary as the text abstract, rather it is supposed to indicate the type, scope, and technical coverage of the article at a glance. 16][17] moreover, some journals also include video abstracts and animated abstracts made by the authors to easily explain their papers.
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18] many scientific publishers currently encourage authors to supplement their articles with graphical abstracts, in the hope that such a convenient visual summary will facilitate readers with a clearer outline of papers that are of interest and will result in improved overall visibility of the respective publication. However, the validity of this assumption have not been thoroughly studied, and a recent study statistically comparing publications with or without graphical abstracts with regard to several output parameters reflecting visibility failed to demonstrate an effectiveness of graphical abstracts for attracting attention to scientific publications. Rating by readers, checklists (not necessary in structured abstracts), and readability measures (such as flesch reading ease).
