Purpose and qualities of abstracts - Abstract: the heart of your paper - Paper structure and purpose

Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Purpose and qualities of abstracts
Abstract: the heart of your paper
Paper structure and purpose

Purpose of the abstract for the reader

· It clarifies the title.

· It provides convincing details on the writer’s scientific contribution.

· It helps the reader decide whether the rest of the article is worth buying or downloading for further reading.

· It helps the reader rapidly gather competitive intelligence.

Purpose of the abstract for the writer

· Because it has more keywords than the title, the abstract allows the paper to be found more easily.

· It states the writer’s contribution in more precise detail than the title to persuade the reader to read the rest of the paper.

· When written early in the life of a paper, it guides the writing and keeps the writer focused.

The abstract is NOT to be used for the following:

1)To mention the work of other researchers, except when your paper is an extension of a (single) previously published paper, yours or that of another author.

2)To justify why the problem you have chosen is significant: the significance of your impact on the problem is what really matters.

Qualities of an abstract

Image

Image

What do you think of your abstract? Does it have enough of the qualities mentioned here? Is the contribution you mention in your abstract consistent with that claimed by the title? A quality abstract makes a good first impression. Spend some time reviewing it.