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Abstracts are succinct, self-contained versions of larger research projects. They contain essential elements of a research article and they independently summarize the essence of the work. Abstracts are structured towards quick information delivery to readers and are often used by online journals and large databases for indexing.
Abstracts usually range from 100- 400 words and are of 2 types: Descriptive and Informative. Descriptive abstracts are one paragraph long (100 words or less) and they provide a brief outline of the work. Informative abstracts are longer (more than 250 words) and can be divided into 4 distinct sections – objective, methods, results, and conclusions- that correspond to the parent article.
An ‘abstract’, as the name suggests, is obtained by extracting bits of information from the original article. It is important to prioritize what information to include in an abstract. A good abstract often uses lines from one or more developed paragraphs of the main article that can represent the larger meaning of the work. They strictly adhere to the chronology of the parent article and provide logical connections between the sentences used in the abstract. Abstracts must not include any new details and should only serve as a quick summary of the existing information.
Abstracts can be written by the author of the research article or by a writer unaware of the original work. It should usually be easy for authors of research articles or papers to successfully abstract relevant information from their work. However, when a person is unaware of the main research, the steps to writing an abstract that is brief, yet inclusive of all the details, are the following:
Read the research article well but not thoroughly: In order to get familiarized with the research work, the writer should learn about the essence of the article but not get into intricacies of the research work as this could lead to summarization of unwanted details in the abstract.
Structuring the abstract to align with the chronology of the main research article: Unless the abstract is designed to be merely descriptive, the division of an abstract into 4 sections that follow the same order as the parent article would help a reader learn about the research work more easily.
Including main points from the original research article: The introduction should not be longer than 3 sentences and should only include the main objective of the study and the reason for conducting that research. The methodology should touch upon the techniques used and the statistical tests performed, if any. Only some important findings should be reported, and the conclusion should be a crisp overall summary of these findings.
Excluding vague and difficult statements: The abstract should not contain statements that could preclude the understanding of the reader. Sentences or terms that deviate from the flow of the article could create gaps in communicating the actual intent of the original work.
Revising the first draft and fine-tuning the abstract: The first draft should be reviewed to exclude irrelevant details and make it well rounded at the same time.
Thus, writing an abstract involves more than briefly representing the information from the original article. It can be executed successfully by adhering to certain guidelines and not compromising on important details while summarizing the work.
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