Unit 2. Guide: Writing Abstract
Text 1. The concept of Abstract
Text 2. Abstracts in Scientific Literature
Text 3. Sections of an Abstract
Text 4. Types of Abstracts
Text 5. How to write scientific abstract
Text 1. The concept of Abstract
Active Vocabulary
1. abstract – an abstract of article, document, or speech is a short piece of writing that gives the main points of it.
Synonyms:
2. outline – a general explanation or description of something.
3. précis /preısi/ – a short written or spoken account of something, which gives the important points but not the details.
4. synopsis – a summary of a longer piece of writing or work.
5. brief – a condensed written summary or abstract.
6. apercu – a short synopsis.
7. epitome /ı`pıtǝmı/ – a brief abstract (as of an article or book).
8. expertise – a special skill or knowledge that is acquired by training, study, or practice.
9. thesis / Ɵisıs/ – a long piece of writing based on your own ideas and research that you do as part of a university degree.
10. review – a report in the media in which someone gives their opinion of something such a new book or film.
11. proceeding – you can refer to a written record of the discussions at a meeting or conference as the proceedings.
12. topic – a particular subject that you discuss or write about.
13. pertinent – relevant to a particular subject.
14. to gauge – if you gauge people`s actions, feelings, or intentions in a particular situation, you carefully consider and judge them.
15. index – if you index a book or a collection of information, you make an alphabetical list of the items in it.
16. bogged down – if you get bogged down in something, it prevents you from making progress or getting something done.
17. to submit – if you submit a proposal, report, or request to someone, you formally send it to them so that they can consider it or decide about it.
18. biased – if something is biased towards one thing, it is more concerned with it than with other things.
The word abstractcomes from the Latin abstractum, which means a condensed form of a longer piece of writing. Abstracts, like all summaries, cover the main points of a piece of writing. Unlike executive summaries written for non-specialist audiences, abstracts use the same level of technical language and expertise found in the article itself. An abstract is a brief summary of a research paper, journal article, thesis, review, conference proceeding and other academic or legal document. The abstract is the last item that you write, but the first thing people read when they want to have a quick overview of the whole paper. In publications such as journals, it is found at the beginning of the text, but in academic assignments, it is placed on a separate preliminary page. Abstracts typically serve five main goals:
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• Help readers decide if they should read an entire article.
Readers use abstracts to see if a piece of writing interests them or relates to a topicthey're working on. Rather than tracking down hundreds of articles, readers rely on abstracts to decide quickly if an article is pertinent. Equally important, readers use abstracts to help them gauge the sophistication or complexity of a piece of writing. If the abstract is too technical or too simplistic, readers know that the article will also be too technical or too simplistic.
• Help readers and researchers remember key findings on a topic.
Even after reading an article, readers often keep abstracts to remind them of which sources support conclusions. Because abstracts include complete bibliographic citations, they are helpful when readers begin writing up their research and citing sources.
• Help readers understand a text by acting as a pre-reading outline of key points.
Like other pre-reading strategies, reading an abstract before reading an article helps readers anticipate what's coming in the text itself. Using an abstract to get an overview of the text makes reading the text easier and more efficient.
• Index articles for quick recovery and cross-referencing.
Even before computers made indexingeasier, abstracts helped librarians and researchers find information more easily. With so many indexes now available electronically, abstracts with their keywords are even more important because readers can review hundreds of abstracts quickly to find the ones most useful for their research. Moreover, cross-referencing through abstracts opens up new areas of research that readers might not have known about when they started researching a topic.
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• Allow supervisors to review technical work without becoming bogged down in details.
Authors are often asked to submit abstracts when they submit research papers. 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. Abstractors are required to have both a professional training and general knowledge about the subject area.
Abstracts are often collected into volumes and must be able to stand alone. They are read by parties who are trying to decide whether or not to read the main document. Sometimes they are read by people who want to get the big picture before reading the main document. Abstracts can save readers an immense amount of time.
Thus, 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. For this, the abstract must have some general qualities.
• The abstract is a condensed and concentrated version of the full text of the research manuscript. It should be sufficiently representative of the paper if read as a standalone document.
• The abstract must be as detailed as possible within the word count limits specified by the journal to which the paper is intended to be submitted. This will require good précis writing skills, as well as a fine judgment about what information is necessary and what is not.
• The abstract must contain as much information as possible on the analysis related to the primary and secondary outcome measures.
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