Abstract (summary)

An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or in-depth analysis of a specific topic. It is generally utilized to help readers quickly grasp the paper's purpose. An abstract always appears at the beginning of a manuscript or typescript as the entry point for any academic paper or patent application. Abstracting and indexing services across various academic fields aim to compile a body of literature on that specific subject.

Some publications use the terms précis or synopsis to refer to the same thing that other publications might call an abstract. An executive summary in management reports usually contains more information (and often more sensitive) than the abstract.

Purpose and limitations

Academic literature uses the abstract to communicate complex research succinctly. An abstract may act as a stand-alone entity instead of a full paper. 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 bibliographic databases only index 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. Therefore, the abstract is a significant selling point for the reprint or electronic form of the full text.

The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article, but the full text must be consulted for details on the methodology, complete experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions. Abstracts can occasionally be inconsistent with full reports, which has the potential to mislead clinicians who rely solely on the information provided in the abstract without consulting the full report.

An abstract allows one to sift through copious numbers of papers for which the researcher can have more confidence that they will be relevant to their research. Once papers are chosen based on the abstract, they must be read carefully to be evaluated for relevance.

It is widely accepted that one should not rely solely on the abstract for reference citations but on the entire paper's content. Abstracts may not fully represent the complete report or article, and relying exclusively on the information in the abstract could lead to misunderstandings.

According to the results of a study published in PLOS Medicine, the "exaggerated and inappropriate coverage of research findings in the news media" is ultimately linked to inaccurate reporting or over-interpretation of research results in many abstract conclusions. A study published in JAMA concluded that "inconsistencies in data between the abstract and the body, as well as the reporting of data and other information solely in the abstract, are relatively common, and that a simple educational intervention directed at the authors is ineffective in reducing that frequency." Other studies comparing the accuracy of information reported in a journal abstract with that in the full publication's text have found claims that are inconsistent with or missing from the body of the full article.

According to the Modern Language Association, there are almost no circumstances in which it is acceptable to cite an abstract: "It only makes sense to cite an abstract if you are writing about the abstract as an abstract and not about the work it summarizes: for instance, if you are writing about different styles of writing abstracts used in the sciences and humanities."

History

The history of abstracting dates back to when it became necessary to summarize the content of documents to make the information they contained more accessible. In Mesopotamia during the early second millennium BCE, clay envelopes designed to protect enclosed cuneiform documents from tampering were inscribed either with the full text of the document or a summary. In the Greco-Roman world, many texts were abstracted: summaries of non-fiction works were known as epitomes, and in many cases, the only information about works that have not survived to modernity comes from their surviving epitomes. Similarly, the text of many ancient Greek and Roman plays began with a hypothesis that summarized the play's plot. Non-literary documents were also abstracted: the Tebtunis papyri found in the ancient Egyptian town of Tebtunis contain abstracts of legal documents. During the Middle Ages, the pages of scholarly texts included summaries of their contents as marginalia, as did some manuscripts of the Code of Justinian.

The use of abstracts to summarize scientific work dates back to the early 1800s when the secretary of the Royal Society recorded brief summaries of talks in the minutes of each meeting, referred to as 'abstracts'. The Royal Society abstracts from 1800 to 1837 were later collected and published in the society's journal, Philosophical Transactions, with the first group appearing in 1832. These abstracts typically spanned one or more pages. Other scholarly societies adopted similar practices. The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) may have been the first to publish its abstracts; the Monthly Notices of the RAS, launched in 1827, included, among other items, abstracts of talks given at their monthly meetings, while the full papers were published months or even years later in the Memoirs of the RAS. The RAS abstracts ranged from one to three paragraphs long. In both instances, these early abstracts were prepared by the learned society, rather than by the authors of the papers. Perhaps the earliest example of an abstract published alongside the paper it summarizes was the 1919 paper "On the Irregularities of Motion of the Foucault Pendulum," which appeared in the Physical Review of the American Physical Society, which subsequently began publishing abstracts regularly.

Copyright

Abstracts are protected under copyright law just as any other form of written speech is protected.

Structure

An abstract is often expected to convey a complete story of the paper since, for many readers, the abstract is the only section that will be read. It should enable the reader to provide an elevator pitch of the entire paper.

An academic abstract typically outlines four elements relevant to the completed work:

• The research focus (statement of the problem(s)/specific gap in existing research/research issue(s) addressed);
• The research methods (experimental research, case studies, questionnaires, etc) used to solve the problem;
• The major results/findings of the research; and
• The main conclusions and recommendations (i.e., how the work answers the proposed research problem).

It may also include brief references, although the standard style of some publications omits references from the abstract, keeping them for the article body (which, by definition, addresses the same topics but in greater depth).

Abstract length varies across disciplines and publisher requirements. Typical lengths range from 100 to 500 words, but it exceptionally exceeds one page and sometimes is only a few words. An abstract may or may not include the section title "Abstract" explicitly preceding the content.

Abstracts are sometimes organized logically to provide an overview of the paper, often using subheadings such as Background, Introduction, Objectives, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Abstracts that explicitly include these subheadings are commonly known as structured abstracts. In contrast, abstracts that consist of a single paragraph without specific subheadings are referred to as unstructured abstracts. Abstracts are so significant that the IMRAD format is occasionally revised to AIMRAD.

Abstract types

Informative

The informative abstract, also known as the complete abstract, is a compendious summary of a paper's substance and its background, purpose, methodology, results, and conclusion. Usually between 100 and 200 words, the informative abstract summarizes the paper's structure, its major topics and key points. A format for scientific short reports that is similar to an informative abstract has been proposed in recent years. Informative abstracts may be viewed as standalone documents.

Descriptive

The descriptive abstract, also known as the limited abstract or the indicative abstract, describes what the paper covers without delving into its substance. A descriptive abstract is akin to a table of contents in paragraph form.

Graphical abstracts

Wikipedia article: Graphical abstract

During the late 2000s, influenced by computer storage and retrieval systems like the Internet, some scientific publications, mainly those from Elsevier, began including graphical abstracts alongside text abstracts. The graphics summarize or exemplify the main focus of the article. They are not intended to provide as detailed a summary as the text abstract; instead, they should indicate the type, scope, and technical coverage of the article at a glance. Graphical abstracts have generally been well received by the scientific community. Additionally, some journals include video abstracts and animated abstracts created by the authors to explain their papers more easily. Many scientific publishers currently encourage authors to supplement their articles with graphical abstracts, hoping that this convenient visual summary will give readers a clearer outline of the papers they find interesting and improve the overall visibility of the respective publication. However, the validity of this assumption has not been thoroughly studied. A recent study statistically comparing publications with and without graphical abstracts regarding several output parameters reflecting visibility failed to demonstrate the effectiveness of graphical abstracts in attracting attention to scientific publications.

Abstract quality assessment

Various methods can be used to assess abstract quality, such as ratings by readers, checklists, and readability measures.

See also

• Abstract (legal)
• Abstract (summary)
• Introduction
• Preamble
• Preface
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Afterword
• Conclusion
• Epigraph
• Epilogue
• Postface
• Postscript

Further reading

Finkelstein, Leo Jr. (2004). Pocket Book of Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists (2. ed.). London: McGraw-Hill Education – Europe. ISBN 978-0072468496. ISO 214: Documentation — Abstracts for publications and documentation.

Jump to: Main Page • Micropedia • Macropedia • Icons • Sexology • Time Line • History • Life Lessons • Links • Help
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root