Writing abstracts-英文文章文献写作

Another way of looking at the abstract’s components
• Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results? The impact your work might have. • Problem statement: What problem are you trying to solve? Put this first if readers know the importance already. • Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem?
Engineering abstracts
• Sometimes they start with a significant finding and then describe the method • A statement of the gap or weakness in past research that you are “solving” may not fit in the abstract of a published paper, but needs to be included in your thesis abstract
Thesis and Journal Writing
Hanyang University
Professor Ted Greiner
Writing abstracts
Intro to the abstract
• The major purpose of an abstract is to summarize, in one clear and concise paragraph, the purpose, experimental approach, principal results, and major conclusions of the work. • Usually the abstract cannot include any graphics, but see journal “instructions for authors,” because among chemistry journals there are exceptions
All good abstracts have a structure. However, “structured abstracts” are those with a particular structure required by the journal editor. A structured abstract is divided into sections with headings in bold print, like the following example. Note that other journals may use different headings. Example: “Advice to use topical or oral ibuprofen for chronic knee pain in older people” Objective To determine whether older patients with chronic knee pain should be advised to use topical or oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Design Randomised controlled trial and patient preference study. Setting 26 general practices. Participants People aged ≥ 50 with knee pain: 282 in randomised trial and 303 in preference study. Interventions Advice to use topical or oral ibuprofen. Primary outcome measures WOMAC osteoarthritis index, major and minor adverse effects. Results Changes in WOMAC scores at 12 months were equivalent. The difference (topical minus oral) was two points (95% confidence interval –2 to 6). The oral group had more respiratory adverse effects (17% v 7%,95% confidence interval for difference –17% to –2%). Conclusions Advice to use oral or topical preparations has an equivalent effect on knee pain over one year, and there are more minor side effects with oral NSAIDs. Topical NSAIDs may be a useful alternative to oral NSAIDs.
What an abstract does
• The abstract should inform the reader in a succinct manner as to what the article is about and what the major contributions are • It is more general than a summary and conclusions section • Its style is more staccato • It tells the reader what to expect, summarizes what the important contribution is, and entices the reader to look further but does not withhold information
The abstract’s components
• An abstract usually starts with a general introduction or background statement • Sometimes it then presents the hypothesis or problem statement or the purpose of the paper • Usually it gives a very short statement on the method(s) used (longer in a thesis) • Then it always presents the major results and contributions of the paper
Another way of looking at the abstract’s components
• Results: What's the answer? Use numbers unless you can talk about orders of magnitude of improvement that you have achieved. A challenge to make this clear because you have no space for caveats. • Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer? How generalizable or specific are your results?
The abstract’s components
• It usually concludes by summarizing the conclusions and implications; briefer than the summary and conclusions section • May give recommendations (eg for codes or standards) • It almost never includes references • Some journals discourage the use of mathematical symbols in the abstract
wenku.baidu.com Importance of the abstract
• It is usually a single paragraph that precedes an article or book chapter • Conferences usually ask for abstracts • The number of words or characters is limited, sometimes strictly • Abstracts are often published separately and alone and thus must stand on their own • All the words in the abstract (and this is likely true only for the abstract) may be indexed (as will the title and the key words)
What an abstract does
• In engineering, an abstract gives detailed quantitative results. • This level of detail lets the reader know what to expect without overwhelming him with details, derivations, or sophisticated results • The reader is equipped to safely set the article aside or delve deeper to uncover the details.
What a conference abstract conveys
• Sometimes, not much, that is when a conference wants to include “breaking news” about ongoing research and asks for abstracts many months in advance. • Then they tend to say things like “the findings will be presented” • Conference editors/committees often choose just a few for presentation and ask the rest to do posters; sometimes each poster gets a time when it is presented to a small group