How to Write an Abstract

Philip Koopman, Carnegie Mellon University

October, 1997

Abstract

Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it is vital to write a
complete but concise description of your work to entice potential readers into
obtaining a copy of the full paper. This article describes how to write a good computer
architecture abstract for both conference and journal papers. Writers should follow a
checklist consisting of: motivation, problem statement, approach, results, and
conclusions. Following this checklist should increase the chance of people taking the
time to obtain and read your complete paper.

Introduction

Now that the use of on-line publication databases is prevalent, writing a really good
abstract has become even more important than it was a decade ago. Abstracts have
always served the function of "selling" your work. But now, instead of merely
convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must
convince the reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down a copy of the
article from a library (or worse, obtain one after a long wait through inter-library
loan). In a business context, an "executive summary" is often the only piece of a
report read by the people who matter; and it should be similar in content if not tone to
a journal paper abstract.

Checklist: Parts of an Abstract

Despite the fact that an abstract is quite brief, it must do almost as much work as the
multi-page paper that follows it. In a computer architecture paper, this means that it
should in most cases include the following sections. Each section is typically a single
sentence, although there is room for creativity. In particular, the parts may be merged
or spread among a set of sentences. Use the following as a checklist for your next
abstract:

 Motivation:
Why do we care about the problem and the results? If the problem isn't
obviously "interesting" it might be better to put motivation first; but if your
work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely recognized as
important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to
 indicate which piece of the larger problem you are breaking off to work on.
This section should include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the
area, and the impact it might have if successful.
 Problem statement:
What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a
generalized approach, or for a specific situation)? Be careful not to use too
much jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the problem statement
before the motivation, but usually this only works if most readers already
understand why the problem is important.
 Approach:
How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use
simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data
for an actual product? What was the extent of your work (did you look at one
application program or a hundred programs in twenty different programming
languages?) What important variables did you control, ignore, or measure?
 Results:
What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer architecture papers
conclude that something is so many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or
otherwise better than something else. Put the result there, in numbers. Avoid
vague, hand-waving results such as "very", "small", or "significant." If you
must be vague, you are only given license to do so when you can talk about
orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a tension here in that you should
not provide numbers that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand
you don't have room for all the caveats.
 Conclusions:
What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world
(unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign
indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous results are
useful). Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a
particular case?

Other Considerations

An abstract must be a fully self-contained, capsule description of the paper. It can't

assume (or attempt to provoke) the reader into flipping through looking for an
explanation of what is meant by some vague statement. It must make sense all by
itself. Some points to consider include:
  Meet the word count limitation. If your abstract runs too long, either it will be
rejected or someone will take a chainsaw to it to get it down to size. Your
purposes will be better served by doing the difficult task of cutting yourself,
rather than leaving it to someone else who might be more interested in
meeting size restrictions than in representing your efforts in the best possible
manner. An abstract word limit of 150 to 200 words is common.
 Any major restrictions or limitations on the results should be stated, if only by
using "weasel-words" such as "might", "could", "may", and "seem".
 Think of a half-dozen search phrases and keywords that people looking for
your work might use. Be sure that those exact phrases appear in your abstract,
so that they will turn up at the top of a search result listing.
 Usually the context of a paper is set by the publication it appears in (for
example, IEEE Computer magazine's articles are generally about computer
technology). But, if your paper appears in a somewhat un-traditional venue,
be sure to include in the problem statement the domain or topic area that it is
really applicable to.
 Some publications request "keywords". These have two purposes. They are
used to facilitate keyword index searches, which are greatly reduced in
importance now that on-line abstract text searching is commonly used.
However, they are also used to assign papers to review committees or editors,
which can be extremely important to your fate. So make sure that the
keywords you pick make assigning your paper to a review category obvious
(for example, if there is a list of conference topics, use your chosen topic area
as one of the keyword tuples).

Conclusion

Writing an efficient abstract is hard work, but will repay you with increased impact on
the world by enticing people to read your publications. Make sure that all the
components of a good abstract are included in the next one you write.

Further Reading

How to write a good abstract for a scientific paper or conference

presentation
Chittaranjan Andrade

Author information ► Copyright and License information ►

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract
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INTRODUCTION
This paper is the third in a series on manuscript writing skills, published in the Indian Journal of
Psychiatry. Earlier articles offered suggestions on how to write a good case report,[1] and how to
read, write, or review a paper on randomized controlled trials.[2,3] The present paper examines
how authors may write a good abstract when preparing their manuscript for a scientific journal or
conference presentation. Although the primary target of this paper is the young researcher, it is
likely that authors with all levels of experience will find at least a few ideas that may be useful in
their future efforts.
The abstract of a paper is the only part of the paper that is published in conference proceedings.
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. The abstract is the only part of the paper that readers see when
they search through electronic databases such as PubMed. Finally, most readers will
acknowledge, with a chuckle, that when they leaf through the hard copy of a journal, they look at
only the titles of the contained papers. If a title interests them, they glance through the abstract of
that paper. Only a dedicated reader will peruse the contents of the paper, and then, most often
only the introduction and discussion sections. Only a reader with a very specific interest in the
subject of the paper, and a need to understand it thoroughly, will read the entire paper.
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. These
are listed in Table 1.

Table 1

General qualities of a good abstract

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SECTIONS OF AN ABSTRACT
Although some journals still publish abstracts that are written as free-flowing paragraphs, most
journals require abstracts to conform to a formal structure within a word count of, usually, 200–
250 words. The usual sections defined in a structured abstract are the Background, Methods,
Results, and Conclusions; other headings with similar meanings may be used (eg, Introduction in
place of Background or Findings in place of Results). Some journals include additional sections,
such as Objectives (between Background and Methods) and Limitations (at the end of the
abstract). In the rest of this paper, issues related to the contents of each section will be examined
in turn.

Background
This section should be the shortest part of the abstract and should very briefly outline the
following information:

1. What is already known about the subject, related to the paper in question
2. What is not known about the subject and hence what the study intended to examine (or what
the paper seeks to present)

In most cases, the background can be framed in just 2–3 sentences, with each sentence
describing a different aspect of the information referred to above; sometimes, even a single
sentence may suffice. The purpose of the background, as the word itself indicates, is to provide
the reader with a background to the study, and hence to smoothly lead into a description of the
methods employed in the investigation.
Some authors publish papers the abstracts of which contain a lengthy background section. There
are some situations, perhaps, where this may be justified. In most cases, however, a longer
background section means that less space remains for the presentation of the results. This is
unfortunate because the reader is interested in the paper because of its findings, and not because
of its background.
A wide variety of acceptably composed backgrounds is provided in Table 2; most of these have
been adapted from actual papers.[4–9] Readers may wish to compare the content in Table 2 with
the original abstracts to see how the adaptations possibly improve on the originals. Note that, in
the interest of brevity, unnecessary content is avoided. For instance, in Example 1 there is no
need to state “The antidepressant efficacy of desvenlafaxine (DV), a dual-acting antidepressant
drug, has been established…” (the unnecessary content is italicized).

Table 2

Examples of the background section of an abstract

Methods
The methods section is usually the second-longest section in the abstract. It should contain
enough information to enable the reader to understand what was done, and how. Table 3 lists
important questions to which the methods section should provide brief answers.

Table 3

Questions regarding which information should ideally be available in the methods section of an abstract

Carelessly written methods sections lack information about important issues such as sample size,
numbers of patients in different groups, doses of medications, and duration of the study. Readers
have only to flip through the pages of a randomly selected journal to realize how common such
carelessness is.
Table 4 presents examples of the contents of accept-ably written methods sections, modified
from actual publications.[10,11] Readers are invited to take special note of the first sentence of
each example in Table 4; each is packed with detail, illustrating how to convey the maximum
quantity of information with maximum economy of word count.

Table 4

Examples of the methods section of an abstract

Results
The results section is the most important part of the abstract and nothing should compromise its
range and quality. This is because readers who peruse an abstract do so to learn about the
findings of the study. The results section should therefore be the longest part of the abstract and
should contain as much detail about the findings as the journal word count permits. For example,
it is bad writing to state “Response rates differed significantly between diabetic and nondiabetic
patients.” A better sentence is “The response rate was higher in nondiabetic than in diabetic
patients (49% vs 30%, respectively; P<0.01).”
Important information that the results should present is indicated in Table 5. Examples of
acceptably written abstracts are presented in Table 6; one of these has been modified from an
actual publication.[11] Note that the first example is rather narrative in style, whereas the second
example is packed with data.

Table 5

Information that the results section of the abstract should ideally present

Table 6

Examples of the results section of an abstract

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CONCLUSIONS
This section should contain the most important take-home message of the study, expressed in a
few precisely worded sentences. Usually, the finding highlighted here relates to the primary
outcome measure; however, other important or unexpected findings should also be mentioned. It
is also customary, but not essential, for the authors to express an opinion about the theoretical or
practical implications of the findings, or the importance of their findings for the field. Thus, the
conclusions may contain three elements:

1. The primary take-home message

2. The additional findings of importance
3. The perspective

Despite its necessary brevity, this section has the most impact on the average reader because
readers generally trust authors and take their assertions at face value. For this reason, the
conclusions should also be scrupulously honest; and authors should not claim more than their
data demonstrate. Hypothetical examples of the conclusions section of an abstract are presented
in Table 7.

Table 7

Examples of the conclusions section of an abstract

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MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS
Citation of references anywhere within an abstract is almost invariably inappropriate. Other
examples of unnecessary content in an abstract are listed in Table 8.

Table 8

Examples of unnecessary content in a abstract

It goes without saying that whatever is present in the abstract must also be present in the text.
Likewise, whatever errors should not be made in the text should not appear in the abstract (eg,
mistaking association for causality).
As already mentioned, the abstract is the only part of the paper that the vast majority of readers
see. Therefore, it is critically important for authors to ensure that their enthusiasm or bias does
not deceive the reader; unjustified speculations could be even more harmful. Misleading readers
could harm the cause of science and have an adverse impact on patient care.[12] A recent study,
[13] for example, concluded that venlafaxine use during the second trimester of pregnancy may
increase the risk of neonates born small for gestational age. However, nowhere in the abstract did
the authors mention that these conclusions were based on just 5 cases and 12 controls out of the
total sample of 126 cases and 806 controls. There were several other serious limitations that
rendered the authors’ conclusions tentative, at best; yet, nowhere in the abstract were these other
limitations expressed.
As a parting note: Most journals provide clear instructions to authors on the formatting and
contents of different parts of the manuscript. These instructions often include details on what the
sections of an abstract should contain. Authors should tailor their abstracts to the specific
requirements of the journal to which they plan to submit their manuscript. It could also be an
excellent idea to model the abstract of the paper, sentence for sentence, on the abstract of an
important paper on a similar subject and with similar methodology, published in the same journal
for which the manuscript is slated.
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Footnotes
Types of Abstracts
Although you'll see two types of abstracts—informative and descriptive—most writers now
provide informative abstracts of their work.

Descriptive Abstract

A descriptive abstract outlines the topics covered in a piece of writing so the reader can
decide whether to read the entire document. In many ways, the descriptive abstract is
like a table of contents in paragraph form. Unlike reading an informative abstract,
reading a descriptive abstract cannot substitute for reading the document because it does
not capture the content of the piece. Nor does a descriptive abstract fulfill the other
main goals of abstracts as well as informative abstracts do. For all these reasons,
descriptive abstracts are less and less common. Check with your instructor or the editor
of the journal to which you are submitting a paper for details on the appropriate type of
abstract for your audience.

Informative Abstract

An informative abstract provides detail about the substance of a piece of writing because
readers will sometimes rely on the abstract alone for information. Informative abstracts
typically follow this format:

1. Identifying information (bibliographic citation or other identification of the

document)
2. Concise restatement of the main point, including the initial problem or other
background
3. Methodology (for experimental work) and key findings
4. Major conclusions

Informative abstracts usually appear in indexes like Dissertation Abstracts International;

however, your instructor may ask you to write one as a cover sheet to a paper as well.
A More Detailed Comparison of Descriptive vs. Informative

The typical distinction between descriptive and informative is that the descriptive
abstract is like a table of contents whereas the informative abstract lays out the content
of the document. To show the differences as clearly as possible, we compare a shortened
Table of Contents for a 100-page legal argument presented by the FDA and an informative
abstract of the judge's decision in the case.

For More Information

Types of Abstracts
Although you'll see two types of abstracts—informative and descriptive—most writers now
provide informative abstracts of their work.

Descriptive Abstract

A descriptive abstract outlines the topics covered in a piece of writing so the reader can
decide whether to read the entire document. In many ways, the descriptive abstract is
like a table of contents in paragraph form. Unlike reading an informative abstract,
reading a descriptive abstract cannot substitute for reading the document because it does
not capture the content of the piece. Nor does a descriptive abstract fulfill the other
main goals of abstracts as well as informative abstracts do. For all these reasons,
descriptive abstracts are less and less common. Check with your instructor or the editor
of the journal to which you are submitting a paper for details on the appropriate type of
abstract for your audience.

Informative Abstract

An informative abstract provides detail about the substance of a piece of writing because
readers will sometimes rely on the abstract alone for information. Informative abstracts
typically follow this format:

1. Identifying information (bibliographic citation or other identification of the

document)
2. Concise restatement of the main point, including the initial problem or other
background
3. Methodology (for experimental work) and key findings
4. Major conclusions

Informative abstracts usually appear in indexes like Dissertation Abstracts International;

however, your instructor may ask you to write one as a cover sheet to a paper as well.
A More Detailed Comparison of Descriptive vs. Informative

The typical distinction between descriptive and informative is that the descriptive
abstract is like a table of contents whereas the informative abstract lays out the content
of the document. To show the differences as clearly as possible, we compare a shortened
Table of Contents for a 100-page legal argument presented by the FDA and an informative
abstract of the judge's decision in the case.

For More Information