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The Research Article Abstract is regarded as the typical representative of the genre, and has greater prominence. The main function is to summarise and highlight the main points so that the prospective reader can decide if the full article is worth reading in full. It has to make independent sense.

The length of a research article abstract is usually set at between 200-400 words.

Some writers distinguish between informative and descriptive abstracts.

Exercise 1:

Read the following abstracts and decide which is which:

Abstract 3

Abstract 4

 

 

  • What do you think the differences are?

 

You can see how some writers describe the features of the two types of abstracts on these webpages:

Online Technical Writing: Abstracts

LEO: Literacy Education Online Writing Abstracts

OWL: Writing Report Abstracts

Different types of abstracts are suitable in different contexts but in most cases the best kind of research abstract is the informative one because it includes the following elements:

      • Objectives and Scope of the research
      • Methods
      • Major Results
      • Principal Conclusions

     

This structure largely corresponds to the macro structure of the original research article, often referred to as IMRAD, which is an acronym for the traditional section headings:

Introduction
Methods (or Materials and Methods)
Results
And
Discussion (and/or Conclusions)
 

Different disciplines, however, will structure research abstracts in different ways and require different sort of information. An arts field abstract will obviously differ from a physical science abstract.

The order of the typical elements included in a research abstract is as follows:

 

B = some background information

P = the purpose of the study and its scope

M = some information about the methodology used in the study

R = the most important results of the study

C = a statement of conclusion or recommendation

 

 

Look at the text analysis of two abstracts from:

Asian Institute of Technology

Exercise 2:

Now practise analysing the following abstract:

Abstract 4

Identify the different elements (B / P / M / R / C) in the abstract.

 

  • Are all the elements present in the abstract?

 

 

Exercise 3:

Order the different sentences from the abstract following the typical structure:

Reorganise an original abstract

 

For indexing purposes most journals, specially e-journals, ask authors to provide a list of keywords.

 

 

 
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