A short tutorial to write an Abstract

What is Abstract?
A lot of researchers need to write abstract for their research papers, in order to get them published
through journals or publications, but they don’t know where to start.

Abstract is as a short description of (a research paper, a thesis, research report, etc.) to help the reader
clearly understand the purpose, problem, methods, results, and conclusion of the research.

Who Need Abstract?

 Researchers submitting their articles to be published in journals.
 Post-graduate Students after completing their Ph.D. dissertation or M.A. thesis.
 Researchers submitting their papers to participate in a conference.
 Anyone wants to apply for research grants.

Types of Abstracts
 Types of abstracts

1. The Descriptive Abstract

Refers to the abstracts that describe the work, without judgments, and are fairly short from 100: 200
words.

Contain information about:

 Purpose of work
 Goal of the work
 Methods of the research
 Keywords of the work

Doesn’t contain information about:

 Results
 Conclusion

2. The Informative Abstract

The most common type of abstracts, as it gives an overview of everything in the research paper, including
all the important results. An Informative Abstract length depends on the full research, and usually more
than 10% of the Actual work.

Parts of the Informative Abstract:

 Purpose
 Case study or problem
 Methodology
 Results
 Conclusions

3. Critical Abstract
This type of abstracts is rarely used, as it provides a judgement about the research’s validity or reliability,
in addition to the description and the main findings of the research.

Parts of the Critical Abstract:

 Purpose
 Methodology
 Critique of the research
 Results
 Before start, keep in mind

Writing good abstract

 The purpose of Abstract

It gives us a background on the idea of the research and clarifies the procedures and the definition of the
proper statement and aims to clarify the methodology to reach the solution.

You should ask yourself these three questions: What? Why? How? What is the problem? Why are you
writing this and why do you care about the problem? And how can you solve the problem?

 The Guidelines
If an abstract is written for a journal, the author has to keep the writing style of that specific journal in
mind.

 ABCs of a great abstract

1. Accuracy: great abstract must include accurate information from the research’s full paper.
2. Brevity: great abstract gets straight to the point, in a scientific manner.
3. Clarity: acronyms and abbreviations shouldn’t exist in great abstract without explanation.
 Writing an Abstract

How to write an abstract?

Either your abstract is about a scientific research paper, or a literature article, it will contain major parts,
however there are some parts depend on the type of abstract.

Purpose
The author should answer some questions during writing this part:

 What are the author’s reasons to do this study?

 What is the importance of this study?
 What makes this study useful for a reader?
Also, the reasons for writing this must be interesting enough for the author to get the writing motivation as
well as to engage the readers .

Problem
In this section, the author should write the problem the research is trying to solve or explain. The following
questions may help the author in writing this part.

 What is the main problem ?

 How can the author solve the problem?
 Methodology
In this part the author may discuss the methods he/she used in the research, or briefly review the
literature. The following questions may help the author in writing this part.

 What are the main variables in the research?

 What is the main approach of the research?
 What is the procedure the author aims to follow to reach the solutions?

Conclusion
In the last part of the abstract, the author explains the main findings of the research and the added value
of the research paper.

Useful Tips

Follow the instructions

If you are writing for a journal with a specific style guides, follow the instructions.

Write from scratch

The abstract should be written with new phrases and vocabulary differ from the ones the Author’s have
already used in the research paper.

Revision
After finishing the abstract, the author should revise it several times and remove any redundant words.

Avoid
 Using the first person pronouns, because the abstract is about the research not the author.
 Including any references in the abstract, however it’s okay to include relevant numerical data
.. So let us all GET SET
GO and ENJOY an
abstract which should
immediately get selected
in renowned
conferences…journals....
publications…