THE SCIENTISTS’ FORUM
Writing a great abstract: tips from an Editor
Daniela Ruffell
FEBS Letters Editorial Office, Heidelberg University Biochemistry Centre, Germany
One day, I looked up the word ‘abstract’ in the dic-
tionary and found the following [1]:
ab
stract (ab-strakt0 , 
ab0 str
akt0 ).
adj.
1 Considered apart from concrete existence
2 Not applied or practical; theoretical
3 Difficult to understand; abstruse
n. (ab0 strakt0 )
1 A statement summarizing the important points of
a text
2 Something abstract
How paradoxical that the word commonly used for
the summary of a scientific article (as in the first defi-
nition of the noun), should also mean ‘abstruse’, ‘diffi-
cult to understand’, and ‘apart from concrete
existence’ when used as an adjective!
As Editor of FEBS Letters, I have read a great many
abstracts through articles submitted to the journal,
FEBS Letters (2018) ª 2018 Federation of European Biochemical Societies
presubmission enquiries, shortlisting of conference
abstracts for poster prizes, and running abstract-writing
workshops. I have come across abstracts of all kinds,
some among them fitting better with the adjective than
the noun. So with time I have learned to appreciate the
contradictory meanings of the word ‘abstract’.
It is not uncommon for early career scientists to
underestimate the importance of an abstract. There is
a tendency to see it as an opening paragraph to a
paper or a summary placed at the top corner of a con-
ference poster, but the importance of an abstract
reaches far beyond. Let’s analyze them a bit further.
Article abstracts
Even before your article is published, the abstract is of
utmost importance. The Editor of the journal who
receives the submission will always read the abstract
before delving in the depths of the paper and get a
first impression of your work. If your article survives
triage by the Editorial Office, it will be sent out to
review. When Reviewers are invited to review a paper,
they do not have access to the full-text article until
they accept the invitation. So, their decision of
whether to review a paper or not is entirely based on
the abstract!
After publication, the abstract is crucial for the suc-
cess of your paper. When scientists search for informa-
tion on PubMed, they get a list of article titles as a
result (so titles are important too!) and, based on what
matches best with what they are looking for, they click
on it and access the abstract. Thus, your abstract is
the front door to your paper. It has to give readers all
the most important elements about your study, and it
has to make them want to read your full-text article.
After all, your goal is to ensure that your paper has
the best possible outreach within the community. A
well-written abstract will attract more readers to your
article and increase the chances of your work getting
cited.
Right, got it. But how do I write a good abstract?
Here, are some tips on how to write a good research
paper abstract.
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The Scientists’ Forum
1 Catch the reader’s attention with a good title.
A good title is short and incisive. It contains
essential keywords and states the main find-
ing of the study, using a verb in the active
form.
2 Familiarize the reader with the background.
Write a brief introduction providing essential
information for the reader to understand
what the general topic is and what was
known so far.
3 Explain what you set out to investigate.
Clearly and concisely identify the gap in
knowledge that you aim to fill.
4 Report the main findings. Only state the main
results and briefly mention the techniques
used to obtain them. Make sure to make a
clear distinction between what was known
and what is your novel finding.
5 Draw a conclusion. Indicate what your find-
ings mean and the implications they may
have in the field.
In general, you must keep in mind that search engi-
nes use keywords to find information on the Internet.
Effective keywords are terms that are commonly used
in your field and specific to your article (i.e. used more
than twice in the article text). Very general keywords,
such as ‘protein’ or ‘DNA’, will not be helpful. To
optimize the ‘searchability’ of your study, you have to
make sure all the important keywords are in there.
You can make a list of the main keywords related to
your paper, and then test them in a search engine to
verify whether you get papers in your field of interest
as a result. Once you have optimized your list, make
sure that the terms are all included in the abstract,
with the most important ones mentioned in the title.
Remember that an abstract needs to be brief and to
the point: the longer it gets, the more readers you will
lose along the way! Among the things to avoid are
run-on sentences, references and specific measure-
ments.
Conference abstracts
When you present a poster at a conference, you nor-
mally submit an abstract upon registration. That
abstract is not just a placeholder for your poster. Con-
ference organizers sift the abstracts to pick the best
among them for brief talks or to select recipients of
2 FEBS Letters (2018) ª 2018 Federation of European Biochemical Societies
travel awards. Journal Editors go through them to
shortlist candidates for poster prizes. Conference dele-
gates look at the abstract book to select the posters
they want to go and see. A badly written abstract
might make you miss out on any of these chances!
The guidelines provided above are generally valid
for writing any abstract. However, when you present a
conference poster, you have not necessarily collected
sufficient data to draw your conclusions and make a
nice round story. Although you should be able to pre-
sent a substantial (i.e. meaningful) amount of work in
your poster, it is yet unpublished work-in-progress
material and, therefore, inherently incomplete.
Abstract writing can be rather tricky depending on
how far you have come with your project. Let us see
how the procedure can be adapted to the situation.
1 Write a good title. If the main finding you
currently have does not render the purpose of
the study, you may consider stating your
main goal in the title. Keep it as short as pos-
sible, include essential keywords and try to
grab the reader’s interest. You can also put
your title in the form of a question.
2 Familiarize the reader with the background.
Write a brief introduction providing essential
information for the reader to understand
what the general topic is and what was
known so far.
3 Explain what you set out to investigate.
Clearly and concisely specify the gap in
knowledge that you aim to fill.
4 Report the main findings. Communicate your
main results and briefly mention the tech-
niques used to obtain them. Make sure to
make a clear distinction between what was
known and what your novel finding is. If
your results are rather thin at the moment,
you can describe the approach you plan to
use to address the pending questions.
5 Conclusions and future perspectives. You may
not be able to draw definite conclusions with
the data you have collected so far, but you
can briefly discuss which possible conclusions
you envisage with the data you already have.
Mind you do not overspeculate! You should
finish by explaining why the final results will
be important to the field.

Again, keywords are not to be neglected. Meeting
delegates may search for specific keywords in the
abstract book online.
To polish up your work, we recommend revising spel-
ling and syntax, checking the accuracy of author names
and affiliations, and asking colleagues for feedback on
your work. Always check the submission guidelines of
the conference you will attend, as they may have specific
formatting and submission requirements.
Since registration and abstract submission normally
take place months before the event, it is not uncom-
mon that in the meantime you collect important
results, which you had not mentioned in the abstract.
The new data cannot be added to the abstract after
submission, but it can certainly be mentioned in the
poster. If possible, try to word your abstract in a way
that allows a certain flexibility regarding the full con-
tent of your poster. However, it is not a good idea to
mention data that you expect to have by the date of
FEBS Letters (2018) ª 2018 Federation of European Biochemical Societies
The Scientists’ Forum
the event, but do not yet have at the moment of
abstract submission. Any number of things may not
turn out to be as you expected, and it is not worth the
risk.
Hopefully, by following the guidelines above, you
will have elicited enough interest in the meeting dele-
gates and/or organizers to come to your poster and
engage in a fruitful discussion. Good luck!
Reference
1 American Heritage dictionary of the English language,
5th edn. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company.
Correspondence
D. Ruffell, Heidelberg University Biochemistry Centre, Im
Neuenheimer Feld 328, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
E-mail: daniela.ruffell@bzh.uni-heidelberg.de
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