Journal articles, abstract

Enables easy access to scientific literature, journals, articles, abstracts, citations, and the like. 

Figure 7.1 A visual representation of the move structure for a typical journal article abstract.

This chapter focuses on writing a conference abstract, not to be confused with a journal article abstract, which was addressed in chapter 7. A conference abstract is submitted in response to a Call for Abstracts issued by conference organizers, typically 3-6 months before the conference takes place. The abstract is reviewed and, if accepted, allows the authors to present a contributed paper (as either an oral or poster presentation) at a conference session. Only accepted papers may be presented at a conference whether they are oral or poster presentations is a decision usually made by conference organizers. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to do the following ... 

Like the journal article abstract, most conference abstracts have strict word limitations (typically between 150 and 200 words). Adherence to this limit is expected your abstract will likely be rejected if the limit is exceeded. Many other formatting specifications must also be followed. For example, most instructions include rules for formatting your title, author list, graphics, and special characters (e.g., pm, a, <, m ). The reason for such specificity is that your abstract, if accepted, will be printed (as is) in conference proceedings. Adherence to these guidelines by all authors ensures that the proceedings appear uniform and professional. 

Because they both include the word abstract , you may think that a conference abstract is just like a journal article abstract. In fact, a conference abstract combines features of both the Introduction section and abstract of a journal article. Like the Introduction, a conference abstract introduces work that will be presented (in this case, at a conference). Like the journal article abstract, a conference abstract highlights signihcant findings. 

Abbreviations and acronyms As with the journal article abstract, most... 

Keywords A list of keywords is not included in a conference abstract (as it is in a journal article abstract), but it is wise to use keywords in the abstract text and title. The inclusion of keywords facilitates electronic searches, making the work more accessible to others interested in your held. 

The Project Summary is not the same as a journal article abstract (chapter 7) or a conference abstract (chapter 8), even though the Project Summary is sometimes called an abstract. The Project Summary summarizes work that has yet to be done and is written for a scientific audience. The journal article abstract summarizes work that has already been done and is written for an expert audience. The conference abstract describes work in progress and is written for a scientific audience. Because the Project Summary reiterates the major aspects of the proposed work, it is written last, after the Projection Description has been completed. For that reason, this chapter comes last in the research proposal module. 

See chapters 7 and 8 for details on journal article abstracts and conference abstracts, respectively. 

Differences between a Project Summary, journal article abstract, and conference abstract... 

JOURNAL ARTICLES ABSTRACTS Index of Drug Testing journal articles abstracts 0 ... 

Erowid Salvia Vault Journal Articles Abstracts ... 

An argument can be made that the isolated abstract format is not a good vehicle for the publication of clinical trials. Indeed, the inclusion and exclusion criteria in most clinical protocols alone exceed the word limit of most journal article abstracts. Too often, the publication of an abstract or poster is a criterion used by companies to justify the time and expense of sending staff to a conference authors then generate and submit unimportant abstracts, principally for use as tickets to venues that attract them for ulterior reasons. 

Quite naturally there is a certain amount of arbitrariness in this system, although the lUPAC nomenclature is followed. The preferred Chemical Abstracts index names for chemical substances have been, with very few exceptions, continued unchanged (since 1972) as set forth in the Ninth Collective Index Guide and in a journal article. Any revisions appear in the updated Index Guide new editions appear at 18-month intervals. Appendix VI is of particular interest to chemists. Reprints of the Appendix may be purchased from Chemical Abstracts Service, Marketing Division, P.O. Box 3012, Columbus, Ohio 43210. 

Journal articles and patents contain virtually all of the original work in organic chemistry. However, if this were all, if there were no indexes, abstracts, review articles, and other secondary sources, the literature would be unusable because it is so vast that no one could hope to find anything in particular. Fortunately, the secondary sources are excellent. There are various kinds and the categories tend to merge. Our classification is somewhat arbitrary. 

Evidence-Based Medicine. Evidence-Based Medicine [45] consists of summarized abstracts of articles on family medicine, internal medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, psychiatry, and anesthesiology with commentary by clinical experts. More than 50 peer-reviewed medical journals are abstracted. Also included are key selections from ACP Journal Club. Evidence-Based Medicine is commercially available however, its distribution is restricted and does not include North, Central, or South America. 

Chemical Abstracts. Chemical Abstracts (CA) [23] is a collection of chemical information, with nearly 16 million abstracts of journal articles, patents, and other documents. In addition, the CAOLD database contains over 3 million abstracts from 1907-1966. Sources for CA include more than 8000 journals, patents, technical reports, books, conference proceedings, and dissertations from around the world. CA patent database covers 29 national patent offices and two international bodies. About 16% of the CA database, approximately 2.5 million records, are from the patent literature. Chemical Abstracts is commercially available from the American Chemical Society in several formats. 

Medline (Medical Information Online) is a data base containing approximately 7 million references to biomedical journal articles published since 1966. These articles, usually with an English abstract, are from over 3000 journals. Coverage of previous years (back to 1966) is provided by back files, searchable on-line, that total some 3.5 million references. 

Over the last decade, the growth in SPMD research and applications has been remarkable. Reports on this work have been in the form of graduate degree (masters and Ph.D.) theses, abstracts from presentations, laboratory reports, journal articles and book chapters. Herein, we provide the reader with a list of SPMD related peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. However, we do not claim that this list is complete and apologize in advance to authors of articles not included. In light of the current rate of the publication of SPMD related articles, additional papers will undoubtedly be available by the time this book is published. 

Although the bulk of the journal article is written for experts, a few sections are often accessible to less sophisticated readers. For example, general or summative remarks in the abstract, Introduction section, and conclusions are often accessible to a scientihc audience, allowing those readers to grasp the key concepts of the work. Similarly, many chemistry journals include features (e.g., book reviews, editorials, and news articles) that are written specihcally for scientihc and general audiences. 

The IMRD format, together with the finer organizational structure (moves) and language of the journal article, helps readers quickly locate the content that they seek. As a developing writer, it is important that you learn to present your content in these expected ways and places. As readers scan your paper, they should be able to quickly locate your topic, the nature of your work, the methods you used, and your conclusions. The use of keywords in your title and abstract and throughout the body of your paper is especially important. Because so many scientists now turn to computer-based technologies and search engines to find pertinent and current information, if you fail to use expected keywords, your work may be missed even if relevant. 

This chapter addresses how to write abstracts and titles for journal articles. Both the abstract and title provide succinct, informative (not descriptive) summaries of the research. To this end, they are usually written in the final stages of the writing process. After completing this chapter, you should be able to do the... 

When compared to the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections of a journal article, the title and abstract are quite short the title usually has fewer... 

Titles and abstracts are read by more readers than any other section of the journal article. 

Read and review the titles and abstracts of the journal articles that you collected during your literature search (started in chapter 2). How well do they capture the purpose, principal results, and conclusions of the work ... 

The major purpose of the title is to inform readers about the specific content of the work, ideally identifying both what was studied and how it was studied. 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. In most journals, the abstract includes only text in some journals (e.g.. The Journal of Organic Chemistry and Organic Letters), the abstract also includes a graphic. Importantly, both the abstract and title must be able to stand on their own. This is because these two sections (and only these two sections) are reprinted by abstracting services (e.g.. Chemical Abstracts Service, or CAS) in separate documents for literature searches. Also, many chemists read titles and abstracts to obtain a quick overview of the journal s contents but do not read the articles in full. 

The Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) reprints titles and abstracts from refereed journal articles to facilitate searches of the chemical literature. 

The moves and submoves of the abstract directly parallel moves found in other sections of the journal article. Despite these similarities, it is important that you do not repeat yourself in the abstract. Effective writers resist the temptation to simply copy sentences from other sections of their papers to use in their abstracts. 

In this section, we read and analyze abstracts taken from chemistry journal articles. (Later in the chapter, we focus on titles.) We include passages from abstracts (P1-P17) and entire abstracts (excerpts 7B-7H) to illustrate both individual moves and how abstract moves work together as a whole. In part 1, we examine selections move by move. Because abstracts in organic chemistry journals vary slightly from other chemistry journals, we consider them separately at the end of part 1. In part 2, we examine writing practices that span the entire abstract. 

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