Writing the Abstract and Title

The purpose of the abstract is to inform, to give away the punch line right at the start, and to let your readers decide whether they want to read the full document. Scientific writing is not like mystery writing in which the results are hidden until the end. 

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 

As you work through the chapter, you will write an abstract and title for your own paper. The Writing on Your Own tasks throughout the chapter will guide you step by step as you do the following  

7A Read titles and abstracts 7B Prepare to write 7C Write your abstract 7D Write your title 7E Practice peer review 7F Fine-tune your abstract and title 

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 

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What parts of this chapter have helped you the most in writing your abstract and title How did you use chapter information to assist you in your writing ... 

Also explain the following to a friend in chemistry who has not yet given much thought to the final steps of finishing a journal article, specifically writing an abstract and composing a title ... 

Reflect on what you have learned about writing an abstract, a title, and the journal article as a whole, now that you are just about done writing your own journal article. Select one of the reflection tasks below and write a thoughtful and thorough response. 

Using the organizational structure developed in Writing on Your Own task 8B, write the first full draft of your conference abstract, title, and author list. Remember to define abbreviations and acronyms that are critical to understanding your work, incorporate keywords into your abstract and title, and use tense and voice in conventional ways. Avoid the use of citations. Make sure that you write for the appropriate audience. 

What have you learned from the experience of writing your conference abstract and title that will help you the most in the future ... 

Altogether, approximately 50% of all the patents are based in chemistry, pharmacy and neighbouring fields. Derwent excerpts patents from 30 countries and two international patent organizations. Like Chemical Abstracts Service, but unlike almost all other patent databases, Derwent writes own titles and abstracts. This abstract is worked out on the basis of the abstract contained in the patent itself as well as relating claims and descriptions. Sometimes it is possible to get more than one abstract. 

As you work through this module (chapters 2-7), you will be writing your own Journal-guallty paper. Your finished paper will Rewritten for an expert audience, be organized into appropriate sections (title, abstract. Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections, and references), and contain at least one table or figure. The final paper must... 

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. 

Using parts 2 and 3 of the Peer Review Memo on the Write Like a Chemist Web site, review the title and abstract below. Provide specihc suggestions in your memo to help your friend improve the title and abstract. (The title and abstract below are adapted from an original source, noted in the Instructor s Answer Key.)... 

The results are collected in Table 4. In 2006, the most recent year for which complete data is available at the time of writing, 228 publications referred to both MP2 and DFT This represents over 25% of the 904 publications with MP2 " in the title and/or keywords and/or abstract of publications in 2006. 172 publications in the same year refer to MP2 and about 19% of those with AfP2 in... 

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