|
Читайте также: |
Abstract is a concise representation of the contents of a publication or an article, accompanied by adequate bibliographical descriptions to enable the publication or the article to be traced.
These are the basic components of an abstract in any discipline:
1) Motivation/problem statement: Why do we care about the problem? What practical, scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your research filling?
2) Methods/procedure/approach: What did you actually do to get your results? (e.g. analyzed 3 novels, completed a series of 5 oil paintings, interviewed 17 students)
3) Results/findings/product: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you learn/invent/create?
4) Conclusion/implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem/gap identified in step 1?
An abstract must be a fully self-contained, capsule description of the paper. It can't assume (or attempt to provoke) the reader into flipping through looking for an explanation of what is meant by some vague statement. It must make sense all by itself. Some points to consider include:
Meet the word count limitation. If your abstract runs too long, either it will be rejected or someone will take a chainsaw to it to get it down to size. Your purposes will be better served by doing the difficult task of cutting yourself, rather than leaving it to someone else who might be more interested in meeting size restrictions than in representing your efforts in the best possible manner. An abstract word limit of 150 to 200 words is common.
Any major restrictions or limitations on the results should be stated, if only by using "weasel-words" such as "might", "could", "may", and "seem".
Think of a half-dozen search phrases and keywords that people looking for your work might use. Be sure that those exact phrases appear in your abstract, so that they will turn up at the top of a search result listing.
Usually the context of a paper is set by the publication it appears in (for example, IEEE Computer magazine's articles are generally about computer technology). But, if your paper appears in a somewhat un-traditional venue, be sure to include in the problem statement the domain or topic area that it is really applicable to.
Some publications request "keywords". These have two purposes. They are used to facilitate keyword index searches, which are greatly reduced in importance now that on-line abstract text searching is commonly used. However, they are also used to assign papers to review committees or editors, which can be extremely important to your fate. So make sure that the keywords you pick make assigning your paper to a review category obvious (for example, if there is a list of conference topics, use your chosen topic area as one of the keyword tuples).
Purpose of an abstract is
(a) to help workers in the subject of the article to decide whether the contents of the paper are such that they desire to read it in full.
(b) to give readers for whom the paper is of ‘ fringe ‘ interest as much of information as possible, so that it is unnecessary for them to read the whole paper.
(c) to expedite the work of the abstracting journals by making it possible for them to reproduce immediately the author’s abstract which will be of great assistance in the general improvement of information services in the scientific field.
Content
The abstract should contain brief and factual summary of the contents and conclusions of a paper, should refer to any new information provided and give an indication of its relevance. New information should include observed facts, essential points of new method or treatment of newly designed apparatus etc.
Reference should be made to new materials, such as new compounds, new species or varieties or forms etc and new numerical data, such as physical constants.
Presentation
(a) The abstract should be written in complete sentences using standard terms avoiding unnecessary contractions.
(b) It should be assumed that the reader has some knowledge of the subject discussed and that he may not refer to the actual paper summarized.
(c) It should be intelligible in itself without reference to the original paper.
(d) Specific references and citations should, in general, not be included in abstracts.
(e) The abstract should be as concise as possible and only in exceptional case should it exceed 200 words.
Дата добавления: 2015-09-10; просмотров: 104 | Поможем написать вашу работу | Нарушение авторских прав |