The Importance of Well Written Abstracts in Research Papers (RPs): A Deep Analysis

The aim of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of the abstracts of four research papers belonging to the fields of education and medicine. Abstracts are the first contact readers have with papers;  however, they are the last part researchers write. As they summarize the major points made by the author, they tend to be short, concise and neat. They are generally written in no more than 250 words. Swales and Feak (1994) state that research papers abstracts consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences. The main purpose is to attract readers to go on reading the rest of the paper. According to APA (2008), an effective abstract uses one or more well developed paragraph which may be able to stand alone, strictly follows the chronology of the report and is intelligible to a wide audience, containing no abbreviations or specialized words. The present analysis will be based on distinguishing the main linguistic characteristics of abstracts, their structure, and their classification as well as their approach.

Considering their classification, abstracts can be either descriptive or informative in nature (Swales &  Feak, 1994). Informative abstracts are extracts from articles, chapters or as in this case, from research papers (RPs). The texts belonging to the medicine field, by Jorgensen´ s ( 2009 ) and Wijeysundera´s et. al (2009), follow this informative characteristic, as they provide a considerable amount of data on what the researchers did. As regards their structure, it can be asserted that they both belong to the structured type of abstracts since they are divided into sections with italicized headings which identify the main sections in the RP. The headings for both articles are: Objective, Design, ,Setting, Participants, Main Outcome Measure, and Results. Therefore, it can be assumed  that both  abstracts on medicine field follow the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussions (IMRAD). Most researchers agree on this formula which is generally followed when writing this part of the texts. Other relevant characteristics these two abstracts share are connected to their linguistic features. In both abstracts the objectives are expressed with infinitives, as for the next sections they are written in full sentences in the past tense, negatives are avoided together with the use of abbreviations.   The vocabulary used is formal.   One main difference between these two pieces  of writing is that the  conclusion of Jorgensen´ s ( 2009 ) abstract on breast cancer is written in the past tense whereas the conclusion of Wijeysundera´s et. al ( 2009) abstract on cardiac stress is in the present tense, probably because of the kind of conclusion reached, which proved the hypothesis that guided this research.  Following Swales and Freak  (1994) again, the approaches of  these two abstracts can be characterized as  results-driven since they concentrate on the research findings and what might be concluded from them.

With reference to the abstracts of the educational field, by Rammal (2005) and King (2002), it can be pointed out that they are similar in the sense that they can be classified as indicative since they do not describe what the researches did in detail. Instead, they summarize the main information in the RP, and they do not provide extensive information about the results. Regarding their structure, they are unstructured since they are not divided into different sections under subheadings. In fact, both of them consist of only one paragraph. King´s (2002) abstract on DVDs seems to have the appropriate length whereas Rammal´s (2005) abstract  on video does not, it is quite short.  The first one contains seven sentences in all and the latter only five. Analyzing the linguistic features of abstracts, it can be seen that both of them are written in the present tense. In both abstracts it is possible to notice the use of the impersonal passive voice, full sentences and no negatives; abbreviations and jargon are not included.   As for their approach, they follow the lines of the summary approach of abstracts as defined by Swales and Feak (1994) because in just a few sentences they outline the different sections of the RP.

On the whole,  Jorgensen´ s ( 2009 ) and  Wijeysundera´s  et. al    (2009)  abstracts on the field of medicine are very structured, mainly following the IMRAD formula.   This characteristic can be thought as a consequence of another relevant aspect they share: They are results-driven, which means that they concentrate on results findings.     On the contrary, the article by King (2002) on the use of DVDs and Rammal (2005) on videos are not structured, but seem to have the function of attracting the readers’ attention, of generating the need of reading the rest of the article, which is one of the main functions abstract have.    As for the linguistics features of the abstracts, it can be seen that the fourth of them respect the tenses generally used for this kind of writings, all of them are written in full sentences and no examples of negatives, abbreviations and jargon can be found in either of them.  

References

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British Medical Journal, 2010;340: b5526.doi:101136/bmj.b5526