How to Write an Abstract for a Research Paper

Writing an abstract for your investigation should be an easy piece assignment, even having in mind that it is the last part of the research that you may write since is a resume of it. But that's not always the case.

For some may be an easy task but for others may be a little triggering, and that makes them do a lot of mistakes when writing the abstract. If that's your case or you just want to know if you are doing it correctly, this post is for you. In this post, we will help you through the process of writing your abstract correctly. Let's start!

What's an Abstract?

An Abstract it's essentially a summary of your complete work. Must be independent of your complete research and explain and describe the main problem, methods used to resolve the problem, and the obtained results. So eventually, must be a concise resume of the entire work.

You shouldn't forget about adding the keywords of your paper on the resume since the bibliographic databases and search engines use the title and the abstract to index your paper. So remember that it's important to add the right words to the title and abstract of your work in order to help other researchers find it.

• That's why when you upload a paper on any community at Orvium we ask you to add keywords and the abstract from your paper so it's easy for the search engines to index your work. Did you try our platform already?.

As we said before, the abstract usually is written at the end of the work, and it should be able to:

• Had all the important keywords about your work.
• Described correctly the paper.
• Announce the key issue or the problem.
• Be able to drive the lector through the research methodology, what's been found, and the results you were able to reach from them.

And you also should have in mind the things your abstract shouldn't have:

• Be too long and redundant.
• Say what you want to accomplish or find out.
• Defend or evaluate your own work.

How's the Correct Structure of an Abstract?

A good abstract it's about a paragraph length, try not to be longer than that, and must contain there the complete information about your paper. For sure, this paragraph can vary depending on the field you are working in.

The structure of an abstract is based on:

• Introduction
• Methodology
• Results
• Conclusion

So, for the introduction, you must have in mind that it needs to answer the question, ''What?''. Here, you need to focus on the main content of your work and the actual context of the issue. This should also mention the importance of the research, talking also about the limitations of some previous works or the leak of it. Remember to mention what problems your research solves, the gap in the knowledge your work wants to fill, and why the results of it are important.

For the methodology, you will have to answer the question ''How?''. Here you have to talk about and describe the methods you use in your research. It should contain how the research was designed, how and why you choose the theme of the work, techniques, and tools you used to arrive at the conclusion, variables that may come up and influence the results, and how the conclusions were validated.

For the results, have in mind to answer the main theme of the research. So, apart from the results themselves, you need to point out the importance of it and how it has changed from the hypothesis. Remember to write the results in the past tense and don't mention anything beyond what you have found out. Just expose the results you have with your work.

Finally, the conclusion. Here you have to describe what the results mean in the long term for your field of study. Interpret what you have discovered and expose the implications of your research. Talk about if the results would lead to another hypothesis, if the results you obtain did fill the gap you mention at the beginning, or if they were some similarities or differences with other related studies. Just remember to not over mention the importance of the results and stick to the data you have in the document.

Remember, the abstract is one of the most important parts of your work. It's not easy, but if you pay attention to details, then it will be easier to do a well-written, effective, and interesting abstract. If you follow all these tips and steps, you will do a good job.

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