Abstract (summary) facts for kids

An abstract is like a super short summary of a big research paper, a thesis (a long paper you write for a degree), or a report. Imagine you have a huge book, and you just want to know what it's about without reading the whole thing. An abstract does that for academic papers! It helps readers quickly figure out if the paper is what they're looking for.

Abstracts always appear at the very beginning of a paper. Think of it as the front door to a research article or even a patent application. There are also special services that collect and list abstracts for different subjects, making it easier to find information.

Sometimes, you might hear other words like précis or synopsis that mean almost the same thing as an abstract. In business reports, there's something called an executive summary, which is similar but usually has more details, sometimes even private ones.

Why Abstracts Are Important

Abstracts are super useful because they help scientists and students quickly understand complicated research. An abstract can even stand alone, giving you the main points without needing the whole paper.

Many organizations use abstracts to decide which research projects should be shown at big meetings called academic conferences. This could be as a poster, a talk, or a workshop. Also, most online libraries that list research papers only show the abstract, not the full paper. Often, you have to pay to read the whole scientific paper. So, the abstract acts like a preview, helping you decide if you want to buy or access the full text.

An abstract tells you the main results and conclusions of a scientific article. But remember, to get all the details about how the research was done, the full results, and a deeper discussion, you need to read the whole paper.

Abstracts help you sort through tons of papers to find the ones that are most helpful for your own research. Once you pick papers based on their abstracts, you still need to read them carefully to make sure they are truly useful. It's generally a good idea not to use an abstract as your only source when you're writing your own paper. Always read the full article!

Sometimes, news stories can get things wrong because they only read the abstract and misunderstand or exaggerate the findings. Studies have shown that information in an abstract can sometimes be different from what's in the main part of the paper. This means it's really important to read the whole article for accurate information.

A Quick Look at History

People have been summarizing documents for a very long time to make information easier to find.

• Ancient Times: In ancient Mesopotamia (a long time ago, around 2000 BCE), people wrote summaries on clay envelopes that held important documents. In ancient Greece and Rome, summaries of non-fiction books were called epitomes. Sometimes, these epitomes are the only way we know about old books that no longer exist! Even ancient plays often started with a hypothesis that summed up the plot. Legal documents in ancient Ancient Egypt also had abstracts. During the Middle Ages, scholars wrote summaries in the margins of their books.

• Modern Science: The idea of using abstracts for science started in the early 1800s. The secretary of the Royal Society in London would write short summaries of talks given at meetings. These were called 'abstracts'. Other scientific groups, like the Royal Astronomical Society, also started publishing abstracts of talks. At first, these abstracts were written by the society, not by the person who wrote the paper.

One of the first times an abstract was published right alongside the paper it summarized was in 1919. This happened in a journal called Physical Review from the American Physical Society. After that, it became more common to see abstracts published with the full paper.

Copyright and Abstracts

Abstracts are protected by copyright laws, just like any other written work. However, publishers of scientific articles usually make abstracts available for free, even if you have to pay for the full article. For example, you can find many biomedical abstracts for free on PubMed.

How Abstracts Are Structured

An abstract is often expected to tell the whole story of a paper in a very short way. For many readers, the abstract is the only part of the paper they will read. It should give you enough information to explain the paper to someone else in a very short time, like an Elevator pitch.

A typical academic abstract usually covers four main things:

• The main question or problem the research is trying to solve.
• The methods used to do the research (like experiments, surveys, or case studies).
• The main results or findings from the research.
• The main conclusions and what the research means (how it answers the original problem).

Sometimes, abstracts might include short references, but many publishers prefer to keep references only in the main part of the article.

The length of an abstract can change depending on the subject and what the publisher requires. They usually range from 100 to 500 words. They are rarely longer than one page and sometimes just a few words. An abstract might or might not have the word "Abstract" written as a heading before its content.

Abstracts are often organized logically, like a mini-version of the paper. They might have subheadings like: Background, Introduction, Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Abstracts with these clear subheadings are called structured abstracts. If an abstract is just one paragraph without any subheadings, it's called an unstructured abstract.

Example of a Structured Abstract

Here's an example from the Journal of Biology:

The hydrodynamics of dolphin drafting

by Daniel Weihs, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.

Abstract:

Background Dolphins sometimes "draft," which means they get a boost from another dolphin's movement without actually touching them. This idea has been used to explain how young dolphin calves can keep up with their fast-moving mothers. Recently, it was noticed that many calves get separated from their mothers when chased by tuna fishing boats. This study looked at how drafting works to understand why mothers and calves get separated during fishing.

Results The study found two main effects when a smaller dolphin drafts behind a larger one. First, there's a "Bernoulli suction" effect, where faster water creates lower pressure, pulling the mother and calf closer. Second, the mother's movement pushes water forward and outward, and then water rushes in behind her. A calf can use these water movements to get a "free ride" in the forward-moving areas. This means a baby dolphin can get up to 90% of the push it needs to swim next to its mother at speeds up to 2.4 meters per second. Observations of eastern spinner dolphins showed that calves could save up to 60% of the effort needed to keep up with their mothers.

Conclusions This study, using both scientific analysis and observations of dolphins swimming freely, shows that how dolphins interact with the water around their mothers is very important. It helps baby dolphins keep up with the fast-moving adult dolphins in their group.

© 2004 Weihs; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL

Different Types of Abstracts

Informative Abstracts

An informative abstract (also called a complete abstract) is a full summary of a paper. It covers the paper's main idea, its purpose, how the research was done, the results, and the conclusions. These are usually between 100 and 200 words. They summarize the paper's structure, main topics, and key points. Informative abstracts can often be read on their own, giving you a good understanding of the paper.

Descriptive Abstracts

A descriptive abstract (also known as a limited abstract or indicative abstract) describes what the paper is about without going into the actual findings or conclusions. Think of it like a table of contents written in a paragraph. It tells you the topics covered but not the answers found.

Graphical Abstracts

Since the late 2000s, especially with the rise of the Internet, some scientific journals, like those published by Elsevier, started adding graphical abstracts. These are pictures or diagrams that summarize the main point of the article. They aren't meant to be as detailed as a text abstract, but they quickly show you what kind of article it is and what it covers.

Scientists generally like graphical abstracts. Some journals also encourage authors to make video abstracts or animated abstracts to explain their papers even more easily. The idea is that these visual summaries will help readers quickly see if a paper is interesting and make the paper more visible.

See Also

Images for kids

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  A friendly robot!