Writing a scientific article can be an intimidating and challenging task for first-timers. I vividly recall my first effort. I was initially overwhelmed with the idea because I was thinking about the entire paper in the same way an amateur mountaneer might view Mt. Everest: one long climb to the top. How would I ever reach the summit when I’ve never set foot on a mountain before?
(Image by Uwe Gille, CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Fortunately, someone suggested to me that I break the job down into small parts and stop thinking about it as one huge task. They also suggested that I study published papers to see how each section was structured and then organize my narrative in a similar way. This piece of advice—to study the structure and writing style of well-written articles—helped me enormously, especially in the early days of preparing research articles for publication.
Over the succeeding years, I periodically “analyzed” papers—those in high-impact journals as well as those I just enjoyed reading—to discover ways to improve my own writing. Along the way, I realized that getting one’s work into top journals depended on how well the paper was written, in addition to ground-breaking research findings. I thus found it strange that my professors did not coach students in improving the quality of their scientific writing. A few professors had their students analyze papers in courses or lab group discussions, but the focus was on evaluating the science aspects of the article rather than the writing.
One section of my scientific papers that I initially did not spend much time crafting was the abstract. Like many novice writers, I left the abstract until last and then dashed off a mediocre summary composed of sentences mostly cut and pasted from the narrative. It was only much later that I understood the abstract to be one of the most important components of a scientific paper. The abstract is often the only section of a paper that is read. More importantly, the abstract can determine whether a reader downloads and reads the rest of the paper. Or, in the case of a conference paper, the abstract will determine whether it is accepted or not for presentation to colleagues. Journal editors and reviewers and conference organizers pay close attention to the abstract because it is a good predictor of the quality of the paper. A poorly written or mediocre abstract says the author is inexperienced or doesn’t care about quality.
Writing a decent abstract is not difficult…if you know what information needs to be included and how to structure it. The presentation embedded below explains how to write an abstract using a real example of a published abstract. I selected the example from one of my own publications–not because it’s particularly good, but because it illustrates some dos and don’ts. And, by using one of my own publications, I won’t embarrass anyone but myself!
Note that there is audio associated with each slide, so be sure to adjust the volume on your device (here is a direct link in case you cannot see the player window below).
Knowing how to condense a scientific article into a short, coherent summary is a handy skill that all science professionals should attain. If you’ve never written an abstract before, this guide should make the task a bit easier.