CAPTIVEABSTRACT Dr. S.Pushkala, Dr. S.Geethalakshmi The Tamilnadu Dr MGR Medical University The Abstract is a brief, objective representation, usually in one paragraph of 300 words or less, of the major aspects of the contents of a primary document or an oral presentation. It is written in a prescribed sequence that includes the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated, the basic design of the study and major findings or conclusions found as a result of your work. The abstract is the only part of the paper that a potential referee sees when he is invited by an editor to review a manuscript. Why is it important to write a good Abstract? For the vast majority of readers, a research paper does not exist beyond its abstract. For the referees, and the few readers who wish to read beyond the abstract, the abstract sets the tone for the rest of the paper. It is therefore the duty of the author to ensure that the abstract is properly representative of the entire paper. Abstracts have always served the function of "selling" your work. But now, instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest of the attached paper, an abstract must convince the reader to leave the comfort of his office and hunt down a copy of the article from a library. Components of an Abstract: An Abstract summarizes and includes the following: The Motivation / Problem statement: Method / Approach Results / Findings Conclusion The introduction should be catchy, short and precise and make the reader interested in reading the article. Motivation: If the problem is not obviously "interesting" it might be better to put motivation first; but if the work is incremental progress on a problem that is widely recognized as important, then it is probably better to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece of the larger problem is being worked on. This section should include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have, if successful. Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What important variables did you control or measure? Results What is the answer? Put the result there, in numbers. Avoid vague results such as very, small, or significant. Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change any concept or simply serve as a road map for future strategies?Are your results general, potentially generalizable, or specific to a particular case? Background This section should be the shortest part of the abstract and should very briefly outline the following information: What is already known about the subject, related to the paper in question What is not known about the subject and hence what the study intended to examine (or what the paper seeks to present) Methods This section is usually the second-longest section in the abstract. It should contain enough information to enable the reader to understand what was done, and how.
