(Adapted From: http://www.clet.ait.ac.th/el21abst.htm
http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/Tapia2003/poster_abstract_guide.htm)
First a Brief Detour into the Definition of
Abstract: An abstract is a brief summary of the contents of a research
report, article or presentation. When an abstract stands alone separate from
a paper or poster, the title and author(s) are added to give it context. Traditionally,
the abstract covers an Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion
(IMRaD format) – in the shortest amount of space imaginable.
Title: This is the most succinct statement of your work.
If you could define your research in one catchy concise concrete statement,
this would be it.
Authors: List authors and institutional affiliations according
to the preferred method in your field. For instance, in computational sciences,
the standard is to list authors alphabetically. The presenting author (you)
will be distinguished from your co-authors on the submission form. Affiliations
must follow each author’s name unless the authors are from the same
institution.
Abstract (Body): There are 4 key elements in the body of
an abstract:
(1) Introduction: Problem Description, Motivation and Relevance;
(2) Methods;
(3) Results;
(4) and Discussion (or Conclusions).
These 4 key elements comprise the IMRaD organizational format.
1. The Introduction typically describes the problem and its
importance.
The art of writing
a good scientific abstract is to address the four key elements of the IMRaD
format using two or three well-constructed sentences per element. Use simple
statements, precise language, and well-known abbreviations when possible.
KEYWORDS
Some publications request "keywords". These have
two purposes. They are used to facilitate keyword index searches, which are
greatly reduced in importance now that on-line abstract text searching is
commonly used. However, they are also used to assign papers to review committees
or editors, which can be extremely important to your fate. So make sure that
the keywords you pick make assigning your paper to a review category obvious.
• Too long. If your abstract is too long, it may be rejected - abstracts are entered on databases, and there is usually a specified maximum number of words. Abstracts are often too long because people forget to count their words (remember that you can use your word processing program to do this) and make their abstracts too detailed (see below).
• Too much detail. Abstracts that are too long often
have unnecessary details. The abstract is not the place for detailed explanations
of methodology or for details about the context of your research problem because
you simply do not have the space to present anything but the main points of
your research.
• Too short. Shorter is not necessarily better. If
your word limit is 200 but you only write 95 words, you probably have not
written in sufficient detail. You should review your abstract and see where
you could usefully give more explanation - remember that in many cases readers
decide whether to read the rest of your research from looking at the abstract.
Many writers do not give sufficient information about their findings.
• Failure to include important information. You need
to be careful to cover the points listed above. Often people do not cover
all of them because they spend too long explaining, for example, the methodology
and then do not have enough space to present their conclusion.
Keep it short and simple!
1. Exercises.
a. De acordo com o conceito visto acima, o que é um abstract?
b. O que significa o formato IMRaD?
c. Traduza os problemas comuns relacionados com a escritura de abstracts.
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