How to formulate a perfect research paper abstract

Every semester student writes all manner of assignments. Amon these academic tasks are the research papers. These important assignments enable a student to analyses and think critically about different topics. The student supposed to pay attention to the formats of writing research papers s to ensure that he comes up with a paper that is free of plagiarism. Research papers have different sections, all of which play significant and diverse roles. The success of any research paper depends on how well all these sections are blended to achieve the same goal.

When writing a research paper, a student has to come up with an abstract. To those who are fond of movies, you can take the abstract as the trailer. It considers only the interesting part that compels you to watch the movie. It whets the appetite of moviegoers to wait and find out what the movie is all about. You can say the abstract plays the same role as a movie trailer. As such, an abstract for a research paper summarises the major aspects of the entire paper.

In most cases, the abstract does no go beyond 300 words. It should capture the overall purpose of the research and the problems that you did investigate. It also captures the basic design of the study and the major findings you infer from your analysis. It should also give a summary of the interpretations and conclusions that you make.

Sometimes your professor may ask for a research papers abstract to go along with the work. Even though they are short, they can sometimes confuse the student. If you are dealing with any research process, you will need a research papers abstract. Writing it is not as hard as you think, and you will find out as you keep reading.

Understanding a research paper abstract

The first question here should be; what is abstract in a research paper? In simple terms, an abstract is a statement of what a scholarly or complex written work contains. It summarises the work and gives the audience a gist of the subject matter, stress brevity and does no preserve the flavour or style of the original work.

Importance of an abstract for a research paper

Before you even start writing your research papers with abstract, you need to understand the importance that comes with it. When you write a research papers abstract, it becomes easier for your research to be recognised on a database. The abstract is the one that is used to search for your work. This is why it should be between 10 to 300 words and should use keywords from the contents of your research paper as much as possible. Databases are known to take the most common words as the indexing material.

As such, if you know how to write an abstract for a research paper using descriptive words makes it easy for one to find it on databases and utilise it. When you write your research papers with abstract, it becomes easier to access the information, thanks to the keywords

General features of a research paper abstract

• When writing an abstract for a research paper, you have to pay attention to the following features. They are necessary for helping you to come up with the best abstract that fits your research paper. All research paper abstracts should:
• Be succinct and tight. In other words, your research paper abstract should be simple and easy to understand
  
• State the objectives and hypotheses of your research paper
  
• Refrain from using unnecessary details and statistical methods
  
• Never at any point include tables, figures, graphs, charts or references
  
• Ave few or no abbreviations at all
  
• State clearly and comprehensively about the major findings of the research paper n manage that is easily understood by the audience
  
• Have clearly stated and concise conclusions that tie to the objectives or the hypothesis
  
• Always be written in an excellent grammatical language

Now that you understand the general features of an excellent research papers abstract, it is time to look a the basic components of the same.

Components of a good research paper abstract

Irrespective of the discipline in which you are writing an abstract for a research paper, you have to include the following components:

Let the audience know why you care about the problem. You also need to include the practical, scientific and theoretical or artistic gap that you research is about to fill. In other words, you are answering the “what?” and the “why?” question.

You have to indicate what you did to arrive at your results. It could be you analysed literature or interviewed respondents. Anything that shows how you arrive at your results must appear in the abstract.

You also need to ensure that your research papers abstract indicates what you learnt, invent pr create.

You need to show the larger implications of your findings, especially when it regards the gap that your research is about to fill.

However, one thing about the above components is that the weight that they exert on the paper differs depending on the discipline. If you want to write effective research papers with abstract, consider going through models of research papers that are similar to your research so that you can get a good idea of how to approach this task.

Do you need help in writing an abstract for your research paper? Our experts are here to help

Types of abstracts

Before delving on the procedure of writing a good research papers abstract, let us look at the available types that you can be required to write. They include:

Critical abstract

When writing this type of research papers abstract, you are describing the major information and findings as you comment or judge on the reliability, validity, and completeness of the study. You have to evaluate some papers and compare it to other works that handle the same topic.

Descriptive abstract

A descriptive research papers abstract will indicate the type of information that is found in work. It does not make any judgments or comments about the work. More so, it does not provide the conclusions or the results of the research. However, it incorporates the keywords that you find within the text and may include the purpose, methods, and scopes of the entire study. In other words, a descriptive abstract simply describes the work you are doing. There re those who consider it an outline of the research instead of a summary. Sometimes descriptive research papers abstract go for a maximum of 100 words or less.

Informative abstracts

Most of the abstracts that you will find in research papers are informative. However, they do not evaluate or analyse the work, but more or less describe it. An informative research papers abstract is a surrogate of the work itself. In other words, you are presenting and explaining all the major arguments as well as the important results and evidence found within the entire paper.

An informative abstract incorporates information that is available in descriptive abstracts as well as the results and conclusions of the research and recommendations of the author. The length of this type of an abstract for a research paper varies depending on the discipline. In most cases, these abstracts do not exceed 10% of the length of the entire research paper. In case of a longer paper, this percentage may even reduce.

The type of a research papers abstract that you should use depends on the instructions of your professor. This should also go hand in hand with the length of the abstract, but remember, the abstract does not exceed 300 words.

The necessary steps of writing your abstract

This is how you go about writing a perfect abstract for your research paper:

Write the abstract after you have finished writing your paper

For you to write effective research papers with abstracts, you have to write it once you complete writing the entire paper. This is because why the time you are finishing writing the research paper, you will have an idea of how to write the abstract perfectly to describe the work. To choose a perfect abstract is not easy, and as such, you must be ready to write something that represents your research paper in the best way possible.

Pick the major objectives, conclusions and hypotheses from your work

To write an abstract for your research paper, you need to use the most important information from the introduction and conclusion of your paper. Do not waste your time trying to figure out what you need to include in the abstract. Using the most important information and summarising it makes it easy for you to come up with a perfect research papers abstract.

Use the methods section to select key phrases and sentences for your abstract

When you are researching for your paper, you write down everything. You can use these notes or the methods section to select key phrases and sentences that fit your abstract. The idea is to inform the reader about the process that you used to arrive at the answers and conclusions.

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Ascertain that the research papers abstract addresses these aspects

• The purpose of your research

• How the research was conducted

• How you arrived at your answers and conclusions

• The kind of answers that you got

• The meaning of the results

Once ascertain the above aspects, you then:

Arrange your information systematically

Here you are required to use the sequence of the introduction, methods, results, and conclusions

Your abstract should not contain the following:

• any new information that is not within the text of the paper

• undefined abbreviations or group names

• discussion previous literature or references

• unnecessary details about the methods that you have used in your study

Read your research papers abstract

Once you have written everything, you have to read the abstract so that you ascertain the consistency of the information that you have presented there and in the contents of the research paper. The information that you have in the research paper ad in the abstract should be the same. Remember that an abstract for research paper is a summary or a short description of the entire research paper. As such, you should never, as earlier said, introduce any new information in it.

Let a colleague go through your abstract

Once you confirm the consistency in the abstract and the research paper, you can let another person read the abstract for you. This will give you an idea of what to do as you refine the work. As them to confirm if the purpose, aims, methods and conclusions are, the study comes out clearly. The feedback he provides is necessary for you to refine the work and ensure it meets the standards.

Read the abstract again

Remember that we are trying to come up with an effective research papers abstract. As such, you need to read it again to ensure it is concise and to the point. As you read, you have to correct all the grammar mistakes, punctuations, sentence structures, as well as the consistency of the tenses. This will make your work cleaner and o the point

Check the abstract to see if it meets the guidelines set

If you are targeting a journal publication, you need to ascertain hat the abstract of your research paper meets all the guidelines. This includes the word limit, the type of abstract, recommended subheadings, and so on.

Once you ascertain that your research papers abstract meets every other standard, you can either print your work and submit it to your professor if you are publishing online, you can deliver it via the recommended means for publications. Writing an abstract for a research paper can be confusing. As such, you need to ensure that you understand the entire paper fully before writing it. You do not have to start with it and to follow the above tips can go along ay in the making are you write a perfect abstract. You can also use our professional online writing services for your research papers abstract. Consult our professional services today

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