What a portable abstract can do for you
Updated: Apr 5
With a portable abstract, you're ready for your next conference, journal article, or funding application
"What is your research about?"
"What are you working on?"
"Tell me about the project you're proposing."
Colleagues at conferences and faculty hiring committees will ask you one of these three (or some variant) when you talk to them in person; editors and reviewers will want to know the answer(s) as they read your paper or proposal. Having a succinct answer ready - a portable abstract - will help you present your work more confidently and will increase your chances of being published and funded, because the answers you give will help your peers and readers understand your research and make informed decisions based on them.
Communicating the essential - in 250 words
The abstract is arguably the second most important part of your journal article or proposal. After the title, this tiny text can determine whether readers keep going. That's a lot of pressure on 250 words: you need to explain and convince, and do it fast. Here's some advice for how to do it quickly and easily.
For researchers who hate writing abstracts
In all my years working with academic writers, I haven't come across one who actually enjoys writing abstracts. I think I know why. The thought of writing an abstract instantly summons heavy and paralyzing associations: editors; reviewers; criticism; (word) limits; the possibility of publication; the fear of rejection; thoughts about starting another cycle with another journal; another delay; career prospects, success, failure; and so on. When faced with the task writing the abstract, researchers freeze in their tracks, and their normal calm and rational ability to communicate is thrown aside as they patch together a text that is the exact opposite of clear communication. Curiously, though, when I ask them to talk about their work and to imagine the consequences of it and why it matters, they're terribly fluent. Talking about their research, then, is not the problem.
In a recent workshop, I tried something new. I wanted to harness researchers' ease in talking about their work to overcome - or at least counteract - some of their difficulty in writing abstracts. The Q&A approach I used works by having researchers answer questions that correspond to the content they need to include in the abstract.
What an abstract needs to include
All journals and funding agencies have specific information they want included in abstracts, and you should closely follow their guidelines, but in general you need to include
a statement or two introducing your field, topic, or area of investigation
a few sentences with more detail about the topic you're investigating, particularly what is problematic about it: what's not ideal, not working, unknown, or unexplained
what you found or hope to find (the results)
an explanation about how your results change (or will change) what is currently known about your topic, the field, or what prior research would lead us to expect
a couple of sentences explaining the context of these results - that is, what they demonstrate, what the mechanisms are, how it works or integrates with other systems, etc.
and finally, a few sentences about the broader significance of these results and what they will allow researchers or practitioners to do with them, such as revise theory, develop new applications, solve a particular problem, etc.