Professional Development


50 - Abstract I
An abstract (each journal has its own guidelines regarding length and structure) should follow the title page. Some journals use more than one structure, so authors must not forget to prepare their abstracts in the format required by the journal they have chosen.The abstract should provide the context or background for the study and also mention its purpose, basic procedures (selection of study subjects or laboratory animals, observational and analytical methods), main findings (state the extent of the effects and their statistical significance, if possible) and principal conclusions. It should emphasize new and important aspects of the study or observations.Because abstracts are the only substantive portion of the article indexed in many electronic databases, and the only portion many readers read, authors need to ensure that abstracts accurately reflect the content of the article. Unfortunately, the content of many abstracts differs from the content of the text of the article.