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Purpose and Limitations: PLOS Medicine Jama

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37 views

Purpose and Limitations: PLOS Medicine Jama

Uploaded by

Ken Zi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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An 

abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis


of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose.[1] When used, an
abstract always appears at the beginning of a manuscript or typescript, acting as the point-of-entry for any given
academic paper or patent application. Abstracting and indexing services for various academic disciplines are aimed
at compiling a body of literature for that particular subject.
The terms précis or synopsis are used in some publications to refer to the same thing that other publications might
call an "abstract". In management reports, an executive summary usually contains more information (and often more
sensitive information) than the abstract does.

Contents

 1Purpose and limitations


 2History
 3Copyright
 4Structure
o 4.1Example
 5Abstract types
o 5.1Informative
o 5.2Descriptive
 6Graphical abstracts
 7Abstract quality assessment
 8See also
 9References

Purpose and limitations[edit]


Academic literature uses the abstract to succinctly communicate complex research. An abstract may act as a stand-
alone entity instead of a full paper. As such, an abstract is used by many organizations as the basis for selecting
research that is proposed for presentation in the form of a poster, platform/oral presentation or workshop
presentation at an academic conference. Most literature database search engines index only abstracts rather than
providing the entire text of the paper. Full texts of scientific papers must often be purchased because of copyright
and/or publisher fees and therefore the abstract is a significant selling point for the reprint or electronic form of the
full text.[2]
The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be
consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations
and conclusions.
An abstract allows one to sift through copious numbers of papers for ones in which the researcher can have more
confidence that they will be relevant to his or her research. Once papers are chosen based on the abstract, they
must be read carefully to be evaluated for relevance. It is generally agreed that one must not base reference
citations on the abstract alone, but the content of an entire paper.
According to the results of a study published in PLOS Medicine, the "exaggerated and inappropriate coverage of
research findings in the news media" is ultimately related to inaccurately reporting or over-interpreting research
results in many abstract conclusions.[3] A study published in JAMA concluded that "inconsistencies in data between
abstract and body and reporting of data and other information solely in the abstract are relatively common and that a
simple educational intervention directed to the author is ineffective in reducing that frequency."[4] Other "studies
comparing the accuracy of information reported in a journal abstract with that reported in the text of the full
publication have found claims that are inconsistent with, or missing from, the body of the full article."[5]

History[edit]
Perhaps the earliest use of abstracts to communicate science were from the early 1800's, where the Royal
Society would publish 'abstracts' summarizing the presented papers during meetings.[6] Three decades later, the
Royal Society compiled abstracts of previous papers published from 1800 - 1837, in the societies
journal Philosophical Transactions, titled Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London.[7] This practice took hold and later other journals followed suite. Perhaps the earliest
example of an abstract bound to the same article dates to the 1919 paper On the Irregularities of Motion of the
Foucault Pendulum published in the Physical Review, the oldest journal published by the American Physical
Society,[8][9] and the journal often published abstracts in its volumes thereafter.[10]

Copyright[edit]
Abstracts are protected under copyright law just as any other form of written speech is protected.[citation needed] However,
publishers of scientific articles invariably make abstracts freely available, even when the article itself is not. For
example, articles in the biomedical literature are available publicly from MEDLINE which is accessible
through PubMed.

Structure[edit]
An academic abstract typically outlines four elements relevant to the completed work:

 The research focus (i.e. statement of the problem(s)/research issue(s) addressed);


 The research methods used (experimental research, case studies, questionnaires, etc.);
 The results/findings of the research; and
 The main conclusions and recommendations
It may also contain brief references,[11] although some publications' standard style omits references from the
abstract, reserving them for the article body (which, by definition, treats the same topics but in more depth).
Abstract length varies by discipline and publisher requirements. Typical length ranges from 100 to 500 words, but
very rarely more than a page and occasionally just a few words.[12] An abstract may or may not have the section title
of "abstract" explicitly listed as an antecedent to content. Abstracts are typically sectioned logically as an overview of
what appears in the paper, with any of the following subheadings: Background, Introduction, Objectives, Methods,
Results, Conclusions.[citation needed] Abstracts in which these subheadings are explicitly given are often called structured
abstracts. Abstracts that comprise one paragraph (no explicit subheadings) are often called unstructured
abstracts.

Example[edit]
Example taken from the Journal of Biology, Volume 3, Issue 2.:[13]
The hydrodynamics of dolphin drafting

by Daniel Weihs, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
Abstract:
Background Drafting in cetaceans is defined as the transfer of forces between individuals without actual physical
contact between them. This behavior has long been surmised to explain how young dolphin calves keep up with
their rapidly moving mothers. It has recently been observed that a significant number of calves become permanently
separated from their mothers during chases by tuna vessels. A study of the hydrodynamics of drafting, initiated
inmechanisms causing the separation of mothers and calves during fishing-related activities, is reported here.
Results Quantitative results are shown for the forces and moments around a pair of unequally sized dolphin-like
slender bodies. These include two major effects. First, the so-called Bernoulli suction, which stems from the fact that
the local pressure drops in areas of high speed, results in an attractive force between mother and calf. Second is
the displacement effect, in which the motion of the mother causes the water in front to move forwards and radially
outwards, and water behind the body to move forwards to replace the animal's mass. Thus, the calf can gain a 'free
ride' in the forward-moving areas. Utilizing these effects, the neonate can gain up to 90% of the thrust needed to
move alongside the mother at speeds of up to 2.4 m/s. A comparison with observations of eastern spinner dolphins
(Stenella longirostris) is presented, showing savings of up to 60% in the thrust that calves require if they are to keep
up with their mothers.
Conclusions A theoretical analysis, backed by observations of free-swimming dolphin schools, indicates that
hydrodynamic interactions with mothers play an important role in enabling dolphin calves to keep up with rapidly
moving adult school members.
© 2004 Weihs; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of
this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's
original URL

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