Scientific Research: Abstract Design for Optimum Access

Abstract

An abstract recapitulates the main article depicting the major sections which the researcher wishes to convey. Despite acting like an advertisement for a scientific paper, some authors treat the abstract as an afterthought, giving it a mediocre summary of sentences picked from the main article. An optimized abstract enables readers get the essence of a scientific research paper at a glance without reading the entire article. Conference organizers, journal editors and reviewers are very keen on the abstract as it is a good predictor of the quality of an article to be presented or published. Search engines and bibliographic databases use the abstract and title to identify key terms to index a published scientific paper. What a researcher includes in the abstract is essential for optimizing its discovery by search engines, raising the ranking of the paper in a search and making it easier for other researchers spotting the article. This article describes different categories of abstracts besides providing a detailed guideline for designing a scientific research abstract with an aim of optimizing its accessibility in search engines. Scientific researchers of different levels of experience may find useful insights in this article as they will understand how to design an abstract and ultimately make it stand out