THE TITLE AND ABSTRACT IN A SCIENTIFIC PAPER
- Genaro Pimienta
- Aug 27, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 27
This blogpost is about the first two components in a scientific research article (paper)—the title and abstract.
Below I define what the title and abstract are and describe their format and purpose. I also provide pointers on how to convey an effective message in these two sections of a paper.
I will cover three types of abstracts currently used in scientific papers, in the interconnected fields of biochemistry, biophysics and clinical studies.
Informative
Structured
Graphical
I will finish with a discussion of the importance of keywords in the title and abstract as descriptors of the main topic of the publication.
There is a great number of useful resources out there that help scientists write a research paper. I will be citing these references throughout the text.
References
THE IMRAD FORMAT
Contemporary science is communicated in a structured format, which varies slightly from journal to journal.
This format is known as IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion), given the components in the main body of a research article.
Journals started to use the IMRAD format in the 1940s to structure the main body of research articles. Broad adoption of the IMRAD format by scientific journals spread slowly until it became of common use by the 1980s.
As you may have noticed, the title and abstract are not included in the IMRAD acronym, but are, as we all know, components of a manuscript, just like the introduction, methods, results and discussion. I should also point out that some journals group together the results and discussion and add a conclusions section.
THE TITLE
A manuscript’s title must be carefully crafted. It must be short, informative and include evocative keywords.
An effective title captures the attention of a broad audience because it is easy to understand and free of technical jargon or misleading claims. It engages subject-matter experts because it is a meaningful statement of why are the results presented important to the field.
A title can be descriptive (informs what the paper is about), declarative (gives away the results and conclusions), interrogative and the combined form — a deeper explanation of these can be found in“How to Choose a Title?” — 2021
The title in a research paper is preferably descriptive to assure a neutral tone and to maximize the number of nouns in the sentence. Nouns increase the number of keywords in the title. A declarative title runs the risk of misleading or biasing readers.
“How to Choose a Title?” — 2021
As per the American Psychological Association (APA) style guidelines, a title should not be longer than 12 words. Still, some scientific journals allow up to 20 words in a title.
“Should title lengths really adhere to the American Psychological Association's twelve word limit?” — 2016
Regardless of any guideline, it is good practice to keep the title length as short as possible.
Other considerations are that abbreviations and acronyms should be avoided. Abbreviations may be used only if these are universally understood.
THE ABSTRACT
The abstract in a scientific publication encapsulates in one paragraph the message conveyed throughout the main body of the paper (introduction, methods, results and discussion).
The abstract paragraph must provide a brief description of a publication, throughout five interlinked components.
Background
Objective
Methods
Results
Conclusions
I personally find the guideline provided by Nature a lot more granular and therefore useful.
Basic introduction — 1-2 sentences
More detailed background — 2-3 sentences
General problem — 1 sentence
“Here we show” — 1 sentence
Main result — 2-3 sentences
General context — 1-2 sentences
Broader perspective — 2-3 sentences
A well-written abstract must the meet the four "C"s of good quality: “condensed, clear, concise and critical”.
Together with the title, the purpose of the abstract is to convince the general audience and subject-matter experts alike, that your story is worth reading.
The abstract is also used for indexing purposes by databases (e.g., PubMed and Google Scholar) and online libraries (e.g., Scopus and Web of Science). Normally this task is performed automatically with text-mining algorithms, which identify keywords in the title and abstract in the manuscript. To assure proper indexing, many journals also require a "keyword" section in the manuscript.
TYPES OF ABSTRACT
Different scientific disciplines have established their own abstract format, leading to five modalities.
1. Descriptive (social sciences)
2. Informative (one paragraph)
3. Critical (extended)
4. Highlighting (non-scientific)
5. Structured (clinical studies)
Biochemistry and biophysics journals often require that the abstract in a manuscript is written in the informative format. For editorial reasons, journals vary in the number of characters allowed in an informative abstract. Some examples are the following.
Science Magazine — 125 words
Cell Press journals — 150 words
Nature Publishing journals — 150 words
EMBO Reports and EMBO Journal — 175 words
Journal of Proteome Research — 200 words
PLOS journals — 300 words
Molecular and Cellular Proteomics — 300 words
Medical journals that publish results from clinical trials use the structured format. The structured abstract differs from the informative one because it is divided in sections with subheadings, instead of being a single paragraph.
The structured abstract format was introduced in the late 1980s. The motivation was that a structured abstract would provide a detailed description of clinical trial studies.
The subheadings in the structured abstract format vary across clinical journals. Two examples are the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. In these two journals, the abstract is comprised of four sections separated by a subheading.
New England Journal of Medicine
Background
Methods
Results
Conclusions
The Lancet
Background
Methods
Findings
Interpretation
THE GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
The first level of engagement occurs when the reader browses through the table of contents (TOC) of a journal.
The graphical abstract is a visual tool —a cartoon— associated to a manuscript's title in the TOC to promote reader engagement.
A good graphical abstract is enticing enough that a reader browsing through the TOC of a journal will want to read the paper’s abstract and hopefully the entire manuscript.
Graphical abstracts are not easy to make and there is an increasing demand for professional illustrators to perform this task.
“The overview figure” — 2024
KEYWORDS AND ONLINE VISIBILITY
Keywords must provide an accurate description of the topic addressed in the publication.
Keywords are important for manuscript indexing in databases and electronic libraries by text-mining algorithms. It is important to chose keywords wisely, so that they accurately indicate the topic the manuscript is about.
Effective keywords are those that make a publication "searchable" in the Google and other search engines.
Search engine optimization is recommended to increase a paper's frequency of appearance in the internet.
Wiley has a useful explanation of how to optimize a manuscript's visibility in the internet by choosing effective keywords.
“Best practice for SEO includes mentioning the keywords every 100 to 200 words you’re your titles, subheadings, and at the beginning, and end of your article.”
If you are about to start writing your paper remember that the abstract should be written once the main body of the manuscript is ready. Likewise, the title should be written only after the abstract is completed.
The title and abstract are the most important components of a manuscript. That's why it's crucial that you leave them to the end to assure that they capture the message of your story accurately.
Stay tuned for our next post on how to draft the Introduction of your paper.
GPR
Disclosure: At BioTech Writing and Consulting we believe in the use AI in Data Science, but do not use AI to generate text or images.
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