How do you best prepare an abstract?

Concept

Abstract are usually require for Congress Submission or as part of a Scientific paper either an article or a Chapter of Book.

Usually is not a difficult task if you have all the information that needs to be included and how to structure it. First you should consider that the abstract should reflect all the parts of your work or chapter if it is a descriptive one, but in shortened form.

Practically, the reader should be able to understand what is the aim of your study, the methodology you utilized, your results and why what you achieved it is important.

Usually an abstract length is maximum an A4 page but many Journals or Congress provide you with more specific indication like type of font, size of the font, word limit and structure.

Structure

What should be the ideal structure of an Abstract? Most of the Journals and Congress provide a template with four to five sections, like: Introduction, Background or Aim, Material & Methods, Results, and Conclusions or Discussion.
This will facilitate the writing, it is useful to follow the structure as guideline and provide with the essential contents.

In the Introduction or Background provide some of the motivation behind your study and the hypothesis with some references. Be concise and essential.
In the Methods section you should briefly describe how your conduct your study, what methodology have you used including the statistical methods you applied. Don’t go into too many details be essential but focused.
What were your key findings? Describe your Results, focus on the main findings. Highlights 2-3 points that are key to your study. Present your statistical analysis to corroborate your results. Avoid to present many data that are not influential to your research.
In the last section, will be your message based on your findings and the related implications. In the Conclusions section, you should discuss your innovative results, compare with the existing and show why your study is important and how will affect the area of your research. Discuss possible implications, avoid wording as “further study are needed” or “findings will be discussed”.