Biophysical Society Bulletin | September 2020

Career Development

How toWrite an Abstract Abstracts are important parts of science, because they represent a

1. Background and introduction. Set the stage for the work. 2. Hypothesis. Provide context about what is known or not known; convey what is missing and how this new study helps bridge the knowledge gap. 3. Methods. Describe experimental methods that were used, and types of data that were acquired and analyzed. 4. Results. Explain what your data showed (not what your data didn’t show)! And bring this back to frame the novel impact of the findings and how this helps fill the knowl- edge gap that you outlined when setting up the study. 5. Conclusions. Summarize in one sentence the important contributions of your study and potentially forecast future directions or open questions that may have come to light from your new data. A more detailed summary of the components of an abstract, including many examples from different disciplines that are written at the undergraduate level are available from the ABRCMS (Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Mi- nority Students) website: https:/www.abrcms.org/index.php/ present-at-abrcms/components-of-a-competitive-abstract Remember that writing well isn’t easy, and the process of writing a high-quality abstract takes practice. The more you read abstracts in scientific papers and write, review, and revise your own abstracts and those of your lab mates, the easier it will be to recognize and understand the typical con- tent of an abstract. — Molly Cule

snapshot or summary of the take home messages and novel impacts of a study. Before we get into abstract content, we need to highlight the importance of titles. Titles describe the focus of the work, and the best titles are specif- ic and descriptive. Think of a library search (or web search): What is the first

thing you read in response to your search terms? The title! A well-constructed title may be more important than the abstract because the title invites a scientist to take the next step and review your well-formulated abstract. An abstract informs the reader, helping them decide whether or not they take the next step to read your paper; or better yet, come talk to you at your poster at a scientific conference. Titles and abstracts are also important because this is typ- ically the first material read when you submit your paper to a journal or for presentation at a scientific conference. Upon initial review, journal editors or conference organizers will make a decision whether to send along your paper for review or whether to program your poster or talk at the scientific meeting. These decisions impact the outcomes and oppor- tunities by which all your hard work, data collection, scientific analysis, and knowledge generation are ultimately shared with the rest of the world. Everyone writes their abstract differently, but there are gen- eral guidelines and details that every abstract should include. Scientists become accustomed to look for these details as they review a paper. Abstracts represent one or two sentenc- es from each section of the paper, such as:

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