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How to Structure an Abstract, Title and Introduction
Many aspects of creating a title, writing the abstract and the ‘introduction’ section of a scientific manuscript have been covered by Dr Satyanarayana in the previous chapter. Therefore, in this chapter, I will present a summary of points to be kept in mind while writing a scientific paper.
Title
A title should comprise the fewest possible words that accurately describe the content of the paper. However, the title should contain sufficient details for interested readers to be able to locate the manuscript on electronic databases, that is, should include the study design, the intervention and the population under study. Although a title must encourage readers to read the full paper, it is best to avoid ‘cute’ or ‘catchy’ titles in scientific manuscripts.
In addition to interested readers, indexing and abstracting services also rely on the accuracy of the title for extracting keywords and for cross-referencing and computer searching. An incorrectly titled paper may never be found (or cited) by researchers working in the same area or may be misinterpreted in terms of significance. This author believes that the title should contain following three components: the intervention that was investigated (e.g. drug name, device), the population that was studied (e.g. animal species, healthy volunteers, patients) and the study design (e.g. randomised, double-blind or open-label).
Properties of a Good Title
The use of abbreviations (unless well accepted) or literary titles is not recommended in scientific manuscripts, and exclamatory titles seldom suit original research articles. However, exclamatory titles could be used in ‘opinion’ type review articles and editorials.
Indicative versus Declarative Titles
Indicative titles do not declare the results of the study (e.g. Pharmacokinetics of sapropterin in patients with phenylketonuria) and declarative titles inform the readers of the result (e.g. Recently-approved sapropterin reduces phenylalanine levels). Whereas this author does not have a preference for either of these types of titles, some journals have specific policies regarding the use of indicative versus declarative titles. Therefore, readers are encouraged to check the specific ‘instructions for authors’ of their target journal before creating a title.
It can be helpful to draw up a list of keywords before creating a title, that is, keywords are the important characteristics of your work and ‘index’ terms that other researchers will look for when looking for data in your field of work. These keywords could then be incorporated into a title. If the keywords of a research work are duloxetine, pharmacokinetics and breast milk, a representative title could be ‘Pharmacokinetics of duloxetine in the breast milk of healthy postpartum women’.
Abstract
A key mnemonic to remember for abstracts is AB—absolutely, STR—straightforward, ACT—actual data presentation and interpretation.
The abstract provides a succinct summary of the work and accurately presents the salient points addressed in the main body of the text. It should not just describe the general areas covered in the manuscript and usually does not cite references.
The abstract provides a discrete synopsis of the article in approximately 250–600 words. Different journals and biomedical databases have different limits on the word count for abstracts and researchers should check the ‘instructions for authors’ of their target journal or online service before preparing the abstract. For example, Circulation imposes a restriction at 250 words; PubMed used to truncate abstracts at 250 words but currently allows ‘10,000 characters’ and the online Ingenta Connect service imposes a limit of 600 words on abstracts.
An important thing to bear in mind when writing the abstract is that the data in the abstract must be the same as data in the main body text, that is, only data from the body text should be quoted in the abstract (no new information), and data in the abstract should appear the same in the body text (i.e. do not present percentages in the abstract and absolute values in the body text or vice versa). Also, it is not advisable to present numerical data in the abstract and a corresponding figure in the main body of the manuscript, that is, if the data are important enough to warrant mention in the abstract, they should also be mentioned in the text.
The abstracts of original research articles should follow the IMRaD (introduction, methods, results and discussion) structure of the body text.
Tips for Preparing Abstracts
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