AcWriMo: Learn about What Makes a Good Title and Abstract

Now it’s time to think about the way published articles are read and, therefore, how they need to be written. In this post you are going to get some tips on how to write effective titles and abstracts.

Let’s start with titles.

The title is the first part of your article that potential readers will see.  They are potential readers only at this stage because there’s no guarantee that they will decide to read the full article at this point.  That’s why a carefully crafted title is so important – you want to make sure that the potential reader becomes an actual reader. To do that, here are a few tips on writing titles:

TIP 1

Make sure that your title clearly reflects the content of your paper for example, are there any keywords in your paper that you could use in your title?

TIP 2

Avoid using acronyms (words made from the first letters of a number of words, e.g. OPEC from Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and abbreviations in your title.  Remember that potential readers might understand acronyms and abbreviations to mean something different from your intended meaning.

TIP 3 

Check that the words you’ve used in the title are appropriate for the style of the publication  – for example, are the words you’ve used too formal and academic for a journalistic publication? Have you used too much technical jargon for an academic publication that targets a multi-disciplinary academic readership?

For more advice about titles, have a look at this link by the London School of Economics on the ‘how to’ guide to choosing article Titles ; and this link by bibliometric experts analysing titles and what makes them draw citations Heading for success; or how not to title your paper

Now let’s think about abstracts.

So, the potential reader has been interested enough in your title to want to read more – the abstract. However, remember that they still have not committed to reading your article.  It will probably be the abstract that persuades them to go onto the actual article itself.  So, here are a few tips on writing a good abstract:

Tip 1

Make sure that the language used in your abstract is consistent with that used in the title and the article – the abstract is a vital bridge between the title and the actual article, and so it should reflect both.

Tip 2

If you have keywords in your abstract, make sure that you have used the same keywords throughout your article – sometimes when you’re redrafting your article, you forget the keywords that you listed at the end of your abstract and start to change keywords into synonyms. Do a final check that the keywords run throughout your article before you submit your manuscript to the publisher.

Tip 3

Thoroughly proofread your abstract. Editors often have too many abstracts to get through, and so they need to have strategies for quickly filtering out the best. One strategy sometimes used is to automatically dismiss any abstract that is badly written or that has a large number of proofreading errors in it.

Let’s find out how good you are at proofreading.  Can you spot five proofreading errors in the abstract extract below? (There are actually more, but you only need to find five!)   Don’t worry if you can’t spot any – the answers are at the bottom!

Abstract extract

The recent rise in international students studying at Higher Education (HE) institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) has lead to an increase in the number and variety of proofreading services offered to tertiary level students. The variation in proofreading services offered have, in turn, resulted in confusion amongst students about the definition of proof reading.

This preliminary study adopted a qualitative research approach to investigated the range of understanding of the term proof-reading among doctoral researchers (PGRs) at UoS.  The main objective of the study was to gather data about PGRs’ understanding of the term, which would be used to inform the design of a larger study. The preliminary findings suggests that there is confusing among the researcher community, particularly among international researchers, about the meaning of the term proofreading. The findings highlight the importance of clarify the definition of proofreading in light of the rise in international students in UK HE institutions.

You can find more about writing a good abstract here:   Journal abstracts

Here are the answers to the proofreading exercise.

Abstract extract

The recent rise in international students studying at Higher Education (HE) institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) has lead (led) to an increase in the number and variety of proofreading services offered to tertiary level students. The variation in proofreading services offered have(has) in turn, resulted in confusion about the definition of proof reading. (There is inconsistency in the writing of this term in the abstract – choose either proofreading or proof-reading, and use the spelling consistently.)

This preliminary study adopted a qualitative research approach to investigated (investigate) the range of understanding of the term proof-reading (inconsistency) among doctoral researchers (PGRs) at the University of Surrey (UoS). (Before using an abbreviation for the first time, you should introduce the term in full.)  The main objective of the study was to gather data about PGRs’ understanding of the term, which would be used to inform the design of a larger study. The preliminary findings suggests (suggest) that there is confusing (confusion) among the researcher community, particularly among international researchers, about the meaning of the term proofreading. The findings highlight the importance of clarify (clarifying) the definition of proofreading in light of the rise in international students in UK HE institutions.